Technology & Learning - October 2007 - (Page 17)

“Schools are going to have to adjust to the new reality of how kids use digital media,” says Peter Grunwald, president of the Maryland-based firm. “Not only are they heavier and heavier users, they are becoming producers of media through social networking and multimedia. Schools have to accommodate that to engage kids.” What does this mean for the classroom? “It’s like not having enough books or enough chalk,” says Edwin Wargo, a teacher and technology coordinator at Quarter Mile Lane Elementary School in Bridgeton, New Jersey. He is enthusiastic about the potential of technology to help students learn 21st-century skills and compete in the global marketplace. But slow access hampers teaching and learning. The Tipping Point may work just fine for a school of 500 students with a 5-to-1 student to computer ratio, but quickly taps out at a high school with 1,500 students and a one-to-one laptop initiative. On testing day, when all students log in to a bandwidth-intensive testing site, an otherwise functioning network may reach capacity. Test sessions may time out before recording answers, or response time may be slow, both crucial factors in timed tests. Even schools that can accommodate all of their network traffic today may be on the tipping point tomorrow. One more classroom application, a video conference, a learning game simulation, or more access points could each top out the network capacity, causing dropped connections, timed-out sessions, and lost data. Everyone agrees on one thing: if the bandwidth exists, students and teachers will use it. For some, bandwidth is crucial. According to Tom Rolfes, education IT manager, Nebraska State Government Office of the CIO, the Nebraska state legislature has invested heavily in upgrading statewide education networks because “our rural schools live and die by video distance learning.…We have massive course exchange between schools and community colleges.…It’s the next best thing to a highly qualified teacher in a face-to-face environment.” Previously, the 92 districts in the northeast region of the state shared 40 Mbps of access, giving each school about 640 kilobits per second (Kbps). An IP network upgrade, switching from T-1 WAN transport between schools to a regional Metropolitan Optical Ethernet Cloud now delivers a full 40 Mbps (26 T-1s) of transport to every district. By tripling the shared Internet access to 120 Mbps, or about 1.3 Mbps to each school, and improving transport speed, the districts can now accommodate all of their administrative and lab traffic, and run full 512 Kbps point-to-point videoconferences to support distancelearning courses. And the schools’ budget line item for connectivity remained essentially the same. Bandwidth Glossary T-3/DS3 dedicated digital transmission of data and voice at the speed of 45 MB per second; composed of 672 channels. Fractional T-3 one or more channels of a T-3/DS3 line; used for data and voice transmission at the speed of less than 45 MB per second. T-1/DS1 dedicated digital transmission of data and voice at the speed of 1.5 MB per second; composed of 24 channels. Fractional T-1 one or more channels of a T-1/DS1 line; used for data and voice transmission at the speed of less than 1.5 MB per second. Pressure from the Students Students feel the crunch when they compare Internet access at home to school. A 2005 study by Grunwald Associates, a market research firm specializing in K–12 education, found that of students who had only dial-up access at home, 35 percent still felt that connection was faster than the broadband they had at school, and 27 percent ranked access about the same. Cable modem dedicated transmission of data through cable TV wires at a speed of up to 2 MB per second. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) refers collectively to ADSL, SDSL, HDSL, and VDSL. DSLs have a dedicated digital transmission speed of up to 32 MB per second. Source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007020.pdf Technology & Learning October 2007 | 17 http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007020.pdf

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Technology & Learning - October 2007 Editor’s Desk News & Trends Product Guide Reviews How Fast Is Fast Enough? Cover Story: Career Education in the Digital Age Getting It Wrong Higher Ed Point of View How To Bottom Line What’s New Emerging Tech

Technology & Learning - October 2007

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