Technology & Learning - October 2007 - (Page 18)

One District’s Journey Northern California’s Santa Clara Unified School District helped launch the effort to network schools in the very first NetDay volunteer wiring event back in March 1996. “Every teacher has e-mail and we encourage them to use Internet research in classrooms and computer labs,” says then Business Manager Roger Barnes, now spokesman for the SCUSD. But as use increased, access slowed. “Three to four teachers at one school couldn’t download videos at the same time. In the morning when everyone checked e-mail, it couldn’t run at the speeds that they wanted.” Prompted by this overload, the district recently received bond funding for a 10-year school improvement plan and upgraded its LANs with fiber to the desktop. It built its own dark fiber transport network from schools to the district office, dropping leased lines. According to Barnes, owning your own network keeps costs under control and lets the district control capacity as well. The district had to give up E-rate funding to switch to its own network, but it calculated that the cost of the network over 10 years will be less than the leased line cost even with E-rate discounts. adequate bandwidth, including: enough computers; software that is easy to use; teachers that understand what they are doing; timely technical intervention and server and backroom equipment; a maintenance and Greaves, of the Greaves Group, and Jeanne Hayes, of the Hayes Connection, divided the total number of students by the bandwidth reported by district IT professionals. “Our viewpoint is from the student,” says Retrieving material from the Web can be a matter of minutes or hours, according to the above statistics compiled by Jim Werle, a University of Washington official. Only Part of the Puzzle Dennis Fazio, director of Technical Services for TIES, an education technology collaborative of 38 Minnesota school districts, warns that bandwidth is only about “5 percent of the solution.” “Technology makes great improvements in learning possible,” says Fazio. “But a whole pile of things have to be lined up in addition to turnover budget; and curriculum advisors and experts to help teachers be creative using the technology.” Technology coordinator Edwin Wargo agrees, but urges attention to bandwidth. Without adequate access, he cannot get the teachers he trains to see the potential for their classrooms. While leading a workshop on wikis for elementary school teachers, he agonized over a slow connection. “I got that bead of sweat on my forehead,” says Wargo. “They were thinking, I can’t do this in front of a room full of second graders, getting restless waiting for something to download. They don’t realize it is the network, not the application.” A Better Way to Measure To calculate school connectivity more accurately, in the America’s Digital Schools 2006 Report, Tom Greaves. “If the student only gets 1/1000th Mbps, it’s safe to say the Internet is having no impact.” The ADS national survey of school districts found that current external bandwidth to the Internet averages 2.90 Kbps per student. Districts project expanding to support 9.57 Kbps per student by 2011, but calculations by Greaves and Hayes suggest that even this expansion will fall far short of the actual need, approximately 40 Kbps per student. If costs remain the same and E-rate funding stays capped at $2.25 billion per year, districts may face rapidly escalating costs for additional bandwidth. “In West Virginia, an $800 T-1 line costs the district $300 [with their E-rate discount],” says Greaves. “A second T-1 line will be full price at $800.” 18 | www.techlearning.com ILLUSTRATION BY MARTY BUMANN http://www.techlearning.com

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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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