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Students on Fast Track to Internet Learning

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By Chris Rosenblum, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

Feb. 28--Picture sitting in a Penns Valley classroom and talking to students in South America. Or a Bellefonte class asking a marine biologist in Miami about dolphins.

By this fall, Centre County students could easily do both before lunch.

A new high-speed computer network, set to start July 1, will link more than 50 school districts in 11 counties across central Pennsylvania. It will offer teachers and students videoconferencing opportunities and virtual lessons.

Central Intermediate Unit 10, which serves Centre County schools, and two other intermediate units formed the Central Pennsylvania Broadband Consortium to secure a $3.4 million state education grant for the network. All five county school districts, as well as the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology in Pleasant Gap, have joined the consortium.

Administrators at the CIU West Branch Technology Center, the project's coordinator, say the network could help school officials with budgeting, federal and state reports, professional training, and other duties.

But they're really excited about the high-tech educational possibilities the network offers.

"Just imagine a situation where you have a class that's learning about marine biology," said Debra Burrows, the center's director. "That class can be put in touch with an organization in Florida that actually studies manatees and other marine life."

Robert Hoffer, audio-visual/technology coordinator for the Philipsburg-Osceola Area School District, said the network will connect all consortium schools to Internet 2, a World Wide Web network limited to educational material. Teachers will be able to download interactive "curriculum content packages," including videos, activities and tests, in real time.

"It's almost like watching television," Hoffer said. "It's that fast and that clear."

For example, Hoffer said, a computer hooked to a dial-up modem would take about 171 hours to download a movie such as "The Matrix." Internet 2, on the other hand, needs just 30 seconds.

"I think this consortium we're involved in, we're on the cutting edge of technology," Hoffer said. "We're certainly in the 21st century now."

Internet 2 may allow schools to teach additional subjects, Hoffer said. "Let's say we have a student in high school who wants to play the oboe and we don't have an instructor," Hoffer said. "We could find somebody in Michigan, and we could have a virtual classroom here. Education is changing."

The same technology may mean smoother videoconferences between school administrators, said Mike Leiter of the West Branch Technology Center.

"Before, to connect two schools together, they would have to go out in the Internet," Leiter said. "It's slow and choppy. Now, they'll be able to do without ever crossing the Internet. It'll be an internal network. It's also more secure."

Depending on their use of the network, school districts will have to pay some costs once the state grant builds the system, Burrows said. But, she noted, the consortium should yield savings from pooled resources and bulk-purchase orders.

"It takes advantage of size and makes it work for everyone," she said.

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

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Source: Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.)

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