November 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 1993 Vol. 2 No. 1
The Changing Concept of Classroom
Sidebar for And They're Off! The Race to Fiber Optics
Two dynamic forces—communications technology and interactive distance learning programs—are shifting the focus of schools from inward to outward. School walls no longer stake the boundaries of the learning environment. Isolation, low enrollment, or limited district staffing budgets no longer preclude a quality education.
Various distance learning programs—employing phones, fax machines, electronic bulletin boards, interactive video, computers, and other media to enable instructors and learners to interact—are being implemented across the country. The technology used by each program depends on a variety of factors, including the number of sites, the distance between sites, program objectives, the level of interaction required, and available funds.
The Wisconsin Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Network Model Distance Learning Project (WISMATE) is achieving effective interaction under the direction of Jon L. Harkness and the technical coordination of LeRoy Lee. The project uses computers, modems, and regular copper telephone lines. WISMATE is funded for the 1992-93 school year by a $44,653 state Science, Mathematics, and Technology grant. It links 577 fifth-grade students and 17 teachers in classrooms across Wisconsin with one another and with practicing scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who volunteer their services. Participating schools provide their own computers and modems.
WISMATE students work on projects especially designed for the network with the help of their in-class teachers and their assigned on-line volunteer scientists. Students and teachers in all classes collaborate and exchange information. Participating scientists pose and answer questions, make suggestions, and guide students to further collaboration with other scientists and with students in other classrooms. WISMATE users communicate with one another by leaving messages in electronic mailboxes for information “not of interest to everyone” and on electronic bulletin boards for information from which “everyone could benefit by reading.” All interactions on the network require writing and reading, a fact which Harkness says WISMATE educators consider a “definite plus to students.”
Distance
learning in Indianapolis, using fiber-optic connections. Students and teachers
see each other on screen and interact as if in the same classroom. This photo
was taken at the Ameritech SuperSchool exhibit.
Interaction is ready to happen on a different level on the Indianapolis Regional Economic/Academic Development (IREAD) network. The IREAD network, also begun in fall 1992, is a closed-circuit television system built and implemented through the cooperative efforts of Indiana Bell/Ameritech, Thomson Consumer Electronics, and Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). The network links three administration buildings and 87 schools by 600 miles of fiber optics. It has the potential to connect any IPS classroom as well as various ad hoc groups of the 47,000 students and 4,000 teachers in the IPS system in an audiovisual, real-time interactive environment. It is also joined to Indiana University Bloomington (IUB), 45 miles south of Indianapolis, by fiber.
Because the schools already were wired for cable, Indiana Bell was able to lay a fiber-optic trunk line and connect it in most cases to the existing coaxial cable in each building to form the network. Easily transportable equipment in the schools can quickly ready classrooms and other sites for two-way voice/video interaction on a need basis.
The first two IREAD projects in fall 1992 were a three-credit-hour graduate course from IUB for teachers and a student project built around the election-year theme that included lectures by IUB professors. IPS spokesman Mark Goff says feedback on these projects was “very positive, and teachers are actively planning new distance learning projects to fulfill the network's interactive potential.”
According to Indiana Bell media information specialist Lisa Hendrickson, the initial cost of the network is covered by a 10-year contract between IPS and Indiana Bell. She says the contract—which has six more years to go—calls for “monthly payments of $15,000 to Indiana Bell,” an amount that includes all Indiana Bell communication services to IPS.
—Joan Lewis
Photo courtesy of Indiana Bell.
Return to And They're Off! The Race to Fiber Optics TECHNOS Quarterly article.