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Report Says Schools Need 100Mbps Per 1,000 Users
alphadogg writes "American schools need mega-broadband networks — and they need them soon, a new report says. Specifically, U.S. educational institutions will need networks that deliver broadband performance of 100Mbps for every 1,000 students and staff members in time for the 2014-15 school year. That's the conclusion reached by the State Educational Technology Directors Association. Why the need for speed? For one thing, more and more schools are using online textbooks and collaboration tools, said Christine Fox, director of educational leadership and research at SETDA. Broadband access must be 'ubiquitous' and 'robust,' she said, adding that schools should think of broadband as a 'necessary utility,' not as an add-on. The report, called 'The Broadband Imperative,' further suggests that schools should upgrade their networks to support speeds of 1Gbps per 1,000 users in five years."
Aging textbooks were not old because they didn't need updating -- they were old because the publication, printing, and distribution an entire volume to modify a few elements was foolishly expensive. Therefore, textbooks were carefully written so as to exclude information that was would quickly become obsolete. We don't have to keep doing it that way. Examples can be current and relevant, and provide for a much more enriching experience. Links to web resources can be perpetually maintained. It's a very exciting new paradigm and we should be looking for ways to capitalize on its strengths rather than hobble it with the limitations of different media.
My wife is a kindergarten teacher. In order for her students to access the content she is required to teach them they must first logon to the machines in the computer lab. (I'll avoid a diatribe on the woes of the poor password practices they are forced to teach these minions...) It can often take 1/3 of her classes computer lab time just to log on; granted much of this wasted time is due to the fact that kindergarteners can't remember their passwords but, an equal amount is also caused by the lag caused when the network is flooded with their logon requests (she has less than 20 students).
Once they've accomplished the herculean task of getting the little minions logged onto the lab computers the real fun begins. Most of the content is only available online from the publishers of the text books the school uses. Adding insult to injury the publishers sites are difficult to navigate often requiring the students to manually type in long cryptic URLs that would make torrent users eyes bleed. While much of the content is colorful, animated and has pleasing sound effects try and imagine what accessing this content is like on a network that can't handle a few dozen simultaneous logons.
While I'm a fan of using online resources, the schools (as directed by their boards of education, county governments etc.) seem to have truly put the digital cart before the horse in the mad dash to move toward education online. Also without competent, which of course often means properly paid, tech support (she was once told by a tech the printer wouldn't print because she was using a japanese USB cable) adding bandwidth is pointless.
I have two children two years apart, in the public school system in the northeast US. Our school district is rated fairly well for the state, better than most but not as good as some.
Now that the context is established, let me say that I have been shocked and somewhat dismayed to see the annual changes to curriculum and approach at the elementary school. While I do understand that gains have been made in understanding childhood development and education, I really struggle to understand this constant churn from year to year. The students struggle with it as well. This is particularly noticeable in basic approaches to reading, spelling, and math. As an example, one year the focus will be on memorizing a list of 10 words, spelling them, and using them in sentences. The next year, the spelling quizzes are gone completely. Maybe this is a response to the standardized testing regimen that all schools are focusing on, but I have a tough time not feeling like this is some kind of ill-considered trend-chasing experiment and our communities' children are the unwitting guinea pigs.
While I'm in rant mode let me also express my surprise to find that precious little time is being spent on learning basic math facts. These children are being exposed to grouping, estimating, while they still don't know their basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division tables. Having these facts committed to memory up front will save them a lot of time and effort down the road when they are trying to digest weightier subject matter. (Before you jump all over me, yes as a parent I have worked with my offspring to get them to know their math facts) Rote memorization may be boring, but it too is a skill that must be learned and why not learn it early on in the same way that's worked for at least the past 200 years? It's *not* broken!
OK so now that the rant is over - yes, caching is good and should be encouraged. Even if the texts are changing daily or weekly and being served "from the cloud" - there are still major performance gains and efficiencies to be found on the network with a little simple cache engine.
and define the bottom 2%
in NYC a teacher that teaches in one of the most elite schools in the city was ranked one of the worst. reason her kids didn't improve from last year. they are already the best in the city but because they didn't improve she's a bad teacher
or what if all your kids never do homework and never study because their parents don't care?
Today's content providers seem to jump through every possible hoop to defeat caching.
You would think that a video provider would use some indirect URL to first log the access attempt and then point to a static location where the actual video is provided, and that can be cached locally, but no...
In a new deployment, including a caching proxy probably is a waste.
E.g. our existing proxy now has a byte-% hit ratio of 11%, falling all the time.
My local school district has several Verizon FiOS 115 Mb/sec connections for the district of 4,000 K-12 students. It isn't that expensive, but it is essentially residential-grade service.
They pay about $200/connection per month, probably $1K/month - much cheaper than the subsidized business class service the district had before, and much faster.
Our in school wire network is Fast Ethernet to the desktop, Gigabit backbone.
It was non-trivial to get this service at a public school, due to rate regulations.
Ken
Gradebooks, attendance, cafeteria manegement, email of course, Courseware, scheduling and calendaring, yearbooks. If it isn't being delivered from the cloud now it is because they are still fighting over which vendor they want to write a check to. (read as the bidding is still fierce over who will kick back more.. ok, I'm a cynic) That pattern means they need LOTS of bandwidth now and will need an ever growing amount going forward into an HD Video for everything future.
Having subbed in many local schools throughout the years and reading an article like this...BULLSH!T! You want to know what your tax dollars are being wasted on? Every class which had an assignment and needed computers...the kids weren't doing their work...they were playing games (web-based)...using You Tube...going to ESPN...racing web sites and going to Facebook/other social media sites. Reminding these "little angels" they had work to do and that if they were in an actual job doing these things...they would be reprimanded or fired...I was informed their teacher doesn't care. I let the teacher/the principal/IT department know this was going on...I was the bad guy and told to mind my own business.
This is what your tax money for education is going for. What a great use of our public resources.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz