Technology Counts - March 14, 2013 - 8

Faster Internet Speeds

WANTED

Districts make moves
to increase bandwidth
as educators demand
stronger and speedier
connections to support
digital learning tools
By_Michelle R. Davis

he broadband connection linking Indiana’s Clark-Pleasant
Community School Corporation to the Internet faltered
repeatedly last school year.
When students tried to view YouTube
videos, the connection was often slow or
unable to handle many users at a time,
says Jim White, the director of technology
for the 6,000-student district. When the
district did its first round of online state
testing, White severely limited teachers’
access to the Internet to prevent an overload of the network. Some teachers went
for days without any Internet access at
all—meaning no online science videos,
access to educational games, or use of
video-editing sites.
“Talk about crippling instruction,”
White says. “You can never have a garage
too big, and you can never have too much
bandwidth.”
This school year, White has upgraded
the district’s technology. He increased the
bandwidth to 100 megabits per second,
but is pulling that from three different
providers so the service never wavers. So
far, there have been no significant issues
with the use of digital media, he says.
“I’m not getting accolades, though,”
he says. “You only hear from teachers if
you’re doing poorly.”
Teachers across the country want to
personalize learning through technology,
districts are putting 1-to-1 computing
initiatives in place, tablet devices are flooding into classrooms, and the 2014-15 deadline for online testing under the Common
Core State Standards is drawing near.
But none of those approaches or plans is
possible without high-speed broadband
connections.
The Federal Communications Commission has made it a priority to get such fast,
reliable connections to every school. It released a national broadband plan in 2010
with recommendations to achieve that goal,
and it is slowly modernizing regulations for
the federal E-rate program, which reimburses districts for many connectivity ex8

EDUCATION WEEK

Photo by_AJ Mast for Education Week
Digital-communications teacher Kara Heichelbech works with 7th graders Camden Lilly, left, and Lance
Parson in her Clark-Pleasant Middle School classroom in Greenwood, Ind.

penses. (See related story, Page 10.)
Though nearly every school is connected to the Internet, not all of them
have the kind of connections that allow
teachers and students to make full use
of digital tools.
A 2010 survey by the fcc found that
most schools had access to some form
of broadband service, but that nearly 80
percent of respondents didn’t have connections adequate to their needs.
Schools should have at least 100 megabits per second for their broadband connections by 2014-15, says a report issued
last year by the State Educational Technology Directors Association, referring to
the speed at which information is delivered to a computer. That’s the same speed
that the assessment coalitions behind online testing of the common-core standards
suggest.
But many schools do not have such
high-speed connections, says Douglas
Levin, the executive director of the Glen
Burnie, Md.-based setda. Even worse, he
says, some think they do—and are paying for such service—without really having it available.
Though Internet-service providers

>> MARCH 14, 2013

might be providing the 100 megabits to a
district, outdated wiring, servers, routers,
and other equipment may be delivering
less to the end user, Levin says. Those
pieces of technology need to be upgraded
to take full advantage of broadband coming into a district.
“Sometimes, they’re not getting the
speeds they think they’re getting,” Levin
says. “The speed out to the Internet is
only as fast as the weakest link.”
Schools can determine just what speed
they’re actually getting in the classroom
with a test developed by EducationSuperHighway, a San Francisco-based
nonprofit group that advocates upgraded
Internet access for schools. The group is
collecting the results, says Evan C. Marwell, its chief executive officer.
So far, between 100,000 and 200,000
tests have been run, and the group hopes
to amass comprehensive data about
school broadband access, he says.
“Our test measures what is getting to
the classroom,” Marwell says. “States
have done a pretty a good job of getting
connectivity to schools, but we’ve learned
that there is a huge deficiency in the
PAGE 10 >

don’t
“SchoolsEXPERTISE
have the

they need to
EFFECTIVELY design
and implement
a network.
CREATING a network
and buying broadband
is a lot more

COMPLICATED

than buying pencils.”
—EVAN C. MARWELL
Chief Executive Officer
EducationSuperHighway

Technology Counts - March 14, 2013

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