High-bandwidth prototype could become national model in education
MUNCIE, Ind. -/04 September, 2004 - The Wi-Fi Technology Forum/- Ball State University has deployed a high-bandwidth wireless network to two elementary schools, a project that could become a national model for the application of high-bandwidth in classrooms.
Researchers from the university will test the educational impact of a range of multimedia content that will be delivered over the network to Cowan and Mitchell elementary schools in Delaware County, Ind. They will also analyze the network's technical capabilities. This joint approach will establish a digital education prototype for academic, government and industry leaders to follow, said O'Neal Smitherman, Ball State's vice president for information technology.
"We want to find the best process for taking individuals right into the middle of an electronic medium, interacting with it and learning from it," he said.
Participating teachers and students will come from the fourth and fifth grades in each school.
"We're extremely excited about this project," said Ermalene Faulkner, director of educational technology of Muncie schools, which includes Mitchell. "It gives us a great pilot study on embedded technology that we'll be able to scale up to more teachers and students in the future."
Ball State technicians set up both schools with 802.11g wireless technology, which provides a speed of 54 megabits/second (Mbps). This high-bandwidth wireless network will carry richer media instruction to a wider area than is available from commercial connections, which often run at 3 Mbps or slower.
The network will provide teachers with access to Ball State's E3 Electronic Field Trips, Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting films, video from Discovery Channel affiliate unitedstreaming, educational games and videoconferencing.
"It's a real potential boost to our curriculum," said Larry John, superintendent of Cowan Community Schools. "We have a good opportunity for our students to have access to all that content and to use technology that we've not had available in the past."
Both schools have been provided with new hardware to access the content. Gateway donated 19 laptop computers, one desktop computer and one plasma screen to each school. Ball State also provided one videoconferencing camera, two data projectors and one laptop for each school.
The project is dubbed "Digital Middletown," a digital age follow-up to the pioneering sociological studies performed by Robert and Helen Lynd during the 1920s and '30s in Muncie. It is being funded with a $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
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