Case study — Connecting Classrooms
In the more sparsely populated areas of the world, it's difficult to deliver education to the most students at reasonable costs. That's the case in a 15,000-square-mile area of Alberta, Canada where six high schools teach as few as 12 students at a time. More importantly, not all the schools teach courses that are required for admission into the universities, so some of the students didn't have a way to continue their education.
That has changed, for the better, with a project called Rural Advancement Community of Learners (RACOL) which beginning in 2002, funded technology to link these schools together to deliver consistent, high quality courses.
First, a broadband network was installed to link the schools. The network, called SuperNet, is powerful enough to handle real-time broadband, including videoconferencing, multicasting, voice-over-IP, etc. It is said to be 1,000 times faster than a home-cable Internet connection.
Next, an MPEG-2 videoconferencing system was installed, and each classroom has videoconferencing capabilities.
Students sit in "learning suites"—rooms equipped with a collection of monitors and interactive video displays.
Classrooms are equipped with two large monitors at the front of each room plus two smaller monitors at the back which duplicate what is on the front monitors. The images displayed on the screens are the same at all school locations. Students can see the teacher on one monitor and a six-way split-screen displaying the six classrooms on the other monitor.
Customized touch screens with "question buttons" allow students to let teachers know when they have questions and the teacher, who can see each classroom, can answer them. They also have an "I'm lost" button so the teacher knows when to stop and review the information.
Each location also has a Rear Projection SMART Board 3000i interactive whiteboard, a document camera and a CD-ROM/DVD/video player. The teacher uses the 3000i to access and control computer applications. Teachers and students can also write on the interactive whiteboard using their finger or a stylus. All the activity performed on the 3000i is viewed live by students in every location on their respective 3000i's. The lessons are then stored and made available to students for review later via streaming video.
Students can switch between watching the image of the instructor, the other students and the 3000i and bookmark areas they want to view again. The system is currently being used to teach math, physics, science, French, aboriginal studies and career and life management.
Each location also contains four Polycom Via Video units that enable students at different locations to work together in small groups.
Everything that happens synchronously is stored and made available to members of the class asynchronously via streaming video. A special application has been developed to allow a student to switch between the image of the instructor, the students or the electronic whiteboard while the sound continues, and to bookmark locations in the stream for later review.
Of course, many of these technologies can be used to link any sort of organization with satellite locations. It's just wonderful to see technology so well applied to such a worthy cause as education of students who otherwise wouldn't have access. And, as one official put it: "Although it sounds like an expensive system, the learning suites will actually save money. It's hard to get someone as specialized as a physics teacher into some of those schools."
