The United States is currently on the verge of a communications revolution, mediated by computers and likely to reach all homes, schools and offices. The relevant technology has been under rapid development for the last few years, and the present administration in Washington has made the application of this technology a cornerstone of its industrial policy, the vanguard of its drive for governmental efficiency and a key element of its hopes for international competitiveness.
The same technology which has such promise for business and governmental applications is likely to have a major impact on education. Indeed, one can take the model of a networked information system as the starting point for a system of restructured schools, rich in resources and closely linked with the larger society. Such a school system would be more closely attuned to the information-based society of the twenty-first century than is its predecessor, a school system modeled roughly on the factories of the nineteenth century.
For this reason the federal plans to implement a National Research and Education Network include major efforts to apply this technology in the service of major educational goals. One such program, currently funded by the National Science Foundation, supports four projects, known collectively as the testbeds for school networking.
One of these four testbeds is a project known as Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh (CK:P). CK:P is a partnership among the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The project outlines a five-year plan to introduce the technology of wide-area networking into the Pittsburgh Public Schools, with eventual application at all grade levels and in all subject areas.
So far funding has been obtained for a two-year pilot phase of the proposed five-year activity. The two-year pilot will reach about ten percent of the school district's classrooms. CK:P differs from the other testbeds in two important respects:
For these reasons the project is of particular importance to both the city and the National Science Foundation. In a recent speech to a convocation at the National Academy of Sciences, Luther Williams, Assistant Director of Education and Human Resources at the NSF, focused his attention solely upon CK:P in the course of a speech dealing with national problems and goals in science education.
Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh is currently under way, having received its initial funding in January and having completed most of its initial staffing in April. A pair of teachers' workshops have been scheduled for the summer. The first workshop was held at the end of June, and the second workshop will be help just before the start of classes in the fall. These workshops served to introduce teachers at CK:P's initial project sites to resources on the Internet. Participating teachers have been supplied with computers for use during the summer, allowing them to continue their network explorations at their own pace while maintaining contact with each other and with the project staff of CK:P.
The theme of the summer workshop has been that of "the teacher as a researcher." We presented this theme at a recent meeting of Principal Investigators of the program for the Applications of Advanced Technology at the National Science Foundation. This is one of the major innovative ideas in our project. Another, which distinguishes our project from the other NSF testbed projects and from much of the NSF's other funded research, is our emphasis upon instituionalization. This is a goal shared by many projects, but few have developed as detailed a mechanism for implementing it. If we are successful in meeting this goal, we are likely to have a major impact upon the design and implementation of other networking projects across the nation.
Another innovation that we were able to exhibit at the NSF PI's meeting was an online resource which disseminates project materials across the Internet. This server also helps coordinate project activities within the school district and effectively cuts the time for dissemination from several years to a matter of days. Materials on the server will be available via any of the nearly one million computers presently connected to the Internet at locations around the world. Servers which will be set up at participating schools will enable students, teachers and administrators at these schools to develop and disseminate their own materials, which can include text, pictures, sounds and eventually even video clips. This mechanism is already being used to distribute an architecture exhibit originally on display in the atrium of McCleary School.
The summer worshops are being conducted at the CK:P Resource Center, which is located in the Woolslair Elementary Gifted Center. Three additional schools are expected to have online classrooms in September. Initial response from teachers and principals has been very enthusiastic, and we expect there to be a lively competition for new sites as the program expands. During the project's second year we expect to accomodate 6-8 new sites. If additional funding becomes available to the project, our architecture will allow it to be expanded to other sites as well.
The NSF imposed several conditions upon the proposal for the current pilot project. Notably, these include the following constraints:
The level of NSF funding represents a strong commitment to the development of extensive networking facilities for the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The second condition relates to the NSF's inability to fund major captial investments under the rubric of their research program for the Applications of Advanced Technology.
While preparing the proposal for the two-year pilot program, we spoke informally with the Buhl Foundation about the availability of supplemental funds on the level necessitated by the NSF's conditions. The level of required supplemental funding comes to approximately $130,000 in the program's first year and $230,000 in the program's second year. The present proposal is being presented to the Buhl, Frick and Heinz Foundations to secure the funds necessary to complete the work proposed to and funded by the NSF. The disposition of these supplemental funds has been dictated largely by the constraints imposed by the NSF upon our proposal to them, but the supplemental funds are obviously of great importance to carry out the broad goals of the full proposal.