III. Requested Funding

The financial agent for Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh is the MPC Corporation, an entity which exists to facilitate collaborative projects involving the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. It is requested that the funds discussed in the present proposal should be granted to this same recipient, for distribution to the school district as specified in the attached proposals to the National Science Foundation. The bulk of the requested funding is for capital equipment, as described in the attached proposals. The funding is for a two-year period, coincident with the period of current NSF support. The requested equipment is intended for use at school sites within the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The detailed budget given below in section IV.3 refers to the following list of staffing and equipment.

• Student Assistant for library project. This person will enter data for the library project which is described in Chapter II of the present proposal.

• Consultants. These people will help extend the reach of our curriculum projects to a national audience, by linking these projects to other ongoing activities.

• Publicity. A set of newsletters will be mailed to interested school districts across the county.

• Workstations for schools and test site. These machines provide services for students and teachers including the maintenance of local files, print services, mail, news and other information services.

• Routers for schools and test site. These devices route network traffic from the school site to the Internet using standard telephone with analog or digital service.

• Modems for schools and test site. These devices are used to connect the routers to the telephone lines.

• User devices for schools and test site. Typical user devices for the project will be Apple Macintosh LC-III's, personal computers with Intel 386 or 486 processors or specialized graphics terminals known as X-terminals.

• Printers for schools and test site. High-quality print services will be available over each school's local area network.

• Network wiring and electronics. This links together the equipment listed above and enables it to function as a coherent system, capable of remote monitoring and maintenance.

• Wiring of school labs. These funds will enable the program to utilize existing equipment in some of the participating schools.

• Racks, cables, power. These expenses are associated with the installation of the school server (the workstation listed above) and the network electronics.

• Security equipment. The project will experiment with several security options to determine what is most appropriate in the school environment.

• Continue to Section IV.
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