A. History
School networking efforts in Pittsburgh date back nearly five years. CK:P staff members R. Carlitz and M. Zinga are currently writing a paper which describes the project history in some detail. A draft of that paper is attached to the present proposal. Here we will simply summarize a few details particularly relevant to the present proposal.
The project itself is a collaboration involving the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the University of Pittsburgh. The school district provides the educational component of the project; the supercomputing center provides technical support; and the university provides overall coordination and assessment. This collaboration gives the project great strength in all its crucial areas and has contributed to the high regard in which the project is held at the state and national level.
All school activities in the project relate to specific curricular proposals generated by teachers and support staff in the school district. Our original proposal to the NSF sketched 15 such activities, and six were chosen for implementation in the project's first year. Four of these involved specific school sites, and two related to resources that will be shared system-wide. The first-year school sites include two high schools (Schenley and Westinghouse) and two elementary schools (McCleary and Woolslair).
The process by which second-year sites are being selected is one based upon the school district's restructuring model. An internal Request for Proposals (RFP) was circulated in October, 1993. Teams of teachers were invited to submit proposals to CK:P. Assistance in proposal writing was provided by CK:P staff, and CK:P facilities at the Woolslair site were opened up to all teachers and support staff wishing to look at available network resources and the hardware and software tools needed to access these resources.
The RFP process has generated a considerable amount of interest in the school district. Approximately 40% of the schools have submitted proposals, and these proposals have just been evaluated by a broadly-based committee of educators, parents and school board representatives. This committee narrowed the original list of 33 proposals to 15 that were deemed worthy of immediate implementation. The 15 best proposals were then rank-ordered, and 7 sites were selected for development during the spring of 1994. These sites will be ready for classroom use of the network at the start of the fall semester. If funds can be found to expand beyond these 7 sites, we will choose additional sites from the list of 15.
In the same time frame during which the RFP process has been underway, another effort of great importance to the school district has also been initiated. This is the district's Instructional Technology Task Force, which seeks to develop a plan for instructional technology adequate to carry the district through the next five years. The goals of such a plan relate closely to the goals of CK:P, as stated above, and the existence of networked school sites provides Task Force members with useful examples of networking technology in action. In this manner the activities of CK:P have provided possible prototypes for future implementation by the school district, along with valuable consulting services in the area of new technology.
B. Current Needs
The RFP process indicates the soundness of CK:P's basic approach to implementation, encouraging extensive teacher involvement within a framework which involves all of the school district's administrative structures. We would like to develop as many of the high-quality proposals as our resources permit, and the present request is aimed specifically at this goal.
The provisions of the NSF grant under which the primary funding for CK:P is supplied are such as to limit our ability to purchase some of the project's essential hardware components. These limitations have to do with the NSF's traditional focus upon research pilots, and their disinclination to fund capital investments at the school level. Thus, while we have been able to use NSF funds for the central computing facilities of CK:P and for the majority of our staffing needs, we have had to look elsewhere to fund the necessary equipment at the school level.
The proposal approved by the NSF contained the following formula for hardware purchases:
During the project's first year we have been able to adhere to this formula, although the climate for vendor donations is considerably harsher than when the proposal was first drafted. A donation of 10 computers from Apple Computer enabled us to set up a summer workshop. We are currently in the process of developing the corporate alliances necessary to secure hardware donations at the level required for our second year of operation. Discussions are presently under way with Apple Computer, Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM.
In March of 1993 a proposal was submitted to the Buhl Foundation for a portion of the foundation funding that is required under the formula developed for our NSF proposal. (A copy of this proposal is attached to the present proposal.) The total amount of subsidiary funding required for the present two-year project is $359,000. In October, 1993, the Buhl Foundation awarded the project a grant of $110,000. This funding has been of crucial importance in allowing us to meet our full commitments for the first project year. There remains a need to secure funding for the rest of the $359,000 obligation. The present proposal therefore requests funding at a level of at least $249,000 to complete our supplemental funding package. Since we hope to have the second year sites fully in operation before the start of the fall semester, there is a need to complete this arrangements early this spring so as to be able to install the necessary equipment, configure it and teach teachers how to use it well in advance of the fall deadline.