October 21, 1996

Collaboration between UCSC and county offices of education helps schools get on--and stay on--the Internet

Sixth graders in Walt Schmidt's science class at Los Arboles Middle School in Marina troop outside each class period to measure the temperature and precipitation and observe the clouds. Using their classroom's computers, they send the information to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) via the Internet, where each day's weather record is maintained as part of an international project.

"NASA is using the information we give them to better understand weather satellite images," Schmidt says. Of more interest to the teacher, his students are getting hands-on exposure to real science.

The computer connection at Los Arboles is one of the results of an innovative partnership between UCSC and the Santa Cruz and Monterey County Offices of Education. The partnership is part of a wider collaboration known as the Monterey Bay Regional Educational Futures Consortium (MBReEF).

As part of the partnership, Communications and Technology Services (CATS) is supporting and advising the two offices as they develop and maintain a regional K-12 computer network.

When the network is completed in 1998, it will link 220 schools and the district offices in the two counties and provide access to the Internet via California State University's network; by the end of last month, 74 schools were connected.

The network allows students, teachers, and administrators to tap into the rich resources of the information superhighway, allowing them to send and receive electronic mail and enter the World Wide Web.

Connecting a single computer to the Internet is a simple task. Efficiently and correctly linking computers in two counties to each other and a single network service provider is far more complicated.

"We view this as academic technology transfer," says Fred Siff, associate vice chancellor for CATS. "We learned how to set up a network by doing it for our own students. It only makes sense that we would share that knowledge with the K-12 schools that surround us."

Since 1993, CATS has helped with this task by lending its staff's technical expertise. Staff have recommended hardware and software, designed the network architecture, negotiated licensing agreements and Internet-connection services, and helped troubleshoot problems.

"We've really been helping to install the plumbing," says network engineer Jim Warner, who has helped with the network as a CATS employee and volunteer since its inception.

In May, UCSC made its partnership official with the county offices of education and helped the offices pay for costs related to its services through a $40,000 contract. The university paid half of the contract with discretionary funds from the Chancellor's Office, and each county office chipped in $10,000. The contract covers UCSC's consulting and Network Operations Center (NOC) services for the period of May 1995 to December 1996.

"I think it's a great gesture on the university's part to reach out to the K-12 community and keep its network moving along," says Mike Mellon, director of instructional resources and technology for the Monterey County Office of Education. "The contract helps us get our institution thinking about how to come up with resources to support the network over the long term."

UCSC and the two county offices of education are part of the Monterey Bay Regional Educational Futures Consortium, a group of local educational institutions that came together in late 1993 to develop the telecommunications infrastructure for schools, libraries, and research institutions in the Monterey Bay Area.

Their effort reached a milestone last November when 36 K-12 schools in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties went on-line as part of a project funded by a grant from the Pacific Bell California Regional Research and Education Network (CalREN). By the end of August, a total of 39 schools in Monterey County and 30 in Santa Cruz County were wired with a high-speed digital line that is capable of linking hundreds of computers at each school to the regional network.

Teachers are beginning to use the network in their classrooms in a variety of ways. "The content on the network has gone beyond what I thought could happen," says Rowland Baker, administrator of media science and technology at the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. "We've got on-line science magazines and virtual field trips all over the county. It's a very exciting time."

Some of the ways schools are using the network are:

-- Fourth and fifth graders at Happy Valley School in Santa Cruz ride a virtual covered wagon down the Oregon Trail as part of a national program sponsored by America Online. Every week, teacher and technology specialist Kirsten Commons pulls historical and geographic information off the Internet about the latest stop on the trail. Taking characters based on historical figures, the kids in her class learn geography and history as they decide each week whether to rest, take another trail, or press on, she said. Commons's students are also studying earthquakes, current events, and geography as they use the Internet to track earthquakes around the world.

Other students are learning about the stock market through an Internet-based stock market simulation developed by teacher Jory Post. Post has also developed (TOWS) The On-Line Write Stuff, a nationwide on-line writing magazine for fourth- through sixth-grade students. A local edition is printed and distributed countywide.

-- Students at Los Arboles Middle School in Marina are creating virtual field trips as participants in the CalREN project. A team of six children developed a multimedia presentation on jellyfish in the Monterey Bay canyon with footage from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. They plan to post their field trips on the Web, says library media specialist Don Livermore.

-- Third- and fourth-grade students at Alianza School in Watsonville are participating in a "culture box" project with students at a Guam elementary school. The Watsonville and Guam students are each collecting items that represent local cultures and talking to one another via e-mail, says teacher Fred Mindlin. Later, the two groups will exchange their collections using traditional mail.

-- A group of students at Monterey High School and its related school, Monterey Academy of Oceanographic Science, work in the library after school on the high school's home page. Approximately 40 students set up the page last year, says librarian Marilyn Canady. This year, the group will meet to improve the page and keep it current. Also, students in economics and civics classes will tap into stock market and election information on the World Wide Web as part of their course curriculum.

--Francine Tyler