University of Oregon
Lane Education Network
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program
Award Number 41-40-94029

Quarterly Technical Report

10/16/95-1/15/96

Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Goals and Objectives
  3. Achievements and Milestones
  4. Problems and Obstacles
  5. Programmatic Changes
  6. Evaluation Data and Other Products
  7. Individual Partner Reports
    1. Bethel School District
    2. City of Eugene
    3. Dynamix
    4. 4J School District
    5. Lane Community College
    6. Oregon Public Networking
    7. PeaceHealth
    8. Springfield School District
    9. Symantec
    10. University of Oregon

Summary

The main activities of the Lane Education Network development team during this quarter of operations included establishment of the access point and network infrastructure for Bethel School District, expansion in the network-based activities by several of the partners, and continuation of several collaborations and on-line resources that depend on the availability of the network infrastructure.

In addition to a brief general survey of the network, individual progress reports from several of the participants are attached below.

This report is available on-line as <URL:http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/LEN/LEN_1-29-96.html> as well as in hard copy.

Goals and Objectives

The Lane Education Network is a consortium of educational, governmental, health care, industry, and civic groups who are collaborating to develop innovative and effective uses of multimedia technology in education. Our goal is to develop and evaluate a wide variety of applications that use networked computers to provide life-long learning opportunities throughout our community. In pursuing this goal, we hope to both enhance the educational opportunities in our own community and to provide experience and guidance to other communities who seek to implement similar networks.

Achievements and Milestones

Some events of particular note during the past three months include:

Oct 31, 1995          LEN presentation at Coalition for Networked Information    
                      fall meeting, Portland OR
A major activity during this period has been commencing to consider long-term plans for the Lane Education Network. With the NTIA grant terminating in April, the partners need to decide what level of ongoing committment they wish to make to the network, and what directions they want to take the collaboration. Current discussions focus on maintaining the metropolitan area network infrastructure in more or less its present form and using it as the basis for providing higher speed Internet connectivity to the partners. In addition, the partners remain committed to using the organizational infrastructure provided by Lane Education Network to develop further programatic collaborations, particularly in the area of very high speed networking.

Problems and Obstacles

No major new problems have arisen during this period.

Programmatic Changes

none

Evaluation Data and Other Products

none

Individual Partner Reports

More detailed reports from some of the individual partners are included below.

Bethel School District

The Bethel School District continues to move ahead with our data network installation. In September both middle schools, the high school and the district office complex were completely wired. That means that every educational space in all four complexes has at least one faceplate with at least four data, phone or video ports available.

All five elementary schools had a limited network presence (4-5 faceplates) by the end of November. We are now in the second phase of network installation. Two elementary schools should be completely wired by the end of January, two more by the end of February and the fifth school is scheduled for complete wiring this summer.

The district is using two AST Manhattan computers as file servers. Each machine has 9 gigabytes of storage space. We also have installed a Sun Sparc 20 and a Sun Sparc IPX. The Sun work stations are used to run our Eudora e-mail system and our World Wide Web pages.

All district employees have network and email accounts. Accounts for all 4500 students have been established and approximately 20% of these accounts are active. Teachers are beginning to implement technology and network access into their daily activities and lesson plans. Training is ongoing and continues to involve hardware, software and network training. Gradually we are moving to assist teachers with the integration of this technology into the district curricula.

For more information about the Bethel School District network (BESTNet), see <URL:http://www.bethel.k12.or.us/>.

City of Eugene

As noted in our previous quarterly reports, much of the LEN-related activity for the City of Eugene is focused on the City's World Wide Web and the public access point in the Eugene Public Library.

The City of Eugene World Wide Web server continues to expand and provide new reference services. The server is available at <URL:http://www.ci.eugene.or.us/>. Among the new resources:

The City of Eugene is also working closely with OPN and a number of other public entities in the community to provide public information via the World Wide Web. Of particular note are the web pages for the Lane Transit District, <URL:http://www.efn.org/~ltd/>, andthe Hult Center for the Performing Arts, <URL:http://www.ci.eugene.or.us/Hult/default.htm>.

We can tell that Eugene is now "high tech". There are coin-operated web access stations in downtown coffee houses!

Dynamix
4J School District

Several projects of note are making use of the 4J network and Lane Education Network.

VideoConferencing

The School District is currently exploring the use of its internal network and Lane Education Network for videoconferencing. We intend to set up access stations in each high school, equipped with video cameras and appropriate network software to allow confrencing over the data network. Current plans call for use of Macintosh and Windows PC systems with color video cameras; we will initially use Cornell University's CU-SeeMe software, though we expect also to explore other software systems including Apple's QuickTime Conferencing and conferencing software using TCP/IP multicast data transfer.

Whiteaker Community School

Whiteaker Community School in Eugene Oregon is one of many elementary schools in the 4J School District. Unlike most elementary schools nationwide, however, it now has its own web presence, including a Hot Links Page, lots of projects, school schedules & info. Check us out! <URL:http://www.4j.lane.edu/websites/whiteaker/whiteaker.html>.

Child Safety on the Information Highway

A major issue facing parents and educators is child safety on the Internet. One excellent resource discussing the issues is a brochure produced by the National Center for Missing Children. 4J has developed a web-accessible version of this brochure, <URL:http://www.4j.lane.edu/InternetResources/Safety/Safety.html>.

Lane Community College

The Lane Education Network Access Point is now fully operational in the LCC Library.

LCC is developing a training collaboration with another LEN partner, Symantec. Numerous Symantec employees enroll in LCC courses, and LCC is investigating ways to utilize the network to increase instructional opportunities for Symantec employees. We have established a listserv for our C++ classes (a total of 7 sections winter term), which have particularly heavy concentration of people from Symantec.

Oregon Public Networking

Please see the "Eugene Free Community Network" web server, <URL:http://www.efn.org/>, for information on recent activities by OPN and Eugene FreeNet.

We now have close to 6,000 members online, 200 non-profit organizations, and are receiving donations and payments of almost $25,000 a month.

We have made an arrangement with the Forest Service which will help us to bring Internet access community members in Oakridge, hopefully by April.

We've started arrangements to bring Internet access to the Oakridge highschool with LCC who uses the building in the evenings. We hope to put the community modem pool in LCC's new addition to the highschool computer lab, so that students can learn to maintain the system for the community.

We offer training, support, hand-holding, and documentation to a minimum of 300 people EVERY week, and we do that with only 2.5 paid employees and considerable volunteer help. We now have well over 20 different support documents available in the office or online.

We have begun discussions for additional public access terminals placed at LCC and at the homeless shelthers.

We are working with leaders in the Gay and Lesbian community to set up an International Hate Crime mailing list.

PeaceHealth

The PeaceHealth system (formerly Sacred Heart Health System) established a presence on the Lane Educational Network during fall, 1995. Due to security concerns which preclude any direct connection between the PeaceHealth WAN enterprise network and the Internet, current connection is a 56Kb/s connection to a router located in Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene. This router serves a small Ethernet which presently has a single PC in the hospital library. Long term plans for a direct Ethernet network connection to the UO campus network are temporarily on hold.

The interim connection is being used to provide access to the Internet for Sacred Heart staff, and to provide a Sacred Heart library web server, <URL:http://sacredheart.len.net>.

A major current focus of Sacred Heart activities is training staff in use of the Internet and raising awareness in corporate administration of opportunities and problems associated with providing Internet access in the organization.

Springfield School District

Walterville Elementary School

Some of the more interesting networking activities in the Springfield School District are happening at Walterville Elementary School. Walterville is a "model technology school" within the district in an attempt to better understand the role of technology and computers in the educational process. Walterville has its own web presence, at <URL:http://walt.sps.lane.edu>.

Access point hardware installations

The LEN access points in the Springfield and Thurston High School Libraries are now almost complete. All hardware has been received, and they should be fully operational within the next few weeks.

.Please see the Springfield Public Schools World Wide Web server, <URL:http://www.sps.lane.edu/>, for additional information.

Symantec
University of Oregon

In addition to its involvement as manager of the LEN metropolitan-area network, the University of Oregon is involved in several collaborations with other partners using the Lane Education Network. This section summarizes a few of the activities. For general information on this and other UO activities see <URL:http://www.uoregon.edu/>.

On Oct 31, 1995, Joanne Hugi, Director of the UO Computing Center, and JQ Johnson, UO Academic Education Coordinator and LEN principal investigator, made a presentation describing LEN and its activities for the fall meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information in Portland, OR. A copy of the Microsoft PowerPoint presentation is available on line as <URL:http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/LEN/NTIA_ONE-final.hqx>.