In addition to a 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_7-15-95.html> as well as in hardcopy.
Circuit installation: LCC, 4J, Springfield, Bethel, 1 Feb 95 - 15 Mar 95 EPL Router and network connection: Sacred Heart 1 Jan 95 - 1 Mar 95 Access point installation: UO, LCC, Springfield, 1 Dec 95 - 1 Mar 95 4J, Bethel Leased circuit upgrades: Springfield, 4J 1 Jan 95 - 1 Mar 95 Access point installation: Eugene Public Library 1 Mar 95 - 1 July 95Circuit and router installations are now complete (in our previous progress report we noted that Bethel circuit installation had been delayed until April due to a change in termination location).
As noted in "Problems and Obstacles" below, the network connection to Sacred Heart has been delayed, and an interim connection is expected this month. Access Point installations at UO and Eugene Public Library have been completed, but other Access Point installations have been deferred until summer 1995, with expected completion by 1 Sept, to take advantage of new workstation technology while still providing access when students return for fall term.
In addition to providing the network connectivity and access described in the original grant application, we continue to expand the scope of the metropolitan-area network. On 1 May we upgraded the connection from the UO campus network to NorthWestNet from T1 to dual T1, and made this dual-T1 connection available to all LEN sites. For several LEN partners this is their only Internet connectivity; for others it is important backup connectivity. The connection to Dynamix reported as planned in the previous progress report has now been completed. In addition, we have now received authorization to connect Symantec to the network, with connection expected to occur in late July. We are also using the grant funded connection to the City of Eugene to provide network access, including Internet access, to a number of city locations not originally anticipated, and are currently negotiating with the City of Springfield to provide Internet access to the City, and in particular to the Springfield Public Library.
The Lane Education Network grant has provided the impetus for a substantial amount of related regional networking activity. For example, it was one impetus for, and featured prominently in, a "Telecommunications Town Hall" held May 26, 1995 in Eugene. More than a hundred community leaders representing LEN partners and other local industry and public entities attended to "further development of an integrated telecommunication system in Lane County." Of particular note has been the active involvement of the major local cable TV, telephone, and public utility providers.
For example, we are seeing increasing concern about the tension between the goal of full and free access to networked information and the need, particularly of our school district partners, to provide age-appropriate access to information. Given the evolving legal situation, it is not even clear to us what our legal responsibilities as a network provider will be in the future. One way we plan to address this set of issues is by organizing a symposium to discuss the legal and technical situation. Our hope is that at a minimum our various organizations can develop a shared understanding of what the issues are; in addition, we hope to begin to develop shared acceptable use policies and guidelines.
A related concern with Internet security has delayed the connection of our health care partner, the PeaceHealth system (formerly Sacred Heart Health System). Given the need to provide high security for patient records and for hospital network operations, Sacred Heart has not been comfortable with allowing any Internet traffic on the Sacred Heart internal backbone network. As an interim measure, Sacred Heart has leased a low-speed 56Kb circuit to provide Internet access for a single, otherwise not network connected, PC located in the Sacred Heart Library.
We are planning further improvements in Internet connectivity for LEN partners in the near future. In particular, we plan to connect LEN directly to RainNet (the network provider for many sites in Oregon, and the primary provider for one LEN partner, OPN). This will provide all LEN partners with good connectivity to regional RainNet sites, replacing a currently tortuous path that leads, e.g., from UO through NorthWestNet, the FIX-west, and Sprintlink. The University of Oregon has also just completed engineering of a T3 connection as part of the NERO (Network for Engineering and Research in Oregon; see <URL:http://www.nero.net/> for information) project ( to the NSI; again, LEN partners will have access to this connectivity as soon as routing issues are resolved.
The Center is staffed by volunteers from Oregon Public Networking, the not-for-profit organization that operates the Eugene Free Community Network. The Center thus represents a major successful collaboration spurred by the LEN project.
The 4J NTIA steering committee has made progress on applications to run on the new Lane Education Network (LEN). Agreements have been reached between the UO Yamada Language Center, which provides technology support to UO foreign language departments, and 4J faculty to pursue a collaborative project in the area of language acquisition for grades 3 - 12. During the summer 4J faculty will work on creating server-based instructional tools for use in 4J using the ForLangNet server at the UO Yamada Center and workstations provided by 4J.
The 4J Computing & Information Services Department has hired one of 4J's star teachers, Tom Layton, to help develop, promote, and model network-based instruction. He is firming up plans for between five and ten Cyberschool courses to be offered in Fall, 1995. Several teacher will work with Mr. Layton to offer these new courses. For more information on this exciting new network-based curriculum see the 4J web server <URL:http://www.4j.lane.edu/>.
The district has purchased CD-ROM products from Information Finder (World Book Encyclopedia) and from EBSCO (over 400 full-text periodicals) to provide information resources on 4JNet. The LEN upgrade to 4JNet along with district-paid upgrades will enable the increased network traffic to access these services. A server and CD-ROM tower has been purchased to provide these services to elementary schools and CD-ROM towers have been purchased for secondary schools. These new services will be available to all 4J school in Fall, 1995.
The Lane Education Network connection to the LCC campus network is now up and operational.
A location within the LCC Library has been identified for the Lane Education Network Access Point, and workstation hardware for it has been ordered, with Access Point completion expected to occur during August.
One innovative project currently using the Lane Education Network is a live digital broadcast of "DaVinci Days," a music festival originating at Oregon State University in Corvallis OR on July 14 through 16. On July 15, the LCC radio station, KLCC 89.7 FM, will broadcast the DaVinci Days concert, with the signal being transmitted from Corvallis digitally over the Internet via the NERO network and Lane Education Network. For more information on the project, see <URL:http://lanecc.edu/davinci.press.html>.
Please see the Springfield Public Schools World Wide Web server, <URL:http://www.sps.lane.edu/>, for additional information.
Bench marks:
The Library Administration drafted press releases, inviting the general public to access the electronic open meeting at the ITC. Special morning hours were reserved for the general public to access the open meeting. The coordinator of the ITC developed a handout, summarizing how the open meeting could be easily accessed, and the ITC's systems manager installed separate icons on each computer's desktop to provide an easy path into the newsgroups. ITC student staff were also instructed to provide service to a public that might not be familiar with computers.
The Library facilities are generally open to the public and libraries traditionally eschew maintaining or releasing records on individual patron use of their facilities. Any patron of the ITC--whether a University of Oregon student or a community patron--could access the open meeting without ITC staff being aware of it. Therefore, it was difficult to get an accurate tally of how many patrons participated in the experiment. Our guess, however, is that the turnout from the general public was fairly low, and that the bulk of access was from UO students or faculty who saw publicity about the open meeting and tried it out.
We have submitted two grant applications, one to the Division of Innovation and Development in the Office of Special Education (Focus on Assessment) and the other to the Interagency Task Force for Technology Challenge Grants in the Department of Education (Focus on Multimedia Materials). Below are the abstracts from each of them.
All studies are anchored on classroom assessments developed by classroom teachers in content areas. In the first year, the focus is on ascertaining the technical adequacy of classroom assessments using not only traditional psychometric criteria (reliability and criterion validity with external measures) but sets baseline for more classroom focused instructional events (teacher developed instructional activities and measures). In the second year, the study moves to concurrent emphasis on three types of standards: (a) performance, (b) content, and (c) opportunity to learn. In addition, a component analysis is planned for performance assessments to determine relevant tasks and instructional events that support and influence the eventual outcomes on CIM (and CAM) tasks. Finally, in the third year, the focus incorporates teacher decision-making and implementation of alternative tasks that may better ensure the success of students with disabilities.
The project fits within the educational and political movements in the state and focuses primarily on how best to accomplish the task of improving outcomes with the added emphasis of including all students within these outcomes. By the end of the three years, the project should have incorporated scores of teachers within the development of performance assessments that not only establish high standards but are pschometrically and educationally defensible and include all students, particularly those with disabilities. Money from the grant would be used to support teachers in both the development of tasks as well as interpretation of performance and communication of outcomes.
A major thrust of our proposal is an emphasis on critical thinking skills in which students not only learn declarative knowledge but also the conditional and procedural knowledge that helps them employ the right kind of information at the right time to solve real world problems. We use several different kinds of technology to move the teaching-learning platform into efficient exchanges that highlight concepts and principles. However, rather than teaching thinking in abstract terms, we use geography to provide the discipline of learning content. Broadly conceived with complementary perspectives of economics, ecology, and history, we consider geography for its unique focus on understanding the spatial organization of the world and the complex influence and impact of human activity in different places. We use the National Geography Standards to make clear the kind of learning we plan to generate.
We believe the geographic perspective provides two value-added components to our grant by addressing a significant educational problem with a solution that can be scaled up. We target our work in areas with significant numbers of children living in poverty; however, with a geographic lens, we believe teachers students also can begin to understand the conditions that generate poverty and develop effective solutions that counteract these conditions. And with a coalition of professional geographic groups and the Geographic Alliance Network, we can move our solutions to the classroom. By the end of five years, the project materials and procedures shall be sustainable in all states and accessible in every district in the country.
Probably the most exciting part of our proposal is the use of technology to frame the solution. We incorporate technology not only in terms of materials development but also as procedural skills teachers and students can use to engage in more authentic and contextualized learning tasks. We include cable television with Discovery Channel, multimedia CD-ROM creations of instructional sequences and libraries of images and sounds, and finally, World Wide Web for creating and accessing rapidly changing resources and dissemination endpoints. We bring all three of these technologies together with an electronic classroom of the future developed by Jostens and Discourse, in which students access a wide range of electronic resources and interact electronically with teachers and other students.