Bandwidth for Schools

A National Broadband Policy needs to be more than just a talking point. Schools in our country need to upgrade their internet bandwidth to 25 Megabytes per second. This is for every school — not just the K12 district who slices up the bandwidth based upon the total number of school buildings in the district. The technology and educational impact upon our schools: leaving them behind just when students from around the world are joining and benefiting from the broadband educational internet.

Playing catch-up
Today we find a majority of schools around the country in the educational slow lane. For some reason it does not matter if the school is remote or urban, many are connecting at just 5 Megabits/second. Its like teaching history with books that still recognize Russia as the old Soviet Union….oh how I miss Gorgachev.
Any college connecting at less than 10MB — shows a lack of understanding and vision for their students who enter higher education seeking not just a degree but an advantage to enter the global marketplace.

How can any teacher provide engaging content to today’s rich media students with the school’s 5Mb/s connection? My home cable modem runs at 6Mb/s while other providers around the country are pushing 8Mb/s for a service that is sparingly used after work.

My home computer sits idle during the school day. I’d support any solution to transfer my 6Mb/s to my local school during the day. Okay, I know this probably will not work. But do you see my desire?

Lets go a step further
With emerging (and engaging) content coming from Internet2 any school (K12 or HigherEd) needs 10Mb/s minimum…to be honest it should probably be 25Mb/s minimum because 10 will be flooded immediately by students accessing rich media content.

HD video on the internet needs 8Mb/s alone, so 10Mb/s will not permit email, web and VoIP to function on the academic side while the administrative access to ERP software like Oracle and MS Dynamics cannot be off-line during a HD video broadcast.

9/11 video history
How successful could a teacher convey history lessons with access to video footage surrounding 9/11? For my generation: think of the value a history lesson from the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. The resource Archive.org has raw video from ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and even the BBC from 9/11 available for free. Take a look for yourself here.

Why is this important? Because ultimately any historian whats to convey a real sense of the times. And what a resource this can be.

I would be interested to see the same access to raw video of Katrina. History teaches us compelling and emotional lessons but the impact on today’s students will only be powerful if you don’t have to deal with the “stop/start/stop/start” video jerkiness due to slow bandwidth.

Competition
Countries including Canada, South Korea and Japan deliver over 1GB/s to their schools and libraries empowering their students and citizens. Yes thats 1 Gigabit per second! Our students (I.E. our future) are learning in the slow lane. Lets use an automotive theme:

Bandwidth to the Home
Japan: 1 Gigabit/second or 1,000 miles per hour
USA : 5-8 Megabits/second or 5-8 miles per hour

Do you see the crisis looming?
Its only going to get worse. Is Bandwidth on the radar for our upcoming Presidential election — Maybe to no surprise? Just as those countries are supplying bandwidth to schools, we are losing our research edge as more and more talented Americans leave for greener pastures overseas. Please understand today’s fight for talent is not east coast vs. west coast…..its now global.

Its now East Asia vs. Western Europe with American somewhere in between and beginning to show its aging infrastructure. If you were unaware of this talent migration, may I suggest Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back I’m just half way through and have been further enlightened to the dangerous slide occurring in America.

Tags: Internet2, bandwidth, school, community, globalization, trends