NSF Award
9253452
This project establishes an educational networking testbed to test conjectures about major changes in the teaching environment of the Pittsburgh Public Schools made possible through the installation of an electronic data network that will ultimately be available to all students and teachers in the school district. The proposed network will be novel in its distributed architecture and distributed administrative structure. Teachers and students will use the network to access information and people outside of their classrooms. These new resources will be incorporated into curriculum, reform efforts, and the network will be used as a tool for the development, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of new curriculum components. The project will develop a set of network-based activities and provide a framework in which such activities can be implemented throughout the local school system, tested, evaluated and made available to other school districts around the nation. The project also establishes mechanisms to institutionalize the use and maintenance of network technology in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The model that will be developed for the Pittsburgh Public Schools will be applicable to other urban school systems, and materials generated in the course of the project will be immediately available for the use of other school districts via district's connection the internet. The project thus tests the educational utility of wide area networks for the national K-12 community and will provide empirical date on costs and essential factors contributing to effectiveness. The project is a joint effort of the school district, the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, which itself was jointly founded by the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The proposed activities will build coalitions involving these groups and many others across the local community. Within the school district the project involves cooperative activities which include students, teachers, instructional specialists, administrators and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. The proposed network is the key element which will allow these groups to work together efficiently and smoothly. It is also the key to significant changes in the structure and quality of education in the Pittsburgh Public Schools and, by extension, in other school districts across the country. Full implementation of the proposed network will require an estimated five years to complete. The present proposal will fund a two-year pilot phase of the larger project. This pilot phase will attempt to answer all those questions which Pittsburgh - or any other school district contemplating the development of an extensive computer network - should understand before proceeding to a full-scale implementation. Funding for the three-year implementation phase which follows will be sought from a combination of NSF programs and programs managed by other federal agencies and private foundations.
