Rural Broadband and Education - Part 2

How much bandwidth is enough?

This is a graph showing the average amount of Internet bandwidth consumed in an average week by the 42,000+ students and 2,000+ instructional and administrative staff in the 14 ECMECC member school districts that I work with.

If you look closely, you can see that we are using about 1.0gbps (that's 1000 megabits per second) during peak times. Eight years ago, we served most of these same schools with 10mbps - that's 1% of what we are using now -- and is similar to the speed of a "basic" DSL or Cable connection in a non-metro community. Today, our schools use 100 times the bandwidth they did eight years ago on a daily basis. And... the number continues to climb. So, what are students and staff doing with all this bandwidth, and what is enough?

There are people who will have us believe that kids are watching videos, playing games and engaging in social media activities while in school. I would say that they are absolutely right, students, are, indeed, doing all of those things. They would say this is a waste of time and bandwidth. I would say it is the way students learn today. Recently, a letter to the editor appeared in our local paper from a writer who believed we should eliminate computers (and presumably mobile devices - though they didn't say that specifically) from our schools since they detract from what they believe is the best way to learn. At a recent meeting I attended organized by Senator Matt Schmit, a participant suggested that people in rural areas and communities don't need "that much" bandwidth since their kids will just stream movies, play games and spend all their time on "that Facebook." Once again, I contend that this is now how people access this kind of content and communicate. It would be like going back 20 years and saying some people don't need a VCR or a phone since they will just play movies and talk.

Think back 10 years... How many places could you find in your area to rent a DVD (or buy one)? Today, how many are there? While rental stores have been replaced to some degree by Netflix (mail-order) and services like Redbox, there is no disputing that the options for renting and buying physical content (DVDs) are diminishing and will likely vanish in the not-to-distant future. The same is true for music (CDs). Now, music and video content is streamed online, and it takes a robust Internet connection to get good quality. Of course, that's entertainment. What about education?

Again, take yourself back 20 years or so and think about how you "learned." Current events information may have come from newspapers, broadcast television or local radio. Remember the trip to the public library or a bookstore to find a book about something that you wanted to learn about? Remember when you needed a manual to figure out how to replace the headlight in your car? In school, you used textbooks that may have been published as long as 10 years or more prior to your use and films that were produced in years gone by.

Today, the number of daily newspapers being published in the United States is down 25% from 20 years ago and readership numbers have fallen off exponentially. Broadcast television and radio is struggling to keep viewers and listeners and has less and less unbiased "news" content. Physical books and manuals have been replaced by ebooks and videos. Heck, most encyclopedia companies don't make encyclopedias anymore (though World Book still does!). We don't access information or learn like that anymore. All of this content has shifted online and will continue to do so.

Accessing that information takes bandwidth in larger and larger amounts. There is a seemingly endless amount of rubbish on YouTube, but it is also the first place I go now when I want to know how to fix or do something. News organizations use YouTube to post content and there are just as many educational videos as cat videos (OK, maybe almost as many as cat videos!) See the Khan Academy for just one example of educational content on YouTube. Without high-speed, affordable Internet access students and families are immediately at a disadvantage. What is enough? I don't know, but I do know that a large number of Minnesotan's (and I'm sure others in the US) don't have adequate access to learn and live in the world of Internet delivered content. People living in high-density urban areas keep getting improved Internet speeds while those in rural areas pay more for less and see little speed improvement. As I said in my previous post, it is our new digital divide and we need to find a solution.

Up Next: How increased bandwidth fundamentally changed the education environment of a school district and how it could change a families life.

Rural Broadband and Education - Part 1

Starting a multi-part series of posts about some of the issues around broadband access in rural areas and education. I've been working for several years with a variety of rural broadband initiatives including the Kanabec Broadband Initiative (KBI) and the East Central Broadband Initiative (ECBI). These groups, and others like them, continue to educate the general public about the importance of broadband, and work to bring more broadband options and affordability to rural parts of Minnesota.

It is no secret that with the proliferation of mobile devices, 1-1 initiatives and migration to cloud based services for productivity and curriculum resources, schools rely on broadband more than ever, and there is no looking back. Unfortunately, many of our students, especially those living in rural areas outside of communities, do not have adequate, affordable broadband access. This puts them at an immediate disadvantage in the new technology-laden education environment. We have a new divide to conquer. Of course, the lack of quality, affordable access in rural areas poses a number of problems from economic development to quality of life to healthcare, to name a few. My focus, however, continues to be on education.

To that end, I have participated in some community meetings recently, arranged by MN Senator Matt Schmit and sponsored by various community organizations. Senator Schmit has taken on the issue of rural broadband and spent time in November and January touring the state to hear about the needs of rural Minnesotans. I had the opportunity to attend two of the meetings in Mora and North Branch to represent the schools in the area. In both cases, I shared some of the initiatives going on in area schools and talked about how schools are limited to what they can expect from students using technology outside of the school buildings. Our schools have very high speed access and do not have speed or data usage caps. I shared that this has changed the way schools talk about technology. Our schools do not talk about what they can't do (because of low bandwidth), they talk about what they CAN do. Sadly, that is not the case with many families living in rural areas. With slow speeds, data caps and expensive overage charges, these families still talk about what they CAN'T do.

I will bring this message to the Border to Border Broadband conference on February 4th and 5th in St. Paul. Senator Schmit has invited me to participate with him on a panel to share the messages he heard around the state during his listening tour. I invite anyone interested in the rural broadband divide to attend this conference supported by the Blandin Foundation.

Up Next: I'll share some of the comments heard from the meetings around the idea of "how much bandwidth (or speed) is enough."

Successful Multi-Generational Interactive Video Conference Event

On December 10th, 2013, the Mora Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA), Kanabec Broadband Initiative (KBI) KBI and East Central MN Educational Cable Cooperative (ECMECC) joined together to present an interactive video conference (IVC) event at the Eastwood Life Enrichment Center (LEC) in Mora, MN. The LEC is a facility run by the Mora HRA as an event center for the residents of the Eastwood senior living complex as well as for community meetings and events. KBI, through the generous support of the Blandin Foundation, was able to outfit the LEC with modern audio/video equipment including a video conference system and high speed, broadband, Internet access (with support from Midcontinent Communications). 

Nearly 60 people assembled at the LEC to view an interactive presentation lead by the National Park Service and broadcast live from the grounds of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Mounument at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The presentation included a short documentary about the attacks of December 7th, 1941, an eyewitness account led by Jimmy Lee who was eleven at the time and living on a farm on the northern part of the harbor (a front row seat to the events of that day) and a question/answer session with Paul Heintz of the park service and Jimmy Lee.

It was an amazing "show" and the audience was glued to the screen. Among the participants in Mora were several veterans including John Kirkhuff of Mora who was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the attacks on December 7, 1941. In the video below, John (with help from his daughter Ginny Berg) had just finished providing his own brief account of the events of that day. Take a look and enjoy. Then remember to continually thank our veterans and active forces for their service to our country!



http://goo.gl/aCdE7G 

Thank you to the National Park Service, the Blandin Foundation, members of the KBI steering committee, staff at the LEC and ECMECC and all of those who were in attendance for making this a highly successful event that provided a moving experience for many, gratitude to our veterans and generated community interest in the technology that allows for such events to occur. We are already planning the next event which may be a fun (and educational) trip to another warm place later this winter.

I always enjoy seeing kids reactions when they participate in a truly interactive video conference event. I found that with adults it was no different. We can talk 'til we are blue in the face about the difference between interactive learning and passively watching a video but nothing gets the point across better than actually participating in a well planned and delivered lesson. I think 60 people walked out of the LEC that night who can now tell you how much better an interactive experience is.

Google Chromecast - Not Ready for Education?

I had a chance today to play with one of the new Google Chromecast devices. Google bills it as, "The easiest way to enjoy online video and music on your TV." It sells for $35. When announced, I was quite excited by the price point and the promises of working with desktop computers and mobile devices. Many were thinking this might be a possible solution to displaying content from a mobile device to a projector in a classroom without the expense of an AppleTV or a sometimes flaky connection to a desktop application. Here is what we found...

It was three geeks and a superintendent evaluating the device's potential for education. We hooked it up to a projector with an HDMI input. Very simple to plug into the projector, but know that it requires a power supply or a usb connection for power. Google doesn't show that in any of the promotional materials. Next, one of the others in the room who refuses to read the manual had the device setup and working on the wireless network in a matter of minutes using an Android based tablet. Nice! Very simple!

So, we used the Android based tablet, an iPad, an iPhone and a Macbook to test the functionality. In all cases, using the most up-to-date versions of the Netflix and YouTube applications, we were able to stream content to the projector. Quality looked good and once you started the stream, you could quit the app and move on to other tasks without causing the stream to stop. (though we did have some difficulty reconnecting to the device to shut off the stream) We used the Macbook, with the Chrome browser and the required extension installed, to stream content from the browser. In this case, we experienced some buffering of the videos that we tried and the quality seemed a little lower than when using the Netflix or YouTube apps. We discovered that there is no support (at least not yet) for the Chrome browser on the Android or iOS platforms. So, mobile devices are not currently supported except for the Netflix and YouTube apps. Google documentation indicates that the Chrome browser for Windows (except RT), Mac and Linux is supported. Nonetheless, any browser based content, including Google Apps, can be displayed from a desktop computer, wirelessly.

We found it to have a nice "cool" factor, but that's about where the functionality ended and where the questions about classroom use started. Here are the issues we found that probably makes it difficult to implement in classrooms at this time.

1. No support for mirroring from a mobile device, regardless of platform.
2. No security to prevent any device from connecting to it. So, if a teacher were streaming to a Chromecast device and a student had a compatible device, they could start streaming to it effectively kicking the teacher off. No passwords needed. This could be a problem!
3. No support for browser content from a mobile device.
4. A few other bugs like the difficulty reconnecting to a device once a stream is started.

These could all be "fixed" by Google in the coming months, but for now, it seems like Chromecast is a nice little streaming media device best suited for household use. It works well with Netflix, YouTube, Google Play (with Pandora support coming soon I read) and with a price point lower than a Roku or AppleTV, it might be an attractive choice for home use. It is NOT, however, a mirroring device suitable for displaying the screen of a mobile device. I haven't read anything from Google indicating that it will ever support mirroring, but with Google, anything can change at any time. 

If you have a different experience or discover additional functionality, please share! I really want this to be a viable classroom tool, but at this point, I don't think it is there.