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Brad Krey, Program Coordinator for the Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students (PORTS), came to the program seven years ago when it was noticed that fewer classes were being brought on field trips to California's state parks. PORTS was initiated to engage K-12 audiences through the use of technology in order to ensure that kids continued to have positive experiences with the astonishing natural beauty of the Golden State, "50,000 students a year, one classroom at a time," as Krey put it. He was quick to tell audience members that the program is completely free: "We charge nothing, and we don't plan to." They work to ensure that schools are set up with the equipment needed to participate, and all network traffic flows over CalREN. The program is enhanced with fixed and mobile cameras, and not only does it enable schools to engage in virtual field trips without travel expenses, but it also allows the parks to use their rangers more effectively.

Multiple online study units are offered at www.ports.parks.ca.gov in various locations throughout California. And while it is challenging to take equipment out to the parks for live events, they have developed wireless mesh networks to deliver live onsite video. Crystal Cove was the first location of a wireless onsite program, which used a typical park maintenance vehicle -- a John Deere Gator dubbed the EduGator -- equipped with cameras, including an underwater camera to introduce students to the complex ecosystems in tidepools.

Figure 1: Crystal Cover State Park Conferencing in with Brad Krey of CA State Parks

The highlight of the presentation was a live videoconference with Jen, a park ranger in Crystal Cove. She stated that she does such programs roughly three times a week, about four a day. The cameras mounted on the vehicle allowed her to share beautiful video of the beach itself, typical materials that one might find during a beach walk, and the aforementioned underwater tidepool video, using a 360-PTZ camera. She specified that the aim was to make the program as interactive as possible, and that the inevitable unplanned events such as the passing of a pod of dolphins were a key part of emphasizing to the students that the video is live.

Pre-class preparation is also an important part of the program, getting the students and teacher ready for the engagement, with ideas already in mind. While they could send out objects to classrooms ahead of time, Jen specified that the PORTS program was very eager to engage as many classrooms as possible, and to make it as easy for classrooms to participate as they could. Post-event interaction is also an important part of the program, with PORTS staff sending out twice-annually evaluations to the roughly 400 participating classrooms each year to ensure that the program develops in the future with the benefit of feedback from those who have taken part.

Of course teaching valuable lessons for the caretaking of California's natural beauty is also a big part of the program, including a "Tidepool Pledge" by which the students pledge to be good citizens when in the field.

The program is currently publicized with the assistance of California's Community Colleges and the California State University as well as the K12 High Speed Network, and future program possibilities include user-generated and drive events, such as allowing students to manipulate the cameras. They take special care to engage students in disadvantaged, remote, or rural districts who, in Krey's words "need and deserve an experience with our state parks."

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California's education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are engaged.

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