CENIC News

I wanted to share with our readers some information from a newly published report by the Public Policy Institute of California on computer and Internet use in the state. In general, I have to say the information contained in the report is both a bit disappointing and not entirely surprising. Some surprises do exist, however.

Among the report's findings are those that compare overall computer and Internet use between 2000 and 2008. An unfortunate plateau appears to have been reached; computer use in California has not changed much (2000: 76%; 2008: 75%), and Internet use has increased only slightly (2000: 65%; 2008: 70%).

It's important when viewing these statistics to remember several things, the first being that the importance of computers and the Internet as a means of providing more equal access to a broad range of services and information across all demographics is widely recognized by many people. When some segments of the population do not have network and computer access, their ability to participate fully in government services, healthcare, and education -- including school web sites -- becomes reduced over time relative to those with computer and Internet access.

The second thing to keep in mind is that California is a very large state, the most populous in the union with over 36 million inhabitants. While a two-thirds to three-quarters affirmative response to a question about computer or Internet use may seem fairly large, these responses indicate that some nine to eleven million Californians do not habitually use computers or the Internet at home or in school. In other words, the number of Californians who do not use computers or the Internet is larger than the complete populations of all but the ten most populous states -- and roughly equal to the population currently being served by CalREN. In this regard, the study results that indicate a plateau are disappointing and symbolize a strong need for action.

The report also considers computer and Internet usage by age. While usage varies somewhat, age variations do not account for the major variations in overall usage. 71% of those between 18 and 34 report having a computer in their home, and 68% report having an Internet connection.

The over-55 age group not surprisingly has somewhat lower use, but what may be more surprising is the magnitude of the difference. The over-55 age group does not lag by very much: 67% of over-55s report having a home computer and 53% an Internet connection. This suggests that, despite beliefs about a technology-phobic older population, aged-related reticence to adopt technology taken by itself is unlikely to account for the majority of the difference between computer and Internet users and non-users.

Another section of the report focuses on how Californians feel about the government's role in regulating and improving access to computers and networks. 54% of Californians say that the government is doing "just enough" or "more than enough" to regulate the Internet. More surprising to me is the finding that 51% of respondents say that the government is doing "just enough" or "more than enough" to improve access and availability of broadband Internet technology. (30% say the government is not doing enough and 19% are undecided.)

Given that over the last 8 years there has been essentially no change in network use among those who are not current users, I must wonder how increased usage will occur without greater government involvement and how that involvement will be "sold" to a population a large portion of which believes, despite evidence, that the government is currently expending sufficient effort toward that end.

To me, this report seems to cry out for some dramatic change being necessary to reduce barriers to use, as plateaus appear to have been reached with current strategies both in terms of their effectiveness and the public perception of their effectiveness. Whether future improvements in computer and Internet usage will be provided by the government, the private sector, or some combination of the two, we must all hope that eight years from now, we will have moved on and upward from the current plateau, to the benefit not only of those who are now underserved, but to all of California as we would all prefer to live in a state where all citizens are empowered to obtain the information they need to live meaningful and secure private lives and to participate fully in public life.

During the past months, CENIC has continued to work with the K-12 segment and telecommunications service providers on upgrades to a significant number of SONET circuits, all of which will be migrated to Gigabit connections. Thus far this past fiscal year, 23 county offices of education and one branch office (the Riverside County Office of Education's Indio office) have been upgraded.

This month, four more circuits have also had acceptance testing completed, making the connectivity to CalREN currently enjoyed by the K-12 sites even more robust and high-performance. Those circuits are that between the Kern County Superintendent of Schools and the Bakersfield CalREN backbone node; that between the Stanislaus and Merced County Offices of Education, both of which are connected to the Merced CalREN backbone node; that between the Victor Valley Community College, serving the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, and UC Riverside; and that connecting the California Department of Education to the Sacramento CalREN backbone node.

In the upcoming fiscal year, we're looking forward to even more upgrades for the K-12 and other segments, so be sure to check out future issues of CENIC Today!

Astronomy, along with sciences like deep ocean studies, seismology, and high-energy physics, is often a natural beneficiary of high-performance networking like that provided by CalREN. All of these areas of study feature large, remotely located observational platforms that generate massive amounts of information, the effectiveness of which would be greatly increased if they could be controlled in real-time. Experiments carried out on these platforms are also routinely composed of worldwide collaborations, which require worldwide high-performance networks.

Observational astronomy does, however, have some unique qualities that make it particularly able to benefit from this type of networking -- what's called "very long baseline interferometry" (VLBI) where radio telescopes placed far from one another are virtually "linked" in real-time, creating in effect, a single telescope as large as the distance between the linked telescopes, with all the resulting increases in resolution.

On June 18, 2008, this was precisely what took place between a 25-meter radio telescope of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, the 34-metre telescope of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Kashima, Japan, and the 64-metre CSIRO radio telescope New South Wales, Australia. In order to complete the link-up, five different networks (Japan's JGM2, China's CSTNet, and AARNet's SXTRansPORT) were connected through CalREN and the Pacific Wave distributed peering facility, run by CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop with support from the University of Washington and USC.

According to the CSIRO, the observations focused on active galactic nuclei, super-massive black holes at the heart of distant galaxies. Without the added resolution of VLBI, such observations are impossible. With VLBI made more powerful and responsive by the high-performance international networking made possible by CENIC, they can become commonplace.

This month saw some significant news for California's Community College System in terms of funding as the California Public Utilities Commission voted 5 to 0 to include them in the CA Teleconnect Fund beginning in either October 2008 or January 2009.

As many readers of CENIC Today know well, the California Teleconnect Fund, made possible by a small end-user surcharge placed on all telephone bills in the state, provides discounts on selected telecommunications services to qualifying schools, libraries, government-owned and operated hospitals and health clinics, and community based organizations. Thanks to the California Teleconnect Fund, qualifying organizations can receive a 50% discount on all measured business service lines, switched 56 lines, ISDN, DSL, T-1, DS-3, and up to and including OC-192 services or their functional equivalents.

More information on the fund can be found at the CPUC's website, including FAQs and applications.

This vote is certainly significant news for California's Community College System, and CENIC Today will keep its readers apprised of all updates on the status of this expansion of the California Teleconnect Fund.

Ten to fifteen years ago, not only were many of the nation's regional R&E networks just getting started, but the Internet itself was still in a state of flux. Of course, "flux" can be said to be a permanent state for the Internet, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the network-of-networks that would become such a force for global knowledge and economic development was in many ways still finding its feet. Forces at work during that time would shape the network for years to come.

Happily, those forces included the burgeoning regional networks and all to the good -- a fact recognized by EDUCAUSE, nonprofit association familiar to many CENIC Today readers whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. On June 24, 2008, EDUCAUSE announced the recipients of its 2008 Awards in Higher Education Information Technology, and the Regional Networks were honored as recipients of the 2008 Catalyst Award. Awardees will be recognized at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference in Orland, FL taking place October 28-31, 2008.

According to the award statement, "The Regional Networks that evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s were an essential part of the collaborative dynamics that created the Internet. Evolving from and supporting higher education consortia with roots in supercomputing research centers, the Regional Networks were able to solve formidable technical problems." More can be found at the 2008 Catalyst Award statement.

Other 2008 awardees include Joel Hartman, the Vice Provost of Information Technologies and Resources for the University of Central Florida, recipient of this year's Leadership Award, and Michael Albright and John Nworie, recipients of the EDUCAUSE Quarterly Contribution of the Year Award for their article "Rethinking Academic Technology Leadership in an Era of Change" from the Volume 31, Number 1, 2008 issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

Distributed throughout the state of California is the world's most successful research university, the University of California. On its ten campuses, the UC community has at their disposal an enormous amount of expertise on very diverse topics -- and CalREN enables that community to leverage this expertise for the benefit of the entire UC system and the state's K-20 public education as a whole.

Among those areas of expertise is a topic of great interest to the world at large: language. Language education in the United States is often comprised of French or Spanish, which is unsurprising as we border on Canada and Mexico. Other languages are far less frequently taught, but these languages have lately become of significant interest for many reasons, some economic or cultural, and some because as one of the most diverse states in the union, California boasts many students for whom English shares their home with another of the world's languages.

However, many of these languages -- among them Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Filipino, Japanese, Punjabi, and Vietnamese -- are not among the more commonly taught Romance or Indo-European languages. Few campuses may feature classes or specialists in some of these languages or their cultures and literatures.

Broadband networks like CalREN, however, make it far easier for the UC system to share scarce but hotly pursued resources like these not only among themselves but among the larger K-20 community. Also, language learning, with its keen dependency on real-time interaction with native speakers, can benefit significantly from the worldwide distributed education made possible by networks like CalREN.

A consortium currently achieving just this sort of synergy is based at UC Davis, the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching (UCCLLT). Headed by Robert Blake of the Department of Spanish and Classics at UC Davis, the Consortium aims to leverage the UC's language expertise -- especially for less commonly taught languages, or LCTLs -- to the benefit of the entire UC community and the larger education community in California.

Begun in 2000, the Consortium has an admirable success under its belt with its Arabic Without Walls online course, made possible by a 2003 FIPSE grant. In fall of 2007, the course debuted with Sonia S'hiri of UC Berkeley teaching. Eleven non-Berkeley students enrolled via simultaneous enrollment, from Santa Cruz, Riverside, Irvine, Merced, Davis, and the Berkeley Extension. (Course content was produced in partnership with Brigham Young University's Kirk Belnap.)

The course itself was a stunning success, winning the 2007 Language Learning Website Award from CALICO, the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. In the course, rich media is integrated with distance instruction and textbook work using applications like Moodle and Wimba. Much of the Consortium's online materials has been accessed for instruction beyond the UC system, demonstrating its use and popularity as a resource for teaching LCTLs in general.

With additional attention to integrate such courses into the course catalogues of the UC system, and the support of broadband networking to make such courses even more immediate and richer for students and instructors both, efforts like the UCCLLT can go a long way to ensuring that the entire UC community and more can benefit from the resources spread throughout the world's most successful research university.

For more information, please visit the UCCLLT online.

The 21st century has brought not only a wealth of new education technology but a wealth of ideas on how best to use it. On June 20-21, 2008 at UC Davis, educators came together to share experiences and ideas about how technology is, and can be, strategically used for teaching and learning. The conference program emphasized student learning outcomes, communication inside and outside of the classroom, and assessment of technology's effectiveness in the instructional process.

Among the presentations and posters was one given by Doug Cremer of the Butte-Glenn Community College District and UC Santa Barbara's Judith Green, focusing on the winner of the 2008 CENIC Innovations in Networking award winner for Educational Applications, CAHSEE: Stepping Into Your Future. The program itself was developed to address the population of students who were unable to graduate high school due to the requirement to pass the California High School Exit Exam, or CAHSEE. It combines online course content, rich media, and real-time instructional interaction via videoconferencing with a flexible take-up model to result in a course that can be tailored for student needs. The program also features a research-based assessment to ensure that those needs are met.

(Click to download CAHSEE insert.)

As a collaborative program relying on input from all public education segments as well as community-based partners such as libraries and technology centers, it's a perfect example of how to use technology to meet a significant educational need. Not only that, it also showcases how the UC system can work together with other segments to create a new and extremely flexible instructional model with the help of innovative educational technology.

Visit the website for CAHSEE: Stepping Into Your Future to learn more. You can also learn more about the UC21st conference by visiting their website and finding out about the presentations made by other UC researchers into educational technology and how it can be most effectively used.

US & World Networking News:

Despite significant gains in high-speed connectivity among schools in the last decade, most schools' broadband access is still not sufficient to accommodate current and future technology needs, according to a report released this month by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA).

High-speed internet access is vital for U.S. education and global competitiveness, and ensuring broadband access for all students has become a critical national issue, SETDA says in its report, titled High-Speed Broadband Access for All Kids: Breaking Through the Barriers.

The Fiber-to-the-Home Council, representing more than 170 companies and organizations involved in connecting American homes directly into fiber optic networks and delivering next-generation broadband services over them, today welcomed the introduction of H. Res.1292, a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for universal availability of next-generation broadband networks with transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) by 2015.

The resolution was introduced by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and is cosponsored by U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and U.S. Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA).

This guide has been developed to help educators think their way through one-to-one computing initiatives. It is organized as a collection of materials more than just an essay. Each section summarizes what we have learned about the challenge of developing, implementing and sustaining one-to-one programs; provides exhibits with information straight from the experts; and offers resources for deeper inquiry. It doesn’t have all the answers, but it does offer a big picture and direction on where to learn more.

The Sixth International HealthGrid Conference opened this past month with a warm welcome from Robert Zimmer, President, University of Chicago, being held at the university's Gleacher Center. "You’re doing important work that is having and will continue to have a positive effect on healthcare."

The HealthGrid 2008 conference is the premier meeting on the transformation of medical research, education and care through the application of grid technologies. Grid technology allows many computers to work together to better understand the interactions between a patient and treatment. HealthGrid is dedicated to enhancing biomedical research and healthcare delivery by creating an open collaborative virtual community and communicating collective knowledge.

São Paulo State University has this semester begun to set up the largest computational cluster in Latin America, on seven different sites in the State of São Paulo. GridUNESP (Computational Capacity Integration at UNESP), powered by Sun Microsystems’ technology, will allow research groups at the university access to the highest levels of data processing and storage capacity for particle physics, genetics, meteorology, medicine, and other areas of scientific investigation.

GridUNESP will be connected at high speed to the United States' Internet2 through the MetroSampa network -- which connects educational, cultural and research institutions in the metropolitan region of São Paulo -- and the ANSP/RNP/Florida International University connection between São Paulo and Miami.

YouTube is home to funny home-videos, TV reruns and sports matches, just to name a few. And now, the online video Web site, partnering with the University of California, San Francisco, launched an Internet channel to educate people about neurodegenerative brain diseases.

The UCSF Memory and Aging Center YouTube channel seeks to promote earlier, accurate diagnosis and to help families cope with such illnesses. Featured on the channel's landing page is Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.

About CENIC and How to Change Your Subscription:

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.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively and efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network as technology advances.

For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

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