SGER: Enabling Wide-Area Network Research in the Science Classroom

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This proposal is for exploratory small grant funding for the collation and summary of telecommunications-in-education research applicable to the use of large-scale wide-area networks in the science classroom and the prompt dissemination of that information to the facilitators of state and national education networks. The purpose of this project is to facilitate future research in educational telecommunications, and to collate and provide information useful to the initial phases of state-wide and national telecommunications-in-education networks. Several states, and several commercial organizations are already offering or are about to offer from September 1991 or September 1992 access to large scale telecommunications facilities to schools. Though a considerable amount of research has been done on individual small scale networks and on small group components of large-scale networks, this research is neither easily accessible nor wholly relevant to the large-scale situation. As yet,l we have very little information on the effects of scaling up from the base of research-oriented prototype networks. Also, the creation of these new telecommunications applications and new network communities in education is taking place extremely quickly. If these developments are to be constructive advances in teaching and learning strategies it is imperative that these new efforts should be informed by prior experience and research. In order to establish a baseline of relevant information in a timely fashion, it is proposed that NSF should fund a limited research initiative between April 1, 1991 and September 1,l 1991. The initiative will have three components - the collation of existing research, a demonstration study of an academic network, and a demonstration study of a global-scale K-12 network.