The Internet‘s Second Coming (1)

The Internet‘s Second Coming
by Stuart Nachbar
The K20 Initiative reveals Internet2‘s capability to support videoconferencing, bringing once-exclusive educational programs into K-12 schools.
IMAGINE THE CHANCE for your students to make friends from around the world. Or receive music lessons from leading composers. These opportunities are part of the future of K-12 education, but they’re also available now, thanks to theInternet2 K20 Initiative. Via the K20 Initiative, member institutions—schools, universities, libraries, and museums—deliver educational programming through 38 state and regional Sponsored Educational Group Participants (SEGPs) over a secure, nationwide “second internet.”
Like the original internet, Internet2 relies on the active involvement of research universities to develop, implement, and maintain the network; but unlike the internet, Internet2’ s academic and instructional uses go far beyond scientific research at the doctoral level, into national and sometimes global programs that are presented in K-12 classrooms through interactive videoconferencing. K-12 schools can both create and deliver programming through Internet2, or purchase programming from a content provider, such as a college or university, museum, library, or performing arts center.
A ‘World’ of Difference

ALL SMILES: Internet2 programming
lets students videoconference with their
peers both near and far.
A good example of the educational opportunities being generated by the K20 Initiative is “Around the World,” a program organized by New Jersey’s Passaic Valley High School that fosters a global exchange of ideas and information. The project has two components. The first is a series of roughly one-hour individual videoconferences with participating schools in Pakistan, India, Israel, and the United Kingdom, among others, hosted by Passaic Valley High during one 24-hour period. The conferences engage students in discussions on selected topics in history, culture, politics, and the arts. The event is supported through a cooperation of two portals:
Verizon Access NJ andNJEDge—New Jersey’s SEGP—which both work with K-12 schools statewide. The second feature of “Around the World” is an interactive website, provided by New Jersey’s Montclair State University, that enables the information exchange between Passaic Valley students and the contacts they make abroad to continue long after the videoconferences are concluded.
“The first time we did ‘Around the World,’ our students realized they were not valued in the world the way they thought they were,” says Matthew Conforth, director of educational technology at Passaic Valley. They found that “students in other countries thought all American high school students owned their own cars and could go to any college of their choice. Our kids also saw that their kids knew more about the United States than they themselves knew about other countries.”