ACADEMIA

Connection to Enable K20 Community Across the State to Benefit from Leading-Edge Internet-Based Educational Opportunities: Internet2 today announced that Florida's statewide research and education network, Florida LambdaRail (FLR), has become the latest Internet2 Sponsored Education Group Participant (SEGP) and will connect to Internet2's nationwide high performance network. While many of FLR's university members are already participants in the Internet2 network, this new agreement extends network participation to Florida's K20 community to enable thousands of students and teachers across the state access to next-generation Internet-based educational opportunities. The Florida LambdaRail SEGP, which will connect to Internet2's network through Southern Crossroads (SoX), is sponsored by Florida State University, University of Central Florida, Florida Atlantic University, University of Florida, Florida International University, and University of Miami. By connecting Florida's K-12 schools, libraries, community colleges, performing arts centers and museums, the SEGP provides these institutions direct access to advanced online resources. Specifically, FLR's participation in the SEGP program will facilitate more significant participation in the Partnership in Global Learning (PGL) program. The PGL is a consortium for research, development and dissemination of e-learning resources for secondary schools, universities, and corporations which has formed alliances among schools in Mexico, Brazil, and the state of Florida. PGL helps to train teachers to develop and use e-learning content modules in their classrooms and enables students to interact and learn from one another across cultural and geographic boundaries. Access to the Internet2 network provided by the Florida LambdaRail SEGP will enable even greater collaboration among the participating schools, especially for applications that use advanced videoconferencing and other real-time communications technologies. "The Florida LambdaRail is providing bundled ISP and high speed research and education networking services to other education institutions in the State of Florida. The Internet2 SEGP offering is a good way for us to provide expanded access to a wide variety of educational resources. We have offered this to the Florida Department of Education as a way of providing these resources for all Florida K-12 schools as a service to the state," said Larry Conrad, Chair of the Board, Florida LambdaRail. The Florida K20 community will also be able to tap into already established programs under the Internet2 K20 initiative like master music classes using DVD-quality videoconferencing or events like Megaconference Jr., an annual project that uses videoconferencing technology to bring together thousands of students in elementary and secondary schools from around the world for an all-day learning conference. Students can also take part in immersive undersea exploration demonstrations with divers in remote locations around the world, among many other applications. "In bringing together innovators from all regions of the country, the SEGP program seeks to encourage the development and use of advanced educational technologies at all levels of research and academia," said Louis Fox, director of Internet2's K20 initiative and vice provost of the University of Washington. "The unique and diverse K20 community brought together by the Florida LambdaRail SEGP will bring a new and exciting perspective as well as additional resources to this expanding program and will help support even greater contributions by this important segment of our community." For more information, visit: its Web site.