M-Lab

What Do You Need to Know About Broadband and the Digital Divide?It Might Be Here!!

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So many people talk about technology without sharing the nuts and bolts of what we are using.
Some resources here.
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
 First, here is the broadband map.
Broadband?

Getting Broadband

What Is Broadband?

Broadband or high-speed Internet access allows users to access the Internet and Internet-related services at significantly higher speeds than those available through “dial-up” Internet access services. Broadband speeds vary significantly depending on the particular type and level of service ordered and may range from as low as 200 kilobits per second (kbps), or 200,000 bits per second, to 30 megabits per second (Mbps), or 30,000,000 bits per second. Some recent offerings even include 50 to 100 Mbps. Broadband services for residential consumers typically provide faster downstream speeds (from the Internet to your computer) than upstream speeds (from your computer to the Internet).

How Does Broadband Work?

Broadband allows users to access information via the Internet using one of several high-speed transmission technologies. Transmission is digital, meaning that text, images, and sound are all transmitted as “bits” of data. The transmission technologies that make broadband possible move these bits much more quickly than traditional telephone or wireless connections, including traditional dial-up Internet access connections.

Once you have a broadband connection to your home or business, devices such as computers can be attached to this broadband connection by existing electrical or telephone wiring, coaxial cable or wireless devices.

Another way to measure/ M-Lab Open Source

Measurement Lab is an open platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. By enhancing Internet transparency, M-Lab helps sustain a healthy, innovative Internet. Find out more Find out more

Updates

 This was a combination of FCC and NTIA projects that were funded. Here is the site. Overall there were panels that presented their work. Because I have been working in this field I know of projects like this but I think the public does not know about these projects. Often in DC the people who attend the conferences already know the projects. They are there out of courtesy.
 
The focus was to identify and discuss best practices learned from broadband adoption programs and academic 

studies/surveys, and how implementation of these best practices can close the broadband adoption gap
among Americans – particularly low-income households, racial and ethnic minorities, seniors, rural
residents, residents of Tribal lands and people with disabilities. 

Here is how they shared on the website the mission of the Summit. 
 
“The Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Services, with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), held a Summit on February 7, 2013 to identify and discuss best practices learned from broadband adoption programs and academic studies/surveys, and how implementation of these best practices can close the broadband adoption gap among Americans – particularly low-income households, racial and ethnic minorities, seniors, rural residents, residents of Tribal lands and people with disabilities. The agenda listing committed and invited panelists for the Summit is below. In addition, the Summit included a keynote speech by Assistant Secretary of Communications and Information and Administrator of NTIA, Department of Commerce, Lawrence E. Strickling.” I was most impressed with the health care project in Arkansas , the Mass Vets Program and the project to help the aging.. but there is more.These are not per se education projects but service projects that serve the connected.
Julius Genachowski was there as a cheerleader. He spoke and shared his vision.He likes BYOD( bring your own device)  and thinks that 4G is going to change the face of connectivity in America and particularly in education .
I was most impressed with a couple of the presentations .I think the public does not know the power of these projects.
 
 
 Subsquently SETDA issued this Broadband Initiative for their member states. They have been on this initiative for some time. It is very important to teachers, to education and to families.

The FCC Broadband Summit was interesting but a lot of it was.. same old same old, but I realize that there is still an unwashed public out there some trying to understand why they should use technology. Not like they are not already benefitting, weather systems, GPS, visualization and modeling and all kinds of medical innovation. Jobs are mostly on line too. There are a lot of benefits that people have gained from using technology, but ..the benefits are invisible to many.

 
The FCC brought forward this new report in a couple of days after the summit.
 
Further resources and references

A Deeper Look at the FCC from the Points of View of Its Former Leaders

by TIFFANY BAIN on FEBRUARY 18, 2013

Former FCC Chairs Wiley Powell and Hundt at 2013 BBSJ Summit - by Jason Miccolo JohnsonThe Minority Media and Telecommunications Council has long worked – and sometimes been at odds – with the Federal Communications Commission in MMTC’s efforts to ensure equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media and telecommunications industries. To address FCC issues, MMTC recently invited four former FCC chairmen to an “FCC Chairs’ Roundtable” panel at its 2013 Broadband and Social Justice Summit.  During the panel, the former chairmen provided a deeper look into the federal agency and revealed their thoughts on a few communications industry regulatory matters.

Serving as the panel’s moderator, MMTC President David Honig used the historic opportunityto ask Hon. Michael Powell, Hon. Reed Hundt, Hon. Michael Copps, and Hon. Richard “Dick” Wiley about why the FCC moves so slowly to consider and rule on issues that have been pending for several years. He also inquired about their thoughts on hot-button issues such as media cross-ownership rules and broadband usage-based pricing.


The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Educational Infrastructure Needs
 Press Release
 Summary
 Access the Full Report
Learn more, visit the Broadband Imperative Report Release and Briefing event.
To learn more about broadband for learning policy and practice in the states, visit the State Education Policy Center (SEPC).
To self-assess your school’s broadband speed, visit SETDA’s freebroadband speed test tool.
The Broadband Imperative provides an up-to-date assessment of access to broadband by students and teachers (in and out of schools); current trends driving the need for more broadband in teaching, learning and school operations; and specific recommendations for the broadband capacity needed to ensure all students have access to the tools and resources they need to be college and career ready by 2014-15 and beyond.
Building upon SETDA’s 2008 report “Class of 2020 Action Plan for Education“, High-Speed Broadband Access for All Kids: Breaking Through the Barriers, The Broadband Imperative provides numerous examples of successful broadband implementation by states and leading school districts.
Notable Mentions:

All Things Considered , A Digital Promise for an Education Nation, Broadband Please!!

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The White House and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan  launched “Digital Promise” this Friday at 10 a.m. “Digital Promise” is a new national center created by Congress to advance breakthrough technologies that can hopefully  transform teaching and learning. I will gently say that without broadband for all. The Promise is yet to come in a meaningful way. But it is a  great start. Here was a start that was initiated by the NEA. after the death of Christa McAuliffe, in 1992 where we discussed some of these ideas how wonderful to find that in the crucible of ideas that can cooked up that many of the ideas have come to fruition. I am excited that Shirley Malcom is a part of this initiative..

This initiative was also discussed around the table at the George Lucas Educational Foundation

Bonnie Bracey , Chris Dede, Seymour Papert at NEA , NFIE workshop for digital equity

The beginnings of ideas to vault the digital divide

At the end of NIAC the ideas were started , creating the possibility of this project. many long years later Founded after more than a decade of effort, including a 2004 report to Congress, Digital Promise has been endorsed by virtually every major national association of educators and educational institutions, libraries, and museums. The project that gave rise to Digital Promise was launched by the Carnegie, Century, Knight, MacArthur, and Open Society foundations, sustained by the Federation of American Scientists, and championed by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats, civic and business leaders, who came together on its behalf so that the dream of a greenhouse, a place to share ideas and promising practices finally is established, online, instead of in regional centers, and or demonstration projects that are geographically based.

GPS, GIS comes to urban students in a neighborhood setting

ESRI , and National Geographic provide resources for all.

This has been a work in progress.  For the Digital Promise Project, The George Lucas Educational Foundation has produced a short videoto share the potential of new technologies in learning for schools, universities, and the workplace. Digital Promise is a project advocating the establishment of a major federally funded educational trust fund to support the use of digital technologies, especially the Internet, to transform education, training, and lifelong learning.

Being involved in transformational education through NASA

We never mentioned the word Supercomputing, we just did it.

The focus in education for the last couple of weeks has been all STEM and all about Digital Promises

 No Child Left Behind has Left the Building, Following the path of  Little Red Schoolhouse 

As No Child Left Behind is being escorted out of the building of the Dept of Education, Common  Core, new ways of assessment are being escorted in , and there is a sea change in that we can now acknowledge STEM/. The Brookings Institute held an exciting meeting,

 At the meeting, the Department of Commerce shared the last of the three reports
Education Supports Racial and Ethnic Equality in STEM. that report is one of three.

Experts in all fields discussed promising practices and then accepted querys and questions from the audience.

Science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM) are said to be fundamental aspects of everyone’s lives as citizens, consumers, parents, and workers. Here is a infographic to help visualize the ideas.

Providing all students with access to high-quality education in STEM is important to their futures and that of the U.S. What can schools do to meet this goal for their students?

How about realizing the problem of Broadband for all.? We have a National Broadband Plan.You can learn more about it here.

There is more, but I am a teacher , semi technology literate. So look down the site and see things like windrider.  See other technology applications here. http://www.measurementlab.net/resources

You can see if your community is broadband ready  here.

If you are an activist and you want to check your connections and contribute to data, you may want to involve yourself in the M-Lab Project.  When you take a first look it looks like a site only for researchers.M-Lab.

It will be helpful to you if you use the site to test your Internet connection. Do it here. It is easy.

There are explanations, so you will know that your privacy is not compromised.

Here are the tests.

Network diagnostic tool

Test your connection speed and receive sophisticated diagnosis of problems limiting speed.

Glasnost test

Test whether certain applications or traffic are being blocked or throttled on your broadband connection.

Network path & application diagnostics

Diagnose common problems that impact last-mile broadband networks.

Bandwidth test

See how much bandwidth your connection provides

Traffic shaping test

Determine whether an ISP is performing traffic shaping.

Bismark Gateway

Apply to host a router device to test Internet connectivity over time.

Mobile traffic test

Detect whether your mobile broadband provider is performing application or service specific differentiation.