Gov. Nathan Deal will propose spending nearly $45 million on the biggest Internet expansion in Georgia school history in a move that would bring lightning-fast connections to all 180 school districts.
The governor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the money would exponentially boost the state’s k-12 online education network, which now slogs at the same speed as regular household Internet packages. It also would fix a costly error last year that nixed a chance to boost Internet speeds in many rural schools.
“This will bring learning into the digital age,” Deal said. “It’s an important new step in the right direction to bring education into the modern era.”
The idea emerged more than two years ago from Bob Swiggum, the state’s top school technology chief, and was included in a list of education recommendations released three weeks ago. He said schools could start seeing changes in July 2015 if the funding is approved. Swiggum’s boss, state Schools Superintendent John Barge, is challenging Deal in a GOP primary that’s expected to focus on education and the economy.
The first part of the proposal involves about $4 million for equipment that would connect public school districts to the PeachNet system, developed more than 20 years ago by the University System to provide high-speed Internet to colleges and public libraries. The money was supposed to be in last year’s budget, but Swiggum has said he accidentally left it out of a bond request.
Another $39 million would go toward “last-mile” connectivity to link far-flung schools to their central offices. Together, the upgrades would amp up school connectivity that sometimes slogs at about three megabits per second — the same as some regular household packages — to as much as 100 megabits per second.
Expanding the online highways that schools use by more than 3,000 percent would improve access to online learning, digital libraries and the “eminent teachers” program that allows top educators to remotely teach courses in the farthest reaches of the state.
Barge, the superintendent, has made the “dire” conditions of public schools in rural areas a centerpiece of his campaign. He’s honed in on problems with Georgia’s technology infrastructure, which he said “is so poor that it cannot handle students in our schools using digital resources all at the same time.”
But poor connectivity is an issue for schools statewide, Swiggum said, especially as classroom learning evolves to include more digital lessons and online tests.
“This is the one thing that will help teachers more than any other tool at their disposal,” Swiggum said. “It will make things more efficient, and it will help teachers focus more on teaching because they will not have to do all these administrative tasks.”
In the future, education leaders imagine classrooms where students use computers to learn at their own pace, with online lessons prescribed by a tech-savvy teacher, and a student’s daily progress report delivered to the teacher’s digital device. Students could also bring their own devices to school, and take lessons on their personal iPads or laptops.
Bandwidth is key to making all that possible, said Mike Abbiatti, director of the educational technology cooperative for Southern Regional Education Board, an Atlanta-based nonprofit.
“The bottom line is bandwidth has now become the currency of education and more decision makers are beginning to see that having adequate bandwidth is as important as having adequate roads or adequate water,” Abbiatti said. “But it’s not the technology that’s important, it’s what you do with it that counts.”
About the Author
