FCC Votes to Move Ahead with High-Speed Internet for Schools

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The FCC has voted to move forward with plans to have high-speed internet access to 99% of the entire nation’s schools within five years. This will be a continuance of the 1997 plan to provide internet access to school libraries, but with emphasis on modernizing and expanding its efforts.

The initiative intends to bring high-speed internet connections into 99 percent of US schools within the next five years.
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Internet access is more of a distraction than a useful learning aid. I suspect this will lead the students wasting more time browsing facebook and spending less time learning..

I don't think it matters much at this point as there's little hope for the future of the western world. All the wealth, both financial and intellectual, is shifting east.
 
They can link broadband to our schools, but they can't make us use it! The district I teach in (just 3 schools, all on the same campus) has a 20 Mb and 100 Mb link shared by all buildings. The 100 Mb connection is turned off because it costs money to use. Needless to say, it is rather slow to use the internet for anything during the day.
 
Grebuloner said:
They can link broadband to our schools, but they can't make us use it! The district I teach in (just 3 schools, all on the same campus) has a 20 Mb and 100 Mb link shared by all buildings. The 100 Mb connection is turned off because it costs money to use. Needless to say, it is rather slow to use the internet for anything during the day.
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The school I went to had 2 T1 lines and QOSed the network where everyone had dial up speeds.
 
I think a government program where K-12 students are given access to productivity software for home use would be much more beneficial.
 
This is great. They should have guest tele-lectures on a regular basis. There's no reason to have some schmuck teaching a class just because they happen to exist locally. Get one of the 10 (or 100) best teachers in the country to talk about any given topic. Why shouldn't every child learn about science from Neil deGrasse Tyson?
 
A few years ago, they defined high speed broadband as 256Kb or higher. So, this may not be that great of a thing. Even a T1 is slow these days.

Bringing technology to schools is great, but for a lot of schools, they can barely teach math or reading... They need to focus on that first, then bring in the cool toys.
 
There's this school district in NJ where the school is very high tech. I mean, their science classrooms look like fortune 100 company research labs. Their computers were top end systems (when I saw them). The cafeteria served freshly made food (none of that reheated stuff or that freeze dried stuff or that one company that runs all the cafeterias in the country stuff). Anyway, turns out that the students were piss poor in everything. The district superintendent and principal were pals. They thought that giving kids who didn't want to learn at all some high tech gadgets was going to make them want to learn. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Moral of the story, the superintendent got fired. The principal got fired. The school was stripped of its gadgets and they were given to more deserving schools. The parents were given an ultimatum. The parents had to ensure that their kids went to school. They had to ensure that their kids did their homework. Every missed day of school would turn into a $100 fine for the parent. Every missed homework assignment would turn into a $50 fine for the parent. This worked. the school started doing better and made it into the top 100 schools for 1 year. And then...they disappeared.

Moral of the story, you can't except technology to make everything better. You need to put in the effort. Sadly, America's youth don't have the "effort" part down.
 
That's pretty amazing. My High-school had good broadband, and I graduated in '02.
 
Does learning actually happen in schools these days? Excluding those nice private or magnet schools with long waiting lists of course.
 
Shouldn't kids be literate before using the internet?

Expect huge costs and wastes of money on this project.
 
Why don't they have this shit already? I mean what is this Universal Lifeline tax that's been plaguing me since the day I started paying my own phone bill supposed to do?

Interesting though, since a lot of schools are in rural areas, getting high speed to them could be problematic... or the solution could then help foster high speed in the rural areas themselves.

It'd be nice if the government would just tell local ISPs that part of the cost of them doing business if to give one free line to schools in the area, and they're not allowed to pass that cost onto the consumer, consider it part of their profits. Or fuck let them write it off on their taxes.
 
I bet they end up buying some more $20,000 Cisco Routers that aren't needed for their single 1 GBit network connection to their local ISP.
 
Gav80K said:
Internet access is more of a distraction than a useful learning aid. I suspect this will lead the students wasting more time browsing facebook and spending less time learning..

I don't think it matters much at this point as there's little hope for the future of the western world. All the wealth, both financial and intellectual, is shifting east.
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Agreed. We're coasting on the momentum of past success, and that momentum is rapidly diminishing.
 
Up until now, it wasn't profitable to do so, because of the overhead and logistics. What's going to be funny to see is when the 5th graders start fact checking their Evangelical teachers and uncover the painful truth that their educators are completely inept and retarded. Soon enough those 5th graders will be getting more education browsing online then they will from a years worth to education from their teachers. I can't wait to see this happen.
 
PersonalJ said:
I bet they end up buying some more $20,000 Cisco Routers that aren't needed for their single 1 GBit network connection to their local ISP.
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Back in 1998, they install high speed internet into the classroom where my soon-to-be wife was working.\
Took a week to fix the phone line they messed up.

They never did connect the internet to anything in the classroom, because all she had was an apple IIe with a couple old games on it. A few years later they closed down the school, so it was a complete waste of money.
 
Ski said:
Up until now, it wasn't profitable to do so, because of the overhead and logistics. What's going to be funny to see is when the 5th graders start fact checking their PUBLIC SCHOOL teachers and uncover the painful truth that their educators are completely inept and retarded.
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Fixed that for you.
 
Great job. Now these schools can catch up with the speed they should have had 13 years ago.
 
OGOC said:
Shouldn't kids be literate before using the internet?
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Most kids can already read and write before they enter middle-school, never-mind high-school. Maybe your area has lower standards.
 
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