Anthology

Establishing a Peer Client-Server Internet

Architecture for Virginia's Schools

Paper Presented at the
Annual Conference of the
Virginia Society for Technology in Education
April 29-30, 1994

Authors

Glen Bull, Tim Sigmon, Frank Becker
Harold Cothern, Bill Thomas, & Tom Morgan

Anthology

Establishing a Peer Client-Server Internet

Architecture for Virginia's Schools

Table of Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. Objectives
  3. Rationale for the Transition to a New Network Architecture
  4. Benefits of a Client-Server Architecture
  5. An Evolutionary Path
  6. Instructional Issues
  7. A New Role for the Electronic Academical Village
  8. An Illustration of Anthology
  9. Summary
  10. References

Introduction

Five years ago, a symposium on establishment of a statewide K-12 Internet network took place at the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE) conference:

Bull, Glen L., Shidiski, Charles J., Creasy, Gordon F., Phifer, James, Caffarella, Edward P., Bartley, R., Booz, William H., Lawrence, Dianne, Weller, Barbara J., & Morgan, Tom (1989, May). Designing a cooperative public school-university network for Virginia. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Representatives from public schools, universities, community colleges, public television stations, and the Virginia Department of Education participated in this meeting. It was at that symposium that the specifications for the statewide system which became Virginia's Public Education Network (PEN) were agreed upon.

Five of the ten members of that panel either were past presidents of VSTE or subsequently served in that capacity. VSTE served as a catalyst in the initiation of Virginia's PEN and provided a strong base of support for the continued evolution of the network.

It therefore seems appropriate to use the current VSTE conference as a forum for describing possibilities for the continued evolution of Virginia's K-12 Internet system. Virginia's PEN has been a remarkable accomplishment in its own right. It was one of the first statewide K-12 Internet systems. It has influenced development of similar educational systems in other states and locations as far away as the United Kingdom. Virginia's PEN introduced thousands of teachers to the educational potential of the Internet, and dispelled the myth that the Internet was too complex for K-12 teachers or students to use. It also created a solid cadre of users who will be well equipped to make use of the next evolutionary stage in K-12 Internet systems.

All technologies change over time, some more rapidly than others. Informal experimentation and Internet use at various Virginia universities in the early 1980's led to development of a regional K-12 Internet system, Teacher-LINK. Teacher-LINK, in turn, served as the prototype for Virginia's PEN. Virginia's PEN was then employed as a platform for establishment of instructional forums or pavilions collectively termed the Electronic Academical Village. This concept, in turn, will serve as the foundation for a graphical client-server architecture which we have titled Anthology.

A 1993 survey by the Virginia Department of Education found that 48 percent of all Virginia schools had installed at least one phone line to access Virginia's PEN, and 16 percent had installed two or more phone lines. The steady incremental growth of the network through its first four phases has produced an installed base of educators who are knowledgeable about the instructional potential of the Internet, and who constitute a grass-roots contingent supportive of the continued growth and extension of this instructional system

Objectives

The two criteria of scalability and sustainability are considerations in any educational technology initiative. Scalability in this context refers to the ability to move from a pilot effort to a statewide system. Sustainability refers to the ability to maintain the system in the absence of external grant funding or support.

The current objectives outlined in this paper involve development of an evolutionary client-server architecture for Virginia's K-12 Internet system which is both scalable and sustainable. Pilot efforts have convinced us that this goal is attainable.

Significance


A Rationale for a Transition to Peer-Desktop Computing

Throughout the past decade Virginia's K-12 Internet activity has been predicated upon dial-up access to a remote host or gateway. Although this direction has been technologically appropriate for the era within which this development took place, it is evident that the current model is not scalable.

The following diagram (Figure 1) illustrates branching choices which face architects of K-12 networks. In some senses, universities serve as time machines which provide a glimpse into the future of K-12 networks. Initially network access at universities was provided through dial-up connections to a host computer via modem, with transfer speeds measured in kilobits per second. Later local area networks (LANs) at the building level were linked to campus wide-area networks with transfer speeds measured in megabits per second. Currently experimentation with fiber-optic networks providing transfer speeds measured in gigabits is occurring within universities.

Figure 1. Methods of Internet Access

Figure 2 illustrates a range of options for connecting a desktop computer to a remote host computer, and for connecting the host computer to the Internet.

Figure 2. Connection through an Intermediate Host

Several factors limit continued expansion of a system founded on dial-up access to a remote host.

Benefits of a Client-Server Architecture

Because of the limits on scalability, the groundwork has been laid for a transition to a model in which direct Internet access is established within each school district. This model assumes that computers within a school building will be linked through a local area network (LAN) which in turn will be connected to an Internet hub or gateway at the central school offices. This model offers several advantages over the current model of dial-up access from a phone line in each classroom.

  1. Scalability

    As projected connectivity costs drop over the next decade, a model which incorporates LAN/WAN connectivity will ultimately be more economical. The costs of routers required to link schools have already dropped below $2,000 (or approximately the cost of an additional microcomputer) while 10-base-T cabling is considerably more forgiving of novice installation than either thick or thin Ethernet (for example). Staffing and administration issues preclude routine installation of a local building-level server at many schools, but if the school LAN is linked to the district hub, access to a district-level server may be more feasible while providing many of the same benefits. A 14.4 kbs Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) connection may provide the same bandwidth for multiple computers on a school LAN that was formerly provided by a 1200 or 2400 bps modem connected to a single computer. As connectivity charges decrease, higher bandwidths afforded by dedicated or leased lines may become affordable.

  2. Training

    Machines directly connected through a LAN/WAN integrated connection can become peers on the Internet. This connection combined with graphical tools which have become available can allow a file to be transferred simply by clicking on a file folder icon or selecting "Save File" from a menu. In contrast, the presence of an intermediate host accessed through a dial-up connection greatly complicates training issues. An Internet file transfer through ftp, for example, is a two-step process when a remote host is involved:

    (1) from remote computer to intermediate host, followed by
    (2) downloading from the intermediate host to the local microcomputer.

    If the reduced training costs afforded by the simplified training costs are included in the equation, integrated LAN/WAN connections become even more economical.

  3. Graphical User Interface

    Bypassing an intermediate host and establishing a client-server connection allows the native power of the microcomputer to be employed. Graphical client-server applications are proliferating on the Internet.

    The shift from a text-based VT-100 system to multimedia capabilities which include graphics, animation, and sound dramatically changes the instructional capabilities of the system. For example, the ability to display geometric figures rather than describing them in text could significantly improve the "Problem-Solving Corner" of Virginia PEN's Math Pavilion.

  4. Shift from a Central to a Distributed System

    The shift from a central to a distributed system in which every client machine has the capacity to become a server is perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the shift. In a pilot site, several classrooms have already established World Wide Web (subsequently referenced by its acronym of WWW, or simply as the Web) home pages. This capability will require a reorientation from a mindset accustomed to a single host computer overseen by a relatively small number of individuals to an environment that encompasses hundreds of servers.

Establishment of a district-level Internet connection will make it possible to re-conceptualize the overall architecture of future public school networks, allowing the state department of education to reduce its responsibility for establishing and maintaining the network infrastructure, and allowing it to focus on the role of information provider. Figure 3 illustrates this relationship.

Figure 3. The Changing Role of the State Department of Education

In the long term it may not be necessary for state departments of education to maintain the network infrastructure which links schools to the state K-12 Internet server, just as it is not necessary for them to maintain a private statewide K-12 phone system. In a competitive market in which Internet access is purchased as a commodity, such access may be established through competitive bids from the most cost-effective service provider.

We project that the transition from dial-up connections to LAN/WAN connectivity will occur over at least a decade. In order to achieve a smooth transition, it is important to begin preparing for such a transformation now. Aside from the potential benefits, many school divisions are proceeding with installation of local area networks. This activity will continue even in the absence of guidance or leadership.

An Evolutionary Path

The cost of Internet access has been decreasing steadily, and now falls within the financial capacity of many school divisions. Additional costs are involved in linking individual schools to a central district hub or gateway, but the decreasing costs of routers make such costs increasingly affordable as well. The lacking component is not the technologic capacity but rather the expertise required to make intelligent choices among a plethora of options. Commercial vendors who possess differing perspectives and levels of expertise make such decisions overwhelming and confusing in the absence of external leadership.

In the absence of model divisions in which other school divisions can observe real world practices, the transition to a client-server architecture is likely to be much more painful. In particular, many school divisions are likely to re-invent the wheel, repeating mistakes previously discovered by others before them. While a state clearing house might appear to address this need, a decade of experience in attempting to meet such needs centrally from within a state department of education has convinced us that a local approach involving test beds in real school divisions is more likely to yield the desired benefits.

Three school divisions have agreed to serve as demonstration sites and test beds in which experimentation can take place on a pilot basis. The three initial demonstration sites vary according to community (rural vs. urban), Internet provider, and division size (large and medium). We feel that the appropriate solution for each school division may differ depending upon its characteristics, and therefore think it desirable to provide several contrasting models of connectivity.

Each of the participating school divisions plans to purchase an Internet gateway and to pay for connections between local area networks within some school buildings and the gateway. We included this prerequisite for demonstration sites to ensure that a model was not inadvertently created which could only be sustained through external funding. More importantly, the credibility of demonstration sites for other school divisions may require that the infrastructure be internally funded and supported.

In Spring 1994 Murray Elementary school in the Albemarle school division became the first demonstration site in this system. An Internet gateway in the Albemarle central school division office links the division to the Internet. A router at Murray Elementary, in turn, connects the school's local area network (LAN) to the division gateway. [The Central Virginia Governor's School for Science and Technology (CVGS) was the first Virginia school to link its LAN to an Internet gateway, and the Thomas Jefferson Governor's School in northern Virginia was the second. However, Murray Elementary, to the best of our knowledge, was the first conventional school in Virginia to establish such a connection.]

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is also sponsoring tests of the Internet point-to-point protocol (PPP) at several sites, including the Henrico and Goochland school divisions. As Figure 1 above depicts, a PPP connection can also be used to establish client-server connections, albeit at lower speeds (and concomitantly lower costs).

A coalition consisting of the participating school divisions, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Department of Education will attempt to identify external support which will make it possible to provide more extensive assistance to other school divisions with similar plans. However, only the scale and scope of such assistance to other school divisions will be affected by external support, and not the basic strategy.

Instructional Issues

In past educational network projects we have encountered a tendency to focus on the mechanical elements (access method and user interface) described above. We now believe the success of such projects frequently depends upon provision of a framework and context for use. For example, after Virginia's K-12 Internet system was developed, we naively assumed that provision of convenient access and an effective user interface would provide teachers with all that was necessary to utilize a broad range of educationally-related Internet resources in the classroom.

However, the team quickly discovered that beyond an initial pool of early adopters, many teachers were overwhelmed by the sheer range and diversity of Internet resources. The solution which eventually was adopted did not lie in additional tinkering with the mechanical aspects of the network, but in establishment of an active support system.

A strategy grounded in the vision of Thomas Jefferson was adopted as an instructional framework for the network. Jefferson established an "academical village" at the University of Virginia in which student rooms were interspersed among pavilions for the various disciplines in which faculty lived and taught. As a modern-day extension of this vision, an Electronic Academical Village was established on Virginia's PEN. Pavilions for the various content areas were established in which resources associated with that discipline were drawn together into a common menu.

The metaphor of a museum was adopted, and a community of "curators" consisting of teachers responsible for supporting the various disciplines was established. Curators serve as educational technology consultants who identify ways in which Internet resources might be integrated into instructional use, and recruit academic experts such as university professors and others who can assist in this use. The curators of the Electronic Academical Village are still in the process of discovering how best to establish and support instructional pavilions. However, it is clear that this community of users and support personnel are ultimately as crucial to successful educational use of the Internet as the mechanical networking factors.

A New Role for the Electronic Academical Village

Establishment of multiple resources at multiple sites does not imply that a central server at the state department of education will be irrelevant. In fact, a central map with links and pointers to some of the more valuable resources may become more important than ever in helping teachers make sense of a seemingly chaotic mass of educational assets.

However, the role of the central department of education may now shift to that of librarian and information technology analyst. Rather than acting as the primary developer of educational materials, the librarians and curriculum analysts may act as catalogers who organize information and provide the equivalent of annotated bibliographies for electronic resources. In some instances illustrative or exemplary models may be developed by the state department of education, but more often the information will not reside directly on the central state K-12 server.

Academic Pavilions in the Electronic Academical Village will not only include information on a central server, but also will provide links to exemplary materials and information across Virginia and the nation. In Virginia's current K-12 Internet system (PEN), the curators' role encompasses that of archivist and editorial board. In addition, many curators also play a more active role of recruiting a network of volunteers who serve as educational resources within a pavilion, and who develop instructional activities and projects.

We believe that the transition from a central text-based system to a distributed graphical system will make these functions even more crucial. The transition to a graphical client server interface will involve more than design of an icon or graphic to replace each item on a text-based menu. This architecture also allows each classroom (or even each individual) to be information providers on the Web.

The most serious impediments to establishment of a useful system are not related to technology, but involve development of a review process to ensure accuracy of information, etc. The curatorial function must provide an editorial review capability for quality assurance. The de facto approach that has evolved under the current text-based Electronic Academical Village has consisted of a partnership of representatives associated with professional associations working with representatives from within the Virginia Department of Education. For example, the Virginia Instructors of Physics (VIP) association provides curators for the Physics Pavilion. These representatives serve as the content experts with respect to appropriate information placed on the state K-12 Internet server, but collaborate with the state department of education regarding the continuing evolution of general policies which affect all pavilions.

The shift to a graphical client-server architecture changes this relationship somewhat. A new graphical interface grounded in Web viewers such as Mosaic will in many instances provide links to local servers. Since the information on these local servers can be changed more easily, it can be anticipated that it will be more volatile. Hence, the job of the curator will become more difficult in some respects.

In many respects the new system will offer far more choices than the current centralized system. If a link to a new resource is not created within an instructional pavilion, users will still be able to create their own personal links to the resource on their individual home pages. Therefore the role of central instructional pavilions will be to establish an instructional framework with resources of known quality and utility, but will not constitute the primary or only source of such materials as the current central system does now.

An Illustration of Anthology

In the future K-12 client-server Internet architecture that we envision, it will be technically straightforward for every school building to maintain its own Internet server, or even every classroom if that is technically desirable. It is less clear how this technical capacity will be translated into instructional benefits. The establishment of demonstration sites in three collaborating school divisions is intended to provide a framework for exploring the answers to this question. We think it likely that this coalition, in turn, will collaborate with a number of similar test beds in other states.

While we have not defined the exact shape of the solution which might emerge from this process, we think it is already clear that resources posted by teachers on hundreds of servers at as many schools will ultimately play a role in this future. For this reason, we have adopted the title Anthology to describe the system which we are developing in parallel to the existing text-based K-12 Internet system in Virginia. This title is intended to convey the concept that future educators may be able to select the best set of resources for their classroom from among hundreds or thousands of servers, developing a customized set of resources which best fits their curriculum.

It will be years before all school divisions make the transition from the current system to the new infrastructure. We want to ensure that useful instructional models are available to guide schools as they come on-line. We have devised an initial community-based project for each school which will allow them to gain experience as they come on line.

In this proposed initiative, each newly-linked school would be provided with a template with spaces for key information about the community, including photographs for area landmarks, information about the community's history, notable geographic and geologic features, industry, and other community-related factors. A Virginia "Home Page" will provide a map of the state. Each community will be represented by a clickable dot providing a link to a school server with information about that community.

The web of information about the state's history, geography, industry, and other characteristics will provide a rich resource complementing other instructional materials such as textbooks, films, and videodiscs. We intend to develop a "Carmen Sandiego"-like on-line game which will encourage Virginia's students to begin exploring this resource. We anticipate that as students gain experience they will also begin incorporating digitized images, citations containing text from on-line historical documents, and similar resources in term papers, multimedia documents, and other assignments.

We envision this effort as a "visible field trip" and hope to make it available to the communities themselves, both by providing access to Internet-linked display systems after school, and by establishing similar community access kiosks in public libraries. We anticipate this will make student efforts and findings visible to communities in a way never possible heretofore, stimulating discussion and interest in these school-based efforts.

Summary

An educational telecomputing partnership which has included Virginia school divisions, the Virginia Department of Education, and the University of Virginia has collaborated on the development and evolution of Virginia's K-12 Internet system for over a decade. Partners in this effort have worked together through a continuing evolutionary process which has included a regional K-12 Internet system (Teacher-LINK), a statewide K-12 Internet System (Virginia's PEN), and instructional forums based upon this platform (the Electronic Academical Village).

In each instance the coalition has pursued a consistent strategy of developing small-scale pilots which are employed as test beds for larger scale initiatives. The coalition which successfully developed past educational computing initiatives is now proposing a series of pilot demonstration projects for development of a client-server Internet architecture in Virginia's K-12 schools. This initiative has been given the title of Anthology to highlight the significance of a transition from a single remotely-accessed host computer to a system in which every client can also be a server.

References

Bull, G.L., Sigmon, T., Cothern, L., and Stout, C. (in press). Establishing statewide K-12 telecomputing networks. Journal of Machine-Mediated Learning.

Bull, G.L., Cothern, L., and Stout, C. (1993). Models for a national public school computing network. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. 1 (1), 43-51.

Bull, G.L., Harris, C., & Cothern, H. (1992). Considerations underlying the architecture of a state public school telecomputing network. In Tinker, R., & Kapisovski, P. (eds). Prospects for Educational Telecomputing: Selected Readings. (pp. 121-134) Cambridge, Massachusetts: Technical Education Research Centers.

Bull, G.L., Harris, J., & Drucker, D. (1992). Building an electronic culture: The Academical Village at Virginia. in M.D. Waggoner (Ed.), Empowering Networks: Computer Conferencing in Education (pp. 35-54). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Bull, G.L., Hill, I. Guyre, K., & Sigmon, T. (1991). Building the electronic academical village: Virginia's Public Education Network (PEN). Educational Technology. 31 (4), 30-36.

Bull, G.L., Sigmon, T., & Shidisky, C. (1991). Specifications for computer networks for support of cooperative ventures between universities and public schools. Computers in the Schools, 8 (1-3), 183-186.

Bull, G.L., Harris, J., Lloyd, J., & Short, J. (1989). The electronic academical village. Journal of Teacher Education. 40 (4), 27-31.

Bull, G. L., Shidiski, Charles J., Creasy, Gordon F., Phifer, James, Caffarella, Edward P., Bartley, R., Booz, William H., Lawrence, Dianne, Weller, Barbara J., & Morgan, Tom (1989, May). Designing a cooperative public school-university network for Virginia. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Bull, G. L., Sigmon, T., & Harris, J. (1985). Teacher-LINK: A Regional K-12 Internet Network [Computer Network]. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia.

Gore, A. (1991) Viewpoint: a networked nation. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 34 (11), 15-16.

Harris, J. & Anderson, S. (1991). Cultivating teacher telecommunications networks from the grass roots up: the electronic academic village at Virginia. Computers in the Schools, 8(1/2/3), 191-202.

Information Infrastructure Task Force (1993). National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action (Version 1.0) [Machine Readable File available through anonymous FTP from enh.nist.gov in file "niiagenda.asc"]. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Newman, D., Bernstein, S., and Reese, P. (1992). Local Infrastructures for School Networking: Current Models and Prospects (BBN Report No. 7726). Cambridge, MA: Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc.

Riel, M. (1989). Four models of educational telecommunications: Connections to the future. Education & Computing, 5, 261-274.

Riel, M.M. & Levin, J.A. (1990). Building electronic communities: Success and failure in computer networking. Instructional Science 19, 145-169.

Robin, B. (1993). The Influence of Conference Moderator Strategies on the Participation of Teachers in Collaborative Telecomputing Projects. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Stuhlmann, J. M. (1993). The Circumstances and Experiences that Lead to Incorporating Telecommunications into Teaching Practices. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Abstract
A decade ago a coalition which now includes the University of Virginia, the Virginia Department of Education, and several of Virginia's school divisions developed one of the nation's first regional K-12 Internet networks, Teacher-LINK. The coalition subsequently used the regional network as a prototype for Virginia's Public Education Network (PEN), a statewide K-12 Internet network. The specifications for this statewide K-12 Internet system were established at the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE) conference which took place five years ago.

The coalition which successfully collaborated on development of Virginia's current text-based K-12 Internet system now proposes an evolutionary path to a graphical client-server architecture for Virginia's schools. In pilot efforts preceding the proposed initiative, the coalition has established World Wide Web (WWW) servers, viewed through the Mosaic interface, at several Virginia schools. A distributed client-server architecture which links local area networks to the Internet offers several benefits with respect to scalability and ease of use by the individual user. While these benefits will make the Internet more accessible to K-12 educators, the real educational significance lies in the capability of any client to become a server, allowing schools and classes to become information providers as well as consumers.

Until now, mechanical startup issues and the cost of connectivity have obscured the significance of the change which will occur. Local model demonstration sites appropriately staffed will ensure that each school division is not required to reinvent the methods required to establish this infrastructure. Provision of several different models will also ensure that recommendations are individualized rather than prescriptive.

The title Anthology has been adopted for this project to convey the sense that in the future teachers will no longer access a single text-based menu on a central educational server. Instead, teachers will be able to construct their own anthology of resources drawn from servers from across the state and the nation. These resources will include graphics, animation, and sound as well as text. A cultural shift will be required to realize the educational potential of this forthcoming capability.

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Authors

Glen L. Bull
University of Virginia

Timothy M. Sigmon
University of Virginia

Frank Becker
University of Virginia

Harold Cothern
Virginia Department of Education

William Thomas
Fairfax School Division

Tom Morgan
Central Virginia Governor's School
for Science and Technology

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