Keith Krueger
CoSN CEO

America made a wise investment in creating E-rate a decade ago. Because of this on-going investment, our nation’s classrooms and libraries are nearly all connected (100% of schools, nearly every classroom). Some have suggested that now the job is done. But today, classrooms need high bandwidth connections.

Slow bandwidth in schools limits potential opportunities for students. These learning opportunities are made possible through services such as video streaming, videoconferencing, secure data submission, voice over IP, digital downloading, online courses and 1:1 computing. These applications require high levels of bandwidth and robust school networks.

A survey done by The Greaves Group and The Hayes Connection, America’s Digital Schools 2006, identified a “Bandwidth Crisis” after having several hundred CTOs calculate their likely bandwidth needs over the next five years.

A terrific resource for educators is an article by Karen Greewood Henke in Technology & Learning magazine called How Fast Is Fast Enough?

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) believes that bandwidth, especially in schools, is a major economic and policy challenge for the U.S. We need wise investment in broadband in our classrooms, one that enables a robust infrastructure and continuous innovation. Now is the time for Congress and the President to focus on this problem in a thoughtful way. Broadband deployment should be our number one legislative priority.

Last fall, we partnered with USTelecom to offer a Webinar for school district technology leaders called “Broadband Bootcamp for Educators” on this broadband crisis. You can view the archive here.

Over the coming weeks, CoSN will unveil a Broadband Knowledge Center on our website to help educators better understand the potential broadband brings to the classroom. The Center will provide “must-read” articles and reports, provide links to other key resources, provide some broadband “calculators,” have RSS signup and discussion forums. Visit www.cosn.org in late March for the latest information.