California

The State of California, under Governor Gray Davis' leadership, funded the Digital California Project (DCP) at $31.6 million per year. This project will ensure the best possible digital learning environment for California's future generations of students by laying the foundation for a statewide advanced service network to serve K-12 education. The DCP offers teachers and students access to the tools needed to make the most effective use of information and learning resources.

The goals of the DCP are to:

• Provide a common, robust, statewide network communications infrastructure for the K-20 systems
• Facilitate access to rich content resources for teaching and learning in K-12
• Create an environment that facilitates collaboration between California's K-12 and higher education
• Provide a conduit for educators to access Information Age tools and to enhance the skills required to use technology effectively in the classroom
• Provide the technical support to sustain a reliable statewide education network

The DCP creates a cohesive and seamless statewide advanced services network backbone that reaches into each of the State's 58 counties. Every kindergarten through higher education learning institution that connects to this backbone will be interconnected to each other, as well as to the larger Internet2 and the Internet universe. The DCP paves the way for K-12 schools to have access to a world of rich content resources that encourage students not only to answer the hard questions, but to ask them as well.

The DCP builds upon the first initiative of CENIC, CalREN-2, which interconnects California's major research and education institutions at unprecedented speeds of over 1000 times faster than the commercial Internet. The DCP expands the architecture and infrastructure of CalREN-2 and the California State University network, 4CNet which enables interconnection among educational institutions throughout the state, as well as providing unparalleled access to global Internet2 communities and the commercial Internet.

Rapid technological advances are challenging us to rethink the education experience. Throughout the nation, leaders in state government and education are embracing high capacity communications systems that enrich the teaching-learning experiences in K-12 schools while emphasizing practical curricula.

A challenge being met by this project is creating an educational environment that integrates the use of these technology tools into the teaching of knowledge and skills as set forth in California's K-12 state standards and curriculum frameworks.

Examples of the types of resources to be made available include the following:

• Virtual Classrooms. Small, rural high schools are challenged to find a sufficient number of students to justify the expense associated with just one full course in any Advanced Placement subject. Moreover, it's difficult to recruit qualified AP teachers. Through the DCP, students in rural areas will have equal access to a variety of on-line AP courses and exams offered via the University of California College Preparation Initiative. While one student attends an online AP chemistry course taught by a renowned chemist, several classmates might simultaneously take a physics AP during the same scheduled classroom period.
• Teacher and Student Education Distributed Learning Programs such as TEAMS and Project Space will provide a wide-range of standards-based instructional materials. TEAMS, developed in the Los Angeles County Office of Education, provides televised instructional programs on language arts, reading, history/social science, mathematics, and technology. These programs are coupled with extensive lesson plans specific to the subject area.
• Project Space, a NASA-supported educational outreach program, integrates advanced computer technology and translates complex scientific data sets and a variety of scientific technologies into educational resources, models, simulations and classroom activities in a manner that allows teachers to see how space exploration fits into an overall science education program.
• Professional Development. With access to the advanced network services provided by DCP, teachers will have more options in choosing the courses necessary to enrich their careers. Programs such as CalState TEACH, developed by the California State University system, and MERET, developed by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, offer professional development assistance to new and emergency-credential teachers. TEAMS, also developed by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, offers professional development specific to subject areas.
• Libraries. Many of the political, social and cultural events that shaped the modern world are available in high resolution, multimedia collections. The DCP will connect classrooms to video libraries of interactive 3D materials, such as the SHOAH visual history library of over 50,0000 interviews with Holocaust survivors.

The University of California is engaged in an ongoing effort to build the California Digital Library, "a library without walls." CDL represents a large shared collection of digital resources that will be accessible to educators and students statewide through the DCP network. The DCP enables California students and educators to benefit from the tremendous resources, exciting opportunities, and dynamic applications envisioned in the 21st century.
For students, the DCP promises new ways of learning with access to:

• Advanced Placement courses taught by experts that can be taken anywhere, anytime
• Language courses by native speaking instructors, enhanced by "conversation" student to student
• Global resources like digital libraries, multimedia visual histories, museums, and science laboratories
• Next generation, potentially interactive, educational programs via high definition television

For educators, the DCP heralds greater opportunities for:

• Online preparation, certification and staff development programs
• Access to a vast array of rich information resources and curricula programs
• Effective and innovative training and services

For administrators, the DCP promotes more efficient and effective management tools that can lead to:

• Stronger relationships amongst KB12, higher education, and industry
• Secure electronic transmission of student data
• Secure electronic transmission of payroll, fiscal records, and other reports

The University of California (UC) has the leadership role in overseeing the project and administering the funds. The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, a non-profit organization known as CENIC under agreement with UC and State of California, is architecting and building the DCP to be the best possible digital learning environment for California. CENIC, founded by California's higher education community (California Institute of Technology, California State University, Stanford University, University of California, and University of Southern California), brings over three decades of information technology leadership to the design, building, and management of the DCP.

Contact
Tom West
CENIC
562-985-9656 (p)  
E-mail: Twest@cenic.org