The National Education Network: Services and Benefits for Schools

Becta | The National Education Network: services and benefits for schools

The National Education Network:services and benefits for schools

October 2006 1 of 29

Becta |The National Education Network: services and benefits for schools

Contents

1The benefits of broadband for schools

2Regional broadband consortia and the National Education Network

3National Education Network services

3.1 Video conferencing

3.2Authentication

3.3Safety and security

4National Education Network content and resources

5Looking to the future

1. The benefits of broadband for schools

Broadband connectivity is becoming more and more important to schools. Connectivity (to other institutions, to resources and content, to services and applications, as well as the internet) underpins both management and professional development and can greatly support teaching and learning.

For purposes of management and leadership, broadband connectivity joins schools to their partners and the LEA administration within a county, and to the DfES and its national agencies beyond the county.
For purposes of learning and teaching, broadband connectivity joins teachers and learners and mentors to each other, within and beyond counties.
For purposes of professional development, broadband connectivity is important both at a local and a regional or national level, to join education professionals, mentors, trainers and teacher educators.

Much progress has been made already. The Becta Review 2005[1]reports that:

Evidence from lesson observation in the evaluation of broadband (Underwood et al, 2004) indicates that increased bandwidth can result in improved pace of lessons and use of time, increased pupil motivation for ICT work, and better quality lesson outcomes. The key benefits of using broadband identified from the research are summarised in a review of the literature (Underwood et al, 2003) as:

enhancing the learning experience
improving co-operation between educational institutions
delivering new potentialities, such as delivering real-time satellite images into the classroom
improving efficiencies in existing educational provision
widening access to education with significant impact on lifelong learning.

Ofsted’s report ICT in Schools 2004: The impact of government initiatives five years on[2] maintains that increased bandwidth, and broadband in particular, has:

…had a significant impact on the quality and range of work that schools can undertake. In particular, it has made systems faster and more robust.

Ofsted reports that regional broadband consortia (RBCs) have been instrumental in ensuring this impact:

The most successful RBCs have fully met their aim of extending schools’ access to broadband, providing faster and more robust connections. This, in turn, has boosted the confidence of teachers in the potential of the internet as an effective teaching, learning and management tool, leading to more use and a higher level of productivity… evidence from lessons shows that broadband access can increase pupils’ motivation, improve the pace of lessons and use of time, and lead to better quality outcomes. It enables fast access to a wide range of websites and fast, easy downloading of large files.

The benefits of broadband are already clear, but there is much more potential yet to be realised. The Becta Review 2006[3] reports that:

Although there have been significant improvements in internet bandwidth in schools which can result in improved pace of lessons, increased pupil motivation and better lesson outcomes, many schools are still unclear about the full range of benefits to learning that broadband can bring and have not yet made significant use of applications that specifically require broadband.

The emerging National Education Network (NEN),[4] created by the interconnection of RBCs and local authority networks, provides a huge range of new and exciting possibilities for education. This paper sets out the benefits for schools of being a part of the NEN and describes the growing range of services available.

2. Regional Broadband Consortia and the National Education Network

It is now clearly apparent that educational institutions are increasingly dependent on reliable, high performance broadband connections, provided in a sustainable, consistent and cost-effective way.

ICT and broadband continue to provide new opportunities for education services to evolve and change. The DfES e-strategy[5] sets out a vision for how this should happen, which is dependent upon learners, educators and educational institutions being able to communicate and collaborate at local, regional, national and international level, supporting new forms of teaching and learning – across a national education network.

To ensure consistency of access and availability, a national approach, governed by an appropriate policy and standards framework, is essential if the NEN is to develop. This necessitates system-wide co-ordination and co-operation – at institutional, local, regional and national level – all within a governance framework that ensures interoperability, consistency, reliability and performance. At the same time, the importance of appropriate local choice regarding decisions that are best made by schools must be recognised.

By definition, the NEN is a joined-up system, and it will not work if different purchasing and implementation decisions are made at regional, local and school level without a governing framework of standards and specifications. Establishing interoperability between applications, services and content will be much more difficult, or even impossible, without agreed standards.

An analogy can be drawn between the road system: individuals and organisations are able to make their own choices when it comes to buying vehicles, but the road system on which vehicles travel is regulated by local, national and international rules. So, to create and develop the NEN, local education authorities, joined in a regional broadband consortium (RBC), are the preferred solution. This enables system-wide leverage of the benefits of working within an agreed framework of standards and offers the considerable efficiency and financial advantages of aggregated procurement, implementation and management.

The standards and policy frameworks being collaboratively developed for the NEN will not only help to ensure that every school has reliable access to a consistent set of broadband resources and services; they will also provide a mechanism to support the further development of the NEN as a whole.

The National Education Network

The NEN is a key component of Becta’s national digital infrastructure – a conceptual architecture for educational ICT.[6] It is envisaged that the NEN will provide every teacher and learner with access to a consistent set of resources, services and applications, improving the availability and use of high quality educational content and helping to ensure schools maximise the return on their investment in broadband.

The NEN comprises a national core of interconnecting regional networks, made up of component or associated wide area networks. These have been developed in various ways by RBCs and local authorities to provide broadband connectivity, principally to schools, in line with the goal that all schools should have a broadband connection appropriate to their circumstances and needs by 2006. RBCs and local authorities have been very successful in providing broadband connectivity.– As of September 2006, 97% of schools in England have a broadband connection, equating to 99.3% of secondary and 96.9% of primary schools. Connectivity in many areas has significantly exceeded the typical target connection bandwidth recommended by DfES. More information about RBC networks is available in the DfES publication Broadband: A must-have technology.[7]

Connectivity to the NEN offers key advantages for institutions:

A common high quality, high bandwidth national interconnect, creating a dedicated high performance network and providing a level of performance, reliability and control not achievable over the public internet

Connectivity and services to support demanding, next-generation applications (including video conferencing and multimedia content hosting and delivery) that cannot run reliably over the internet

A delivery mechanism for new regionally and nationally managed services, including a unified authentication and authorisation infrastructure, reducing the burden on schools and local authorities and streamlining access to dedicated education resources

Delivery within an agreed standards framework to reduce complexity, minimise duplication of effort and ensure consistency, interoperability and reliability; for example, to establish a national minimum standard for safe access to the internet for schools

Continual development and improvement: RBC networks and the SuperJANET backbone are periodically reviewed and re-procured to ensure they continue to meet the needs of their users.

The NEN, JANET and UKERNA

JANET is the name given to the UK’s academic network. It connects a wide range of institutions across the UK, including universities, further education colleges, research councils, specialist colleges, adult and community learning providers and schools. Over 16 million end users are currently served by the JANET network. This community continues to expand and includes RBCs within England, a similar initiative in the Scottish Schools Digital Network, C2K in Northern Ireland and the Lifelong Learning Network for Wales.

The core of this network is referred to as SuperJANET. This backbone provides highly resilient and fast access to all JANET organisations and ensures they can communicate effectively. To ensure the network continues to meet the changing needs of its community, this backbone is procured under a fixed-term contract. The individual versions of the backbone are identified by number: the current version is referred to as SuperJANET4 and the roll-out of SuperJANET5 is currently underway..

The range of activities facilitated by JANET allow individuals and organisations to push back the traditional boundaries of teaching, learning and research methods. For example, JANET’s video-conferencing and video-streaming capabilities are being used to deliver lectures to remote groups of students. (More information about the JANET video-conferencing services for schools is provided in the next section of this paper.) For researchers, the high capacity of the JANET backbone allows the linking of large data storage and high performance computing facilities at a national and international level.

The United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association (UKERNA[8]) manages the operation and development of JANET on behalf of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) for the UK further and higher education funding councils. JISC also works in partnership with the research councils. UKERNA is government funded, with the primary aim of providing and developing a network infrastructure that meets the needs of the education and research communities.

It is important to consider the NEN as an emerging network and, like all networks, it will need to be continually reviewed and developed. UKERNA periodically reviews and re-procures the SuperJANET backbone to ensure it continues to meet the needs of all its users. The NEN needs to be similarly maintained, by Becta, the DfES, UKERNA, RBCs and others, to ensure that schools are able to benefit from new technologies, services and resources as they develop.

3. National Education Network services

3.1 Video conferencing

The interconnection of RBC networks through the SuperJANET backbone and the growing number of institutions with broadband connections have facilitated the piloting of the high quality JANET Videoconferencing Service (JVCS) with the schools sector.

Since the early 1990s, JVCS, managed by UKERNA, has been providing unbiased advice and technical support to UK universities and colleges to help them navigate through this sometimes confusing area of technology. Thanks to a centrally funded initiative, these resources and national video-conferencing services are now available free of charge to schools through the JANET Videoconferencing Services Project (VCSP).[9]

The benefits of video conferencing via IP

Schools that are connected to Internet Protocol (IP) video-conferencing-enabled regional networks can now video conference with other schools via the regional interconnects to JANET and JVCS.

IP-based video conferencing has a significant advantage over Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)-based video conferencing in that it is free of call charges.

With IP transmission, calls are made using an institution’s existing broadband connection, rather than a dedicated line. While this means results can be variable, as the video-conference data has to compete with other computing data, this is becoming less and less of a concern as available bandwidth increases and technologies improve. ISDN guarantees connections at the selected quality, giving more reliable conferences, but ongoing call and line rental charges make it much more expensive than IP. Over time, there is likely to be an increasing move to IP-based conferencing as technical issues are resolved.[10]

Schools with IP video-conferencing equipment can use either a broadband or ISDN data connection. However, those that do not yet have a broadband connection and still have ISDN equipment may need to continue to video conference using ISDN until they are connected to the IP network. The Videoconferencing Services Pilot provides national gateway facilities to bring together all schools with IP or ISDN video-conferencing systems.

National video-conferencing opportunities for schools

Schools may not need to be connected to the SuperJANET backbone to video conference with other institutions within their region, and Becta recognises the value and benefits of such use of video conferencing. However, the potential for video conferencing within a national, inter-regional educational context is huge. Video conferencing offers possibilities for high quality national interactions, not only between schools, but with a wide range of other institutions as well, such as museums, libraries, galleries, archives and other content providers.

Work is underway to increase the numbers of institutions offering video-conferencing services to schools via the NEN.

The National Archives[11] is one example of a provider already offering video-conferencing services to schools; details of others are available on UKERNA’s schools pages[12].

On 11 October 2005, the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) hosted ‘London Live’,[13] a full day of video-conferencing sessions between schools throughout London, elsewhere in the country and a wide range of other institutions including the Science Museum, the London Symphony Orchestra and the National Maritime Museum. Participation was managed by the JVCS Booking Service. The event was a great success: during the day more than 120 different end points were connected, with a live video stream available throughout. Video footage of the all the day’s sessions is available on the LGfL site.

JVCS features and benefits for schools

Being part of a national network also provides access to central support tools and mechanisms, such as the JVCS central booking facilities and quality assurance assessments. The wide range of JVCS benefits and services for schools include:

Gateway: The JVCS Gateway facilities enable schools with ISDN to video conference with schools with broadband (IP) connections in any other region of the UK and overseas.
Content: The national and international resources of museums, galleries, libraries, universities and colleges are accessible via the JVCS.
Cost: The costs of all ISDN calls made as part of phase 2 of the project by schools in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland will be met by central call charge budgets. All International ISDN calls must be agreed in advance.
Quality: The quality assurance assessment process includes advice and guidance on system configuration and environmental issues.
Booking: The JVCS Booking Service provides a simple interface to arrange video conferences with other schools or organisations.
Security: The JVCS Management Centre dials out to each venue at the start of every video conference to ensure that no uninvited venues can join.
Support: National support and guidance for local authorities and RBCs is integrated into the phase 2 project.
Training: Tutorials on using the JVCS Booking Service are available online.

3.2 Authentication

It is envisaged that the NEN will provide a delivery mechanism for a wide range of content to educational institutions, including commercial content that requires authentication. Indeed, some commercial content licensed for schools nationally is already available via the NEN. Work is underway to streamline and simplify learners’ and educators’ access to content via the NEN in ways that also support greater personalisation of learning.

Where we are today: the Content Access Registry

The British Pathe[14] film archive, comprising 3,500 hours of digitised film, 85,000 items and 12 million stills is available over the NEN, enabling teachers and pupils to access high quality footage with the speed and reliability that is essential for the effective use of these materials in the classroom. The schools licence requires a secure environment; this is provided by the NEN. Under the terms of the licence, resources can be re-purposed to meet individual pupil and teacher needs.

Currently, schools are licensed and authenticated to access the British Pathe archive on the basis of the originating IP address. An IP address is a unique number that devices use to identify and communicate with each other across the internet. The IP address uniquely identifies the source of the request within the NEN in the Content Access Registry, a national directory of RBC and local authority IP addresses maintained by UKERNA,[15] granting or refusing access as appropriate.