Submission Date: 01.20.1998
| Title of ODL course / project: |
OWLink Project |
| Subject / Field of the ODL course / project: |
Collaborative Creative Writing |
| Institution Name: |
Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning |
| Country: |
USA, Texas |
| Language: |
English |
More Info about ...OWLink Project
- Addresses to
- Supports classroom teaching
- Activity of the distant learners during the project interact with
"classmates" miles away
- Started at 1994 and will be ended at 1998
- Is
- No of Distant Learners:
- No of Distant Educators:
- Means used in the project:
- Web based discussion groups
- There is
Description of the project
Project OWLink is a distance education project that
involves students and teachers at separate and diverse Texas sites (in Houston
and the Rio Grande valley) in project-oriented work with each other and
with subject area experts. The goal of the project is to experiment with
the combined use of videoconferencing and Internet technologies in the K-12
setting in innovative ways. The Houston sites are interconnected via an
ATM-based fiber-optic network, and the participants in the Rio Grande Valley
are connected via more traditional T1 technology. Project OWLink is an exciting
collaboration between the following private and public entities: Southwestern
Bell Telephone Corporation (SWBT) Rice University Houston Independent School
District South Texas Independent School District Each OWLink site has a
room-based video teleconferencing system (two-way, full-motion) with all
the trimmings and a local area ethernet network connected at high speed
(768 Kb/s for the Valley, 10 Mbps for Houston sites) back to Rice University.
There, the bandwidth is aggregated and connected to the Internet by Sesquinet
at T1 speed (1.544 Mb/s). In other words, it's fast. The technologies used
include Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) standards which will be a central
part of the much discussed "Information Superhighway." This configuration
of equipment and connectivity allows all parties to explore and evaluate
the effectiveness of the technology as a tool for learning in K12 educational
settings.
|
