|
 The
Mid-Pacific ICT Center attended and presented at the March
9-11, 2009 CENIC Annual Conference in Long Beach, CA.
The non-profit Corporation for Educational Network Initiatives
in California (CENIC) designs, implements, and operates CalREN,
the California Research and Education Network. This
high-bandwidth/performance network is specially designed to
meet the unique requirements of California’s K-20 educational
institutions.
To facilitate education and research collaboration, CENIC also
connects non-California institutions and industry
organizations engaged with CENIC's Associate researchers and
educators.
 CalREN
consists of a CENIC-operated fiber optic backbone, to which
schools and other institutions in all 58 of California's
counties connect via fiber-optic cable or leased circuits
obtained from telecom carriers.
Currently, the CalREN backbone consists of 2,700 miles of
CENIC-owned and managed fiber, plus last-mile fiber. This
network is HOT! The backbone can support up to forty
10-Gigabit wavelengths of transport bandwidth on a single pair
of fiber. Additional network components include:
• 472 routers and 81 switches,
• 51 optical components, and
• 300 managed telco circuits.
Dedicating transport wavelengths for different purposes,
CalREN operates 3 distinct networks to meet the diverse needs
of California’s sophisticated educational institution users.
CalREN-XD: The experimental and developmental network
supports bleeding-edge services for researchers at sites like
the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the U.C. Institutes for
Science and Innovation, Caltech’s Center for Advanced
Computing Research and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USC’s
Information Sciences Institute, the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center and other major network research entities.
CalREN-HPR: The high-performance research network,
provides leading-edge services for large-application users.
CalREN-HPR connects to the Internet2 Abilene network at 10
Gbps.
CalREN-DC: The Digital California network provides very
high-quality network services for K-20 students, teachers and
staff at California’s higher education institutions and K-12
schools. The DC backbone speed is 10 Gbps.
In addition to providing the entire California research and
education community with the most cost-effective advanced
services network available, the multi-tiered CalREN
infrastructure supports or supplies higher-level network and
value-added services to serve educational institutions,
including:
www.cccconfer.org
CCC Confer, hosted at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA, is
funded from a grant from the California Community Colleges
Chancellor’s Office to offer the CCC system a viable means to
meet and collaborate at a distance. CCC Confer allows free
communication and collaboration, using the latest Web
conferencing technology, for all staff, faculty and
administrators in the CCC system. It is ADA and Section 508
accessible.
MPICT uses CCC Confer’s free “Meet and Confer” service to
connect and collaborate at a distance via telephone or the
Internet with ICT educators throughout its region. It supports
meetings, trainings and events at a moment's notice, anytime,
anywhere, without traveling. It allows document sharing,
presentations, audience polling, public and private chat, use
of a white board for taking notes, and the ability to archive
the entire meeting for later.
“Teach and Confer” functionality supports synchronous
classroom instruction delivery of students anywhere with
Internet access.
Sessions can be recorded for asynchronous review via the
Internet or for download as audio or video podcasts.
Application sharing capabilities allow students to access and
share laboratory equipment in a remote collaborative
environment. Most forms of content can be shared, including
PowerPoint, Word, Excel, HTML, webpages, images, PDFs, Flash,
CMS pages, and more.
CCC Confer is easy to use and adaptable to the enormous
variety of hardware, software, network design and IT skills
found throughout the Community College system. Low-bandwidth
features allow for dial-up access, and virtually any user, on
a PC, Mac, or Linux machine can fully participate with minimal
training and setup.
MPICT is championing CCC Confer use to improve ICT education
and expand ICT educational offerings throughout its region.
Hands-on CCC Confer training will be offered at MPICT Summer
Faculty Development Week, June 15-19,2009 in San Francisco.
To “walk the talk,” MPICT presented at the CENIC conference in
person, synchronously over the Internet via CCC Confer and
asynchronously as a CCC Confer session and as a video podcast.
(Available on the MPICT’s website)
CalREN Video Services (www.cvs.cenic.org):
 CENIC’s
network also supports high-quality videoconferencing, and
CENIC operates a videoconferencing addressing and bridge
service, to make it easy to find and connect videoconferences
at up to 48 sites. CENIC’s service supports the California UC,
CSU and CCC systems, and it interconnects easily with
California high schools via the K12video.org system. System
upgrades are expected over the next year which should support
HD videoconferencing.
MPICT is championing the use of videoconferencing technology
to improve ICT education.
3C Media Solutions:
 Among
other great, relevant services utilizing CENIC’s network is 3C
Media Solutions (www.3cmediasolutions.org),
based at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA.
3C Media Solutions distributes media to students at all
California’s community colleges via the Internet and two
closed circuit satellite channels: 3CTV and 3C Community
Network. Every community college and district office in the
CCC system is equipped with 3C Media Solutions’ satellite
downlink, connecting roughly 2.6 million students and 85,000
faculty and staff throughout the state of California.
Expansion for 3CTV remains unrestricted. Anyone with
appropriate downlink equipment can receive 3CTV programming.
MPICT is interested in promoting and improving ICT education
via 3C Media Solutions.
Edustream:
 EduStream.org
is a cost-effective, centralized resource for providing
participating institutions video-on-demand capabilities they
might not otherwise be prepared to implement or manage.
EduStream helps educational institutions embed educational
videos into online content, expand staff and professional
development programs, and increase the reach of workforce and
economic development programs.
It works with a statewide license, is agnostic to different
course management systems, is ADA compliant, uploads most file
formats, converts to Flash video on the fly, and is free to
CCCs. It currently has some 3,000 volumes (about 26TB) of
video content and operates on a gigabit backbone.
MPICT is interested in promoting and improving ICT education
with EduStream content distribution.
 Housed
at Butte College in Oroville, CA, the California Virtual
Campus (www.cvc.edu)
is a vehicle for making CCC online courses more widely known
and available. MPICT would like to promote ICT program
collaboration with the CVC to expand ICT course offerings in
California.
College Buys:
The Foundation for California Community Colleges
College Buys program provides educational discounts up to
85% for colleges, faculty/staff and students on computers,
supplies and software.
CCC Apply:
CCC Apply (www.cccapply.org)
provides information on each of California’s 110 community
colleges and opportunities to apply for admission and
financial aid to one or many colleges with one online process.
K-20 California Educational Technology Collaborative:
 The
K-20 CETC (www.k20cetc.org) supports effective and innovative
network-enabled teaching and learning for the California K-20
education community, including new media, online course
delivery support, exploration of STEM careers, @one,
communities of interest, and technology advocacy, great
collaboration opportunities for improving ICT education.
Conference Presentations:
CENIC’s annual conference brought together managers of
educational networks, researchers making interesting use of
CalREN and educators.
General sessions included a global teleconference to launch
the Global Library and Museum Education and Research Network (GLIMERNet),
a Stanford led initiative to improve Internet performance, a
strategic innovation partnership between California and
Canada, reports on activities of other RENs around the world
and stimulus plan implications to “broadband.”
Research and Technology track sessions included two undersea
research networks tied into CENIC, a network enabled health
services virtual organization, creating 4K video on a budget,
networked collaboration for hurricane research and Internet2.
Teaching and Learning track sessions included the
Internet2 K-20 Initiative, videoconferencing,
Merlot, an NSF report on
Fostering Learning in the Networked World and many others.
MPICT is pleased to be collaborating with CENIC and its
outstanding educational resources network.
Back to Q1 2009
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