Title : NSF 95-25 NSF Awards First Series of Networking Infrastructure for Education (NIE) Grants Type : Dir of Awards NSF Org: EHR Date : January 27, 1995 File : nsf9525a NSF Awards First Series of Networking Infrastructure for Education (NIE) Grants In FY 1994 the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Education and Human Resources (EHR) Directorates established the Networking Infrastructure for Education (NIE) program. NIE represents an expanding effort to encourage innovation and leverage the power of computer and networking technology to support science and mathematics education. Co-funded with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense, the program awarded 19 planning grants and policy studies, eleven multi-year projects and 10 one-year supplements to existing awards. These awards total $13.8 million, with over $15.8 million received by awardee consortia in cost-sharing. NIE's two goals are (a) to build synergy among technology and education researchers, developers and implementers so they can explore networking costs and benefits, test self-sustaining strategies, and develop flexible educational networking infrastructures that will be instrumental in the dissemination, integration and application of technologies to speed the pace of educational innovation and reform; and (b) to build capacity in the field and encourage innovation and experimentation by educational groups who are new performers to the Foundation and/or to the integration of technology with education reform. The NIE program will help lay a foundation on which strategies for the appropriate use of technology in support of increased student achievement in science and mathematics can build. Planning Grant Awardees: William Beldham - Allegheny (PA) Intermediate Unit - "Planning for Regional Technology Initiative" - $98,165: To create a technology planning consortium involving stakeholders in 10 intermediate school units in Western Pennsylvania. The consortium will apply lessons learned from other regional initiatives to yield a formal regional infrastructure implementation plan. Thomas Clark - Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance - "Discovering Community Networks" - $96,248: To investigate potential strategies to be used by communities to plan for and manage self-sustaining telecommunications networks. The project will focus on developing links in and among three diverse sites participating in the State Systemic Initiative in the state of Maine, and will involve teachers, students, parents, industry and businesses, research laboratories, higher education, local government, civic organizations, and network service providers. William Coberly - University of Tulsa - "Metropolitan Tulsa Education Network - Planning Grant" - $99,776: A group of representatives from area business, education and government, in existence since 1992, will offer community workshops to heighten local awareness of the benefits of access to the "Information Superhighway," develop public support through local and state bond initiatives, and offer network and curriculum integration training for a team of teachers whose mission will be to champion technological change in their home school districts. Norman Dodl - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - "Planning for Virtual Schools in Electronic Villages" - $99,824: This planning grant will pave the way for the establishment of a "virtual school" in which collaborative classrooms involve the entire community and utilize resources available from schools, libraries, homes, businesses, and local and global networks. This environment has been enabled by the implementation of the Blacksburg Electronic Village, which provides high-speed connectivity to the entire town of Blacksburg, Virginia. Pamela Keating - University of Alaska - Fairbanks - "Coming into the Country: Pioneering K-12 Internet Access Across Alaska's Interior" - $101,343: This effort will bring together the Schools of Education and Arts and Sciences, as well as computing personnel, from the University of Alaska with 11 state school districts to develop Internet connectivity plans for schools. The project team will study a novel distribution strategy which will include satellite-to-cable connectivity. James Laffey - University of Missouri - "Planning Grant for the Development of NIE Most (Missouri Supporting Teachers) Electronic Support System to Promote Problem-Based Learning Using a Computational Science" - $96,020: This project will plan the implementation of a network infrastructure which will feature a electronic teacher support system designed around the practices and challenges of teaching and learning, and to support teacher professionalization and school restructuring. William Lamb - Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology - "Developing Oregon's Technical, Human and Organizational Networking Infrastructure for Science and Mathematics Education" - $99,924: The project team will establish a coalition between educational, governmental, business and community interests across the state that will serve as a policy and management board to research issues involved in the implementation of technology, develop a set of prioritized goals, and develop a comprehensive statewide plan. Kam Matray - Monterey Peninsula Unified School District - "The Ultimate Electronic Field Trip...from abyss to Andromeda" - $112,000: This project will support the creation of testbed K-12 classroom to be linked via network technology to video images and other data from research institutes, museums and aquaria, through a virtual field trip experience involving the marine and environmental studies and astronomy curricula. Shirley McBay - Quality Education for Minorities Network - "Expressway to Quality Mathematics and Science Education for Low- Income Minority Communities - A Planning Grant" - $100,000: This project will formulate a plan to use technology to enhance Community Service Centers on the campuses of predominately minority institutions in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Virginia in their mission to address science and mathematics education needs of students and families in neighboring low-income housing projects. John Shacklett - Morse High School, San Diego - "Morse High School (San Diego) NIE Planning Grant" - $91,690: This project will develop a plan to deploy infrastructure that will support Morse High School's effort to implement educational reform. The school will work with local industry to implement a curriculum based on producing a biomedical product, and will include a focus on research and development, regulatory affairs, manufacturing, and marketing. Josef Stagg - University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee - "The Virtual Community: A Telecommunication Model for the Inner City" - $93,136: Efforts will focus on community master planning using advisory committees of community residents, and using distance education as a tool for teaching residents how to take control of the planning process. David Thomas - Montana State University - "Development of a Rural Networking Infrastructure in Support of Systemic Change in Mathematics and Science Education: The Network Montana Project One- Year Planning Grant" - $105,807: A statewide coalition featuring partners from all public and private stakeholders, including the Statewide Systemic Initiative, will work to plan for the development of a lasting infrastructure that will support a variety of educational telecommunications services, paying particular attention to the special conditions in this largely rural state. Frank Watson - Vermont Institute for Science, Math and Technology - "Vermont Technology Alliance" - $99,000: This project will create a statewide alliance of technology-related, education, and business groups to plan for a sustainable telecommunications network for use by rural educational concerns and the community-at-large. This alliance will help to coordinate the many efforts already underway in Vermont into a unified effort directed toward systemic educational reform. Michael Williamson - Wheelock College - "WhaleNet - Interdisciplinary Curriculum" - $86,395: This project will seek to foster communication between students, teachers, scientists, and content-area experts using telecommunications and other advanced technologies to deliver programs and data related to the study of the marine ecosystem. Students will have a chance to participate in actual research projects and interact with researchers in the field. Judith Yoho - Keystone Central (PA) School District - "Keystone Community Network" - $50,000: The objective of this project is to bring together ideas and resources from individuals in a widespread, diverse community to create a network infrastructure accessible to all. Collaborating with nearby Lehigh University, the network will bring local and worldwide (Internet) resources to all users and create a forum for collaborative problem-solving. Policy Studies and Small Grants for Exploratory Research Awardees: C. Victor Bunderson - Brigham Young University - "Differentiated Staffing in Global Village Learning Communities" - $49,728: This research effort intends to delineate a set of new roles for staffing patterns in support of technology-based (digital multimedia and networking) education in elementary schools. Particularly, the project seeks to define the interrelated roles of teachers, administrators and professional and technical support personnel in technology-intensive learning environments. Robert Kozma - SRI International - "A Community Learns On-Line: Planning Activities to Explore the Use of Interactive Cable for Education" - $99,986: SRI International will work with partners Viacom and the Castro Valley Unified School District and community to develop models for using interactive cable networks for educational reform. The project will use Viacom's interactive cable system in Castro Valley as a testbed. Investigators will identify present educational needs that can be matched by products and services deliverable over the experimental cable system, and determine development, dissemination and evaluation activities for the future. Karen Buller - American Indian Science and Engineering Society - "Electronic Pathways Alliance: A Native American Think Tank" - $96,069: This grant will allow for the planning necessary to implement a national center designed to reach out to American Indian and rural communities. The center will provide technical, educational, and personnel support for the development and/or enhancement of telecommunications applications to be used to further science and mathematics education and the general reform of these content areas in American Indian schools and communities. Charles Warlick - University of Texas - "Role of State Networks in Educational Reform" - $218,315: This grant, with additional support from the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Information Agency and the Department of Education, will bring together state educational organizations, network service providers, and public utilities commissioners to address the role of individual state networks in the development of educational infrastructures in supporting systemic educational reform goals. Charles McClure - Syracuse University - "Policy Issues in Assessing the Role of Public Libraries in the NII" - $102,529: This project seeks to develop models to describe the alternative roles of responsibilities that libraries might assume in the National Information Infrastructure (NII), and assess the impact of the models in terms of universal access to information, cost, training and personnel requirements, etc. The authors also will analyze the existing Federal public library system to determine how the existing policy system might be changed to meet current NII objectives, and offer recommendations. Multi-year Awardees: Ann Billings - Maine School Administrative District #45 - "A Community of Learners Network" - $927,800: This joint proposal including two Maine school districts and Bowdoin College will develop a regional data network to connect schools, libraries, and community centers to individual households, the network itself, and the Internet. The project will also establish a education and training for students, teachers, citizens, and business members, and will construct a teaching model that focuses on problem-finding and problem-solving. These activities will be coordinated with ongoing Statewide Systemic Initiative efforts. Alan Feldman - TERC, Inc. - "Enabling Widespread Telecollaboration" - $2,835,229: This project seeks to give students and teachers access to resources and experts outside the classroom using wide- area networking technology. This testbed will examine the use of networks by students and teachers in collaborative efforts with geographically remote partners, and the effect of this use on educational reform and the creation of new classes of collaboration. Edward Friedman - Stevens Institute of Technology - "NIE Testbed Within the Context of Statewide Systemic Reform in MST Education" - $2,901,234: This project is an integral part of New Jersey's Statewide Systemic Initiative efforts toward educational reform. Through the creation of a technical infrastructure that will enhance student learning and empower teachers, researchers will seek to determine how best to integrate technology into the classroom, develop a broad public understanding of the benefits of educational telecommunications, and assure that these benefits are available to all students in an equitable manner. Carrie Heeter - Michigan State University - "A Digital Learning Center for Microbial Ecology for K-12 Education" - $461,568: The center will bring together scientists, educators, and multimedia designers to develop interactive, computer-based learning tools that will motivate learners to explore, discover, manipulate, and interact with the microscopic world of organisms. This will serve as a pilot program for collaborative development and delivery of K- 12 interactive science learning experiences that may ultimately be applied to many other curricula. Paul Helfrich - Franklin Institute Science Museum - "The Science Learning Network" - $3,511,089: The Science Learning Network (SLN) is a unique online collaborative of science museums, industry, and schools to support the teaching and learning of K-8 science, mathematics, and technology. The SLN will incorporate resources from science/technology centers to provide online support models for use in schools and school districts around the nation. A major feature of these models will be the development of a database and software package that will permit interactive Internet searches by K-8 teachers. Martin Huntley - BBN Systems - "Toward Universal Participation in the NII - Phase II of the National School Network Testbed" - $2,231,881: This testbed partnership features over 1,000 schools in 19 states. The goal of Phase II efforts is to provide empirical evidence to taxpayers, governments, and private industry that "scaling up" the National Information Infrastructure will require active participation, and not just access, by everyone. Efforts will focus on providing an understanding of the design, construction, and management of communications networks information services to support educational innovation in local schools and communities. David Lassner - University of Hawaii - "HERN - Hawaii Educational and Regional Network" - $2,152,673: Seeks the development and deployment of a networking infrastructure to support all public education in the state, and features the participation of the state Department of Education and the federally-sponsored East-West Center. The project will address issues such as the optimum organizational and management structures necessary to support such a network, and the technological questions involved in deploying an Ethernet-over-CATV delivery system. Bernie Manning - Pittsburgh Public Schools - "Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh - Creating an Urban Research Laboratory" - $3,170,565: This project will extend the existing networked educational environment in Pittsburgh and create an urban research laboratory with which to explore issues such as student usage, community access, teacher enhancement, institutionalization, dissemination, and content. Roy Pea - Northwestern University - "The Co Vis Testbed: A National Science Education Collaboration" - $3,539,105: This project builds on a existing NSF testbed to focus on project-enhanced science learning, collaboration, and scientific visualization as a means for transforming science education. This second phase will work with Chicago public schools to develop a research framework combining cognitive science, survey methods, and case studies to help expose challenges for deploying high-bandwidth networking infrastructures for education and to clarify ways in which these infrastructures can improve the effectiveness of science education. Philip Sadler - Harvard University - "Micro Observatory Net" - $1,312,897: This project will network together several remote telescopes to test the feasibility of their use by students in grades 4-12. Special software will allow students to collaborate on research projects with each other as well as working astronomers. The authors will examine problems inherent with using remote instruments and develop solutions to improve ease-of-use and accessibility. One-year Supplements to Existing Awards Jack Buchanan - University of Tennessee - Memphis - "Memphis Educational Computer Connectivity Alliance (MECCA)" - $263,304: This project connects universities, K-12 schools, a city housing project, senior citizens groups, libraries, and a medical school using a variety of network tools including authoring tools and e-mail to local libraries and navigation. The project examines the use of network infrastructure relationships with academic institutions to deliver educational resource not previously available to certain parts of the community. Kerry Davidson - Louisiana Board of Regents - "Integrating Educational Needs With Networking" - $564,000: This project will assess the current state of technology and related networking activities in Louisiana, and build upon the State's Systemic Initiative to develop transferable models of networking implementation for the State, including standards of evaluation and district-level technology plans.. Wallace Feurzeig - BBN Systems and Technologies - "A Distributed Multi-Server Architecture for Scalable Educational Applications" - $523,030: This project will develop and test MuseNet, a technological infrastructure for network-mediated science and mathematics education. This generic distributed computer and communications environment will be simultaneously accessible by multiple users over interactive network connections. MuseNet is a response to the need for the need for more user-friendly interfaces that will be better equipped to handle fluctuating user loads and computational demands. Gerhard Fischer - University of Colorado - "Mastering High-Functionality Systems by Supporting Learning on Demand" - $374,907: The technical focus of this proposal is on the creation of an instrumental version of computationally-based learning environments that are open enough to allow workers and learners to pursue their own tasks and at the same time provide technical support and the opportunity to learn new things relevant to the task at hand. Louis Gomez - Northwestern University - "Augmenting the Collaborative Visualization (Co Vis) Network" - $301,858: This grant will extend the present Co Vis testbed so that it will become a more accurate model of next-generation educational networking, help to develop new technology transfer techniques to enable greater sharing of Co Vis results, and aid in the examination of the technical and social issues involved in deploying telecommunications applications in support of learning communities. John Klensin - International Nutrition Foundation - "Network Start-Up Resource Center" - $63,281: This project will build on the development and extension of technologies to enable networks to be established in developing areas of the nation. Specific tools will be adapted to the Internet in support of K-12 access, and a methodology will be devised for the transfer of the technology and expertise necessary to install and operate sustainable Internet connectivity. Robert Panoff - University of Illinois - "An Affiliates-Based Educational Infrastructure Testbed" - $553,157: This project will continue work to establish a community-based infrastructure consisting of a testbed network and a variety of school environments for the purpose of evaluating the impact of community networking and support with teacher training on reform and improvement in science and math education. A major goal is the establishment of a sustainable environment that will be scalable to other communities. Perry Samson - University of Michigan - "The Weather Underground: Application of Computer Technology to Science in Michigan Secondary Schools" - $623,261: Funds will be used to implement a unique weather display system known as Blue Skies in a statewide testbed to focus on network and content development. This will include programs to address curriculum preparation and inservice training of science teachers, and to develop the framework and personnel necessary to provide technical assistance to participating schools. E. Michael Staman - CICNet - "Networking Native Americans and Education Futures" - $152,000: This request is designed to ensure that Native Americans are included in the future of electronic networking, and are able to take advantage of programs to enhance math and science education. Activities will include roundtable discussions and workshops with communities in the Great Lakes region to determine the level of need, demonstrate networking benefits, and assess local technology capabilities. Robert Tinker - TERC, Inc. - "Alice: A Collaborative Infrastructure Supporting Educational Use of NREN - Phase I" - $187,535: This grant will extend work to develop a server and client software that provides the functionality needed to make the National Research and Education Network meet the needs of pre-college educators. Activities will focus on providing easier access to NREN and developing software to support collaboration among users. About the NSF The Foundation provides awards for research in the sciences and engineering. The awardee is wholly responsible for the conduct of such research and preparation of the results for publication. The Foundation, therefore, does not assume responsibility for the research findings or their interpretation. The Foundation welcomes proposals from all qualified scientists and engineers, and strongly encourages women, minorities, and persons with disabilities to compete fully in any of the research and related programs described here. 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It will be used in connection with the selection of qualified proposals and may be used and disclosed to qualified reviewers and staff assistants as part of the review process and to other government agencies. See Systems of Records, NSF-50, Principal Investigator/Proposal File and Associated Records, and NSF-51, Reviewer/Proposals File and Associated Records, 56 Federal Register 54907 (Oct. 23, 1991). Submission of the information is voluntary. Failure to provide full and complete information, however, may reduce the possibility of your receiving an award. The public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 120 hours per response, including the time for reviewing instructions. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Herman G. Fleming, Reports Clearance Officer, Division of Contracts, Policy, and Oversight, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22230; and to the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project (3145-0058), Washington, D.C. 20503. The National Science Foundation has TDD (Telephonic Device for the Deaf) capability, which enables individuals with hearing impairment to communicate with the Foundation about NSF programs, employment, or general information. This number is 703-306-0090. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Dr. Barbara Weibel Mihalas, Program Director Networking Infrastructure for Education, EHR & CISE National Science Foundation Stafford Building Suite 855, 4201 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA 22230 Phone: (703) 306-1655 X 5875 Fax: (703) 306-0434 Email: bmihalas@nsf.gov ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^