The Global School District Overview

THE GLOBAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

AN OVERVIEW

WHAT IS IT?

The GLOBAL SCHOOL DISTRICT is a new, FREE, service that will connect high schools across the country together through the internet. It's a complete distance learning solution ... but that's only the beginning! We have expanded the concept of distance learning to accommodate the power and flexibility of the internet. The Global School District will change the way you think of high school education forever!

In order to create a successful distance leaning system you need more than just email, web browsing and video conferencing. Schools need inexpensive teaching materials and resources that can be easily integrated into a traditional classroom setting. We have developed powerful personal networking software to bring new resources to students and teachers across the country.

Imagine a student in Iowa working with students from New York, Texas and Arizona under the guidance of a professor from Harvard. They're all trying to solve a challenging problem in which each has been given a part of the solution and specialized software to help with their analysis. Rarely does any one high school have the resources to promote teamwork and problem solving on this level. Only through our pre-existing network of science educators and institutions, cultivated for over thirty years by the Academy of Applied Sciences, can we offer such wonderful educational opportunities.

The primary goals of this system are as follows:

To create a formal means of networking and communication between high schools
To provide high-quality education in subjects that may not be available in every school
To give students easy access to mentors and peers in their fields of interest
To motivate and allow students to look beyond what is offered at their own school
To develop teamwork skills

SO WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT DO?

This easy-to-use software provides features that have never before been integrated into one package. On the surface, it provides the following functionality:

The Group Oriented Approach

What makes our system special is the way in which these features are integrated. The key to our software is the concept of a group. A group is a bunch of people with common interests. When a user logs into the system, he or she will see a toolbar containing a button for each group they belong to. All users are members of their own private "group" which contains a list of the people they know on the system. Classes, fields of interest and hobbies are also represented as groups.

Clicking on any one of the group buttons will bring up a new window. This contains all of the actions that can be performed within the group. Each group has an information page which acts as the reference point for the group's archived resources such as presentations, discussions, frequently asked questions (FAQ's) and software.

Online Classes

Groups that represent classes will have additional features such as online tests and homework assignments, multimedia lectures and lecture notes. The lectures, homework assignments and tests may be viewed at a student's convenience.

Chat

Since the students will have many questions about the assignments or lectures, teachers and teaching assistants will hold scheduled online discussion sessions. This will be done through another section of the group's window called the "chat" area. This is a real-time text-based conferencing system. Users type in one or two sentences at a time and then send them out to the group. In the chat area their text will show up next to their user name. A session might look like the following:

<joe> So on question two, why is force acting horizontally in the opposite direction of motion?
<Professor Smith> That is the force of friction, which always opposed motion.
<sam> Professor, on question eight...

All groups have this feature. Any members that are currently viewing a group's window may participate in its chat session.

Electronic Mail and
Instantaneous Zephyr Messages

There is a list down the side of the group window which contains the names of each member of the group currently online. The list will be sorted such that professors and TA's are at the top, followed by the people the user knows. By clicking on a user's name one can send either an email message or a real-time zephyr message to that user.

Email messages are useful for sending long or complex messages that may incorporate graphics, sound, or files from other software packages. These messages can be sent to individual users either online or offline, entire groups, or even to people on the internet that are not part of the Global School District sysem. When a new message arrives a little note appears on the specified group's button in the main toolbar. Personal mail appears within a user's own private group. Within each group window there is a button which brings up a list of email messages sent to it. Selecting a message will display it's contents.

Zephyrs are much simpler than email since they only handle text. Like email messages they can be sent to users or enitre groups. But, zephyrs immediately appear in a separate window on the designated user's screen and only function if the selected user is online. Zephyrs are preferable to email for quick, real-time messages, and also preferable to chat since it does not require viewing a specific window in order to communicate. It is possible to block receiving zephyrs from particular users or groups.

Presentations

Groups may contain multimedia presentations that any member can download at any time. For classes, these presentations would be lectures created by the teacher. There is a VCR-style interface with which one can pause, fast-forward or rewind the presentation. As the audio plays through there will be numerous images and interactive demonstrations that will appear on the user's screen.

One of the major breakthroughs in our software is the ability to incorporate customized software into the lectures. For example, a physics teacher could add a small program that illustrates the laws of motion. Students would be able to pause the lecture and experiment with the software in real-time. Users may create the programs themselves or obtain pre-made softare from the group's software library or the internet. Since this is an advanced topic there is a group devoted to helping users create such software.

Resources

Our resource finder is another first -- we allow users to search through all of the people on the system by interests, classes, groups, school, region, and/or year. The power of such a system is evident through example. Let's say a student wanted to do a research project on genetics. Few high schools have complex genetics labs on premises. The best way for this student to do his or her project is by finding a professor of genetics at a nearby university willing to act as a mentor. This task is made trivial with our resource finder. The student would simply search for a professor with an interest in genetics in their region. Given the Academy of Applied Science's extensive network of educators across the country, few students will have to look far to find a willing mentor.

Teams

Finally, we have the teambuilding software, which is the true heart of our system. One of the things lacking most from high school education is TEAMWORK. It has always been hard for teachers to explain the fine line between collaboration and cheating. Many simply ignore the benefits of learning how to work in teams in order to avoid this issue altogether. Our system puts students from diverse geographic backgrounds together into teams and then gives them challenging problems to solve ... together. The benefits of learning how to function as a team, coping with the problems of distance, cultural differences, and differences in capabilities, are self-evident.

Directly access
the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a major means of communication and information dissemination. Therefore we provide both Netscape and the Internet Explorer with our software. All forms of text can include web page references, which when selected will call up a web browser. In addition, we have compiled a list of great educational sites broken into subject. These bookmarks are included with the software and will be continuously updated.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

From the user's end, the Global School District is accessed through custom software developed by a team of MIT graduates. Conceptually, it's similar to AOL or Compuserve -- we provide the software through which you can access our services. The software uses your internet connection to communicate with our main system in Boston. It's like a giant conference call in that anyone connected to our system will be able to communicate with anyone else online.

The software updates itself automatically. When a new release is available it detects it and does all of the necessary installation. It has been carefully designed so that viruses cannot get into your system.

HOW AND WHEN CAN I GET IT?

We are planning on releasing a test version of the software in September. The testing process will last one year. The production version will be unleashed on the unsuspecting public in September of 1997.

The purpose of this first release is to get the basic system tested and to let the testers help develop the content of the system. Through the feedback of our beta-testers we will be honing and redesigning the software until we're sure we have a solid, effective product.

When the first production release occurs in September of '97 the system will be able to offer high school and university courses online, as well as contain many powerful tools for teaching classes both inside and outside of the system.

To join the Global School District simply download and install the software onto your machine. That's it! We've designed it to be as easy as possible -- all of the updates to the software are automatic!

Hopefully this has given you a decent idea of what the Global School District is all about. Check back here for progress reports, updates, and demo software.

Wes Sonnenreich -- sonny@mit.edu

Academy Of Applied Science