High-speed Internet access available to Rice users

High-speed
Internet access available to Rice users
…………………………………………………………………

BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

A new high-speed
Internet routing point that allows staff, faculty and students
at several Houston-area educational institutions to access
high bandwidth multimedia education materials at home will
debut at Rice University at the end of May.

EduPop, a project
of Rice’s Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning,
also will benefit all regular customers of its partner commercial
Internet service providers who access Internet sites at
these educational institutions.

Many Texas universities,
school districts, libraries and research institutions already
are developing collections of digital multimedia resources.
However, these resources are difficult to access reliably
from home because the existing structure of the commercial
Internet reduces the reliability and quality of these streamed
multimedia files.

EduPop will
create a new Internet routing point between the Texas GigaPOP
— the higher education gateway to a high-speed network
known as Internet 2 — and commercial Internet service
providers in the Houston area. The high-speed interconnection
will support the efficient delivery of streaming multimedia
and other teaching resources to area educators who subscribe
to one of the commercial partners.

“Educators
have barely begun to understand the possibilities for incorporating
digital multimedia into teaching and learning when the materials
are available to a widespread community,” said Tony
Gorry, the Friedkin Professor of Management at Rice and
director of the Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning.

“Providing
teachers, researchers, students and parents at home with
high-bandwidth access to Internet 2 resources will significantly
enrich their educational experiences.”

Participating
educational institutions include Rice University, Texas
A&M University, the University of Texas Health Science
Center at Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, the University
of Houston, Texas Region 4 Service Center, Aldine Independent
School District, Houston Independent School District and
Spring Branch Independent School District.

The EduPop project
has been made possible by a $750,000 grant from the Telecommunications
Infrastructure Fund Board.

For more information
on this topic go to <www.edupop.net>.