With some progress already achieved toward bringing high-speed Internet to 99 percent of the schools in the US, President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced $750 million in commitments from US companies to begin wiring even more classrooms with high-speed Internet, the Associated Press reports.
The president praised a program at Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, Md., in making the announcement, and then went on to address the expectation for high-speed Internet:
So today, the average American school has about the same Internet bandwidth as the average American home, but it serves 200 times as many people. Think about it. So you’ve got the same bandwidth, but it’s a school—it’s not your house. Only around 30 percent of our students have true high-speed Internet in the classroom. In countries like South Korea, that’s 100 percent. We shouldn’t give that kind of competitive advantage over to other countries. We want to make sure our young people have the same advantages that some child in South Korea has right now. In a country where we expect free Wi-Fi with our coffee, we should definitely demand it in our schools.
Now, here at Buck Lodge, you are showing how we can use technology to teach our young people in innovative ways. And by the way, the principal told me that part of how this got started was some of the stimulus dollars that we put in place almost five years ago now. But every student here has access to their own iPad. And you don’t just write papers or take tests; they’re animating movies, they’re designing blogs, they’re collaborating on multimedia projects. In the word of an eighth grader, Annie Gomez, she says, “You can learn even more, you can take in more, and then you know more about the world.”
Via the blog at the White House:
President Barack Obama visited Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, Md., on Feb 5 to announce major progress on the ConnectED initiative, designed to enrich K-12 education for every student in America. ConnectED empowers teachers with the best technology and the training to make the most of it, and empowers students through individualized learning and rich, digital content.
Preparing America’s students with the skills they need to get good jobs and compete with countries around the world relies increasingly on interactive, personalized learning experiences driven by new technology. Yet fewer than 30 percent of America’s schools have the broadband they need to connect to today’s technology. Under ConnectED, however, 99 percent of American students will have access to next-generation broadband by 2017. That connectivity will help transform the classroom experience for all students, regardless of income.
As the President announced today, the Federal Communications Commission will invest $2 billion over the next two years to dramatically expand high-speed Internet connectivity for America’s schools and libraries—connecting more than 20 million students to next-generation broadband and wireless. He also announced that private-sector companies have committed more than $750 million to deliver cutting-edge technologies to classrooms, including:
- Apple, which will donate $100 million in iPads, MacBooks, and other products, along with content and professional development tools to enrich learning in disadvantaged U.S. schools
- AT&T, which pledged more than $100 million to give middle school students free Internet connectivity for educational devices over their wireless network for three years
- Autodesk, which pledged to make their 3D design program “Design the Future” available for free in every secondary school in the U.S. — more than $250 million in value
- Microsoft, which will launch a substantial affordability program open to all U.S. public schools by deeply discounting the price of its Windows operating system, which will decrease the price of Windows-based devices
- O’Reilly Media, which is partnering with Safari Books Online to make more than $100 million in educational content and tools available for free to every school in the U.S.
- Sprint, which will offer free wireless service for up to 50,000 low-income high school students over the next four years, valued at $100 million
- Verizon, which announced a multi-year program to support ConnectED through up to $100 million in cash and in-kind commitments