SMETHPORT – The Seneca Highlands Intermediate Unit Nine, in
conjunction with its 14 member school districts, took a step toward
realizing high-speed, broadband technology in local classrooms
Friday with the introduction of vendor partners at a meeting at the
intermediate unit in Smethport.

Those attending included superintendents and technology staff
from the school districts, intermediate unit personnel, and James
Seibert from Brinjac Engineering, the unit’s engineering
consultant.

Presenters were Kathy Brautigam, bureau director of educational
technology, Pennsylvania Department of Education; Robert Roland,
executive vice-president and general manager, Sting Communications,
the winning vendor from the request for proposals process; Don
McGlone, director of business development and wireless markets for
Sting Communications; Ray Miller, senior network engineer, Sting
Communications; Jim Swanson, director of information systems for
North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development
Commission, a partner with Sting in Elk County; Ed Matts, technical
director, North Central; and Jim Rigas, president and chief
executive officer, Zito Media, a partner with Sting in Cameron and
Potter counties.

Following a welcome by Dan Wetzel, IU 9 executive director,
Brautigam spoke about Act 183, the state initiative promoting the
use of technology in schools through broadband connections.

As part of Act 183 of 2004, an annual $10 million E-Fund was
established to assist local schools with purchasing services,
hardware, technical assistance and distance education over the next
six years, especially in rural areas like those in Intermediate
Unit 9 and its partners in the Central Pennsylvania Broadband
Consortium, IU’s 8 and 10.

These three educational agencies include a large geographical
area, stretching north and south from the Maryland to New York
borders. In Intermediate Unit 8 are Somerset, Bedford, Blair, and
Cambria counties. Intermediate Unit 10 is comprised of Centre,
Clearfield and Clinton counties.

Members of this consortium will be able to provide their school
students with the same advantages already enjoyed by their
counterparts in more urban districts.

In addition to connecting the participating school districts
from the three IU’s, PDE has a larger goal to ultimately connect
all Commonwealth schools in a statewide wide area network. A WAN is
a computer network that covers a relatively large geographical
area. Typically, a WAN consists of two or more local area networks.
The Internet is the largest WAN in existence.

Brautigam commended the writers of the local application for Act
183 funding, saying, “You should be proud of your application. It
was an excellent application that showed excellent vision by
including schools and other community and governmental
agencies.”

Brautigam listed many new and exciting teaching and learning
opportunities being created for the 55 educational entities in the
three-IU WAN. Teachers, students and administrators will be able to
share curricula, classes, research and professional development
activities.

Since broadband is a type of data transmission in which a single
wire can carry several channels at the same time, this greater
capacity will allow streaming video of important events and
educational subject matter, interactive video conferencing for a
variety of classroom and administrative uses, the delivery of
Internet2, a connection to educational institutions, universities,
museums and art galleries for the delivery of stimulating content
that is otherwise not readily available.

Brautigam further remarked that an expected value from the
infrastructure build out will be that businesses, health care
providers, governmental agencies, and others in the local
communities will see greater broadband capacity available at
affordable rates.

Roland then addressed the group to describe the specifics of
this project, particularly as it applies to district connections to
the Central Pennsylvania Broadband Wide Area Network.

He introduced representatives from the partners who will be
assisting Sting Communications with the build out and delivery of
100 Mbps connections to each of the 14 districts in IU 9, which
covers McKean, Cameron, Elk and Potter counties.

Sting Communications, a Lebanon-based company, and its partners
also spoke about the project deployment, technical issues, and
communications plans with the district-level technology contacts.
This led to a discussion of outcomes and action items needed to
bring the network live by the beginning of the 2006-07 school
year.