By Lauren Marshall,
Harvard University Public Affairs and Communications
September 22, 2010: Harvard University announced today a new
partnership with the cities of Boston and Cambridge designed to bring
the world to students – faster and clearer than ever.
Harvard will share its access to the super high-speed Internet2
Network connection with Boston and Cambridge schools, granting all 148
public schools in the two cities use of the most advanced networking
consortium in the world.
In addition, Cisco is contributing Cisco TelePresence equipment to
the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science and Cambridge Rindge and
Latin School enabling the students and teachers to connect with people
around the globe. This interactive collaboration tool will put them at
the forefront of teaching and learning. Raytheon BBN Technologies, an
advanced networking research company, has donated the networking
equipment that provides connectivity to Cambridge.
“This exciting technology not only provides our Boston Public Schools
students with exceptional educational opportunities, but furthers the
City of Boston’s position at the forefront of the technology frontier.
Together with Harvard and Cisco, we are opening the globe to our
students and connecting our city to the world,” said Mayor Thomas M.
Menino at a celebration of Harvard’s teaching and learning partnerships
with the Boston Public Schools. The fete included a demonstration of
the new technology at the O’Bryant School of Math and Science.
Internet2 is a high-speed, high-performance national network
dedicated to serving the research and education community. It brings
together a broad range of the education sector, including K-12 schools,
colleges and universities, libraries, and museums, providing them with a
platform for collaboration and distribution of content. Harvard, which
has provided the high-speed connection for the schools, will continue to
host the school systems at no cost to either city. This collaboration
also grew out of the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI)
project, which Raytheon BBN is leading. Funded by the National Science
Foundation, GENI is a unique virtual laboratory for at-scale networking
experimentation where the brightest minds unite to envision and create
new possibilities of future Internets.
Cisco TelePresence technology in the O’Bryant and Cambridge Rindge
and Latin schools will enable teachers and students to work in real-time
with experts and lecturers, and other classrooms locally and around the
globe; access online multimedia education materials, and to connect to
new professional development opportunities— all with a simple phone
call.
"Putting cutting edge technology in the hands of Boston teachers and
students is an exciting new chapter in Harvard's long and fruitful
partnership with Boston school,” said Harvard President Drew Faust. “The
Cisco TelePresence installations will connect classrooms in Boston and
Cambridge to each other, to universities like Harvard, and to learning
opportunities around the globe."
“Through Cisco TelePresence, schools and universities are able to
foster a more collaborative and interactive teaching and learning
environment to better equip students with the skills required for
success in the 21st century,” said Ken Gaines, Cisco’s vice president of
state and local government, and education. “We are pleased to work
alongside Harvard University to provide the Boston and Cambridge Public
School Systems with access to new interactive, collaboration tools that
extend the in-person teaching and learning experience beyond the
traditional physical classroom.”
President Faust also announced that as part of the new partnership
with the Boston and Cambridge schools, Harvard will convene an advisory
group that will identify opportunities to use these new technology
resources to further strengthen Harvard’s teaching and learning
partnerships with Boston and Cambridge. Cisco is providing teacher
training on the new TelePresence units and ongoing support as needed.
Harvard is also convening Boston and Cambridge educators to present
Internet2 resources and offer training.
This new partnership is just the latest in a long and robust
relationship between Harvard and the Boston and Cambridge school
systems.
"This technology will help our students connect with
their peers, authors, and scholars around the globe," said Boston Public
Schools Superintendent Carol R. Johnson. "We are fortunate to be
supported by organizations such as Harvard University and Cisco as we
work to make all of our schools centers of excellence in every way."
“Technology is exciting but it isn’t a goal in and of itself,” said
Cambridge Superintendent Jeffrey Young. “Making it easier for students
and teachers to access and participate in the world of ideas as players
not just observers is what matters. These resources can break down the
walls of the classroom and extend teaching and learning to every corner
of the globe.”
This partnership between Boston and Harvard is just the latest
example of a relationship that has extended over nearly four centuries. A
new report released by Harvard today chronicles the depth and breadth
of that relationship, cataloging the 123 educational programs that take
place in Boston schools or engage Boston students. Called Partnerships
for Progress, Harvard Teaching and Learning Partnerships: Boston, the
report gives readers the opportunity to learn about key initiatives and
how they’ve strengthened both the Boston and Harvard communities.
Menino, Faust, and Cisco representatives joined BPS Superintendent
Carol Johnson at the O’Bryant and CPSD Superintendent Jeffrey Young for a
30-minute TelePresence
tour that connected teachers, students, and
administrators with several destinations while gathered in the in the
70-seat amphitheater classroom. The O’Bryant School’s Headmaster, Steve
Sullivan, guided the room through a series of conversations with
educators and students in Boston and beyond.
After an initial call across the river to connect with Harvard
Graduate School of Education Dean Kathleen McCartney and Cambridge
Superintendent Jeffrey Young, Sullivan reached out to Joan Reede, dean
for Diversity and Community Partnership at Harvard Medical School, who
oversees programs that give Boston children access to real-world science
experiences at Harvard and in Harvard labs. O’Bryant geometry teacher
Jim Munsey then took the stage and on a call to students in Phoenix,
taught a mini-lesson on probability with a magic trick.
“This is a dream come true,” said Sullivan, who noted one of the
school’s goals this year was to increase its partnerships. “There are
endless possibilities now. We can span time as well as distance in a
way that goes beyond traditional learning and gives us access to new
opportunities and cultures that we only dreamed of connecting with
before.”
This technology partnership grew out of collaboration that began more
than a year ago linking Harvard, the Cambridge and Boston school
systems, with funding from Raytheon BBN Technologies, to provide the
connectivity to the Internet2 Network. Building on access to Internet2,
Cisco offered to establish a leading Cisco TelePresence capacity at a
school in each city. The partnership comes at a time when Harvard itself
is growing its use of this technology as well. Harvard currently has 11
TelePresence units throughout its campus.
“
This network will provide fertile research ground for students to
explore their ideas over the next few years,” said Chip Elliott, GENI
project director.
About Cisco TelePresence Technology: Cisco
TelePresence systems combines innovative real-time video, audio, and
interactive technologies to give people in distributed global locations a
wide variety of face-to-face collaboration experiences. It enables new
types of collaboration applications that are transforming business
processes, saving resources, improving productivity and helping
organizations grow globally.
About Internet2: Internet2 is a not-for-profit
advanced networking consortium composed of more than 200 U.S.
universities in cooperation with 70 leading corporations, 45 government
agencies, laboratories and other institutions of higher learning as well
as over 50 international partner organizations. Internet2 members
leverage this high-performance network and worldwide partnership to
support and enhance their educational and research missions. The Boston
and Cambridge schools now have 1GB(gigabit) Ethernet connectivity to
Internet2.
About “Boston Broadband” and Internet2: The goal of
Mayor Menino’s “Boston Broadband” initiative is to close the digital
divide by increasing access to, and adoption of, broadband technologies
in all of Boston’s neighborhoods and communities. The City of Boston’s
Department of Innovation and Technology and Boston Public Schools
collaborated to connect the City’s fiber network to Internet2, with
Harvard sponsoring the City’s Internet2 connection at the Northern
Crossroads. This connection opens the research and educational resources
of Internet2 to the City of Boston and advances Mayor Menino’s
commitment to enhance access and the adoption of cutting edge technology
citywide.
About the Cambridge Internet2 connection: The City
of Cambridge, Mass., BBN Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Raytheon Company and Harvard University collaborated on the joint
technology project to provide the City of Cambridge’s public schools
with access to Internet2. BBN Technologies was awarded a National
Science Foundation grant for the GENI project.
The Internet2 connection is provided thru the Northern Crossroads,
the New England Regional Aggregation Point for Research Networking in
the Northeast U.S. The Northern Crossroads members include University,
K-12, Government, Corporate and Hospital members throughout the
Northeast connected over a high performance network. Harvard University
is the network operations center for the Northern Crossroads (NoX) and its members.
About the O'Bryant School: The John D. O’Bryant
School of Mathematics and Science is an exam school in which more than
95% of students score at advanced or proficient levels in the state MCAS
exam and go on to four-year colleges. The school is committed to
achievement, academic excellence and to insuring that all students learn
and succeed. The school was recently designated as a 2010 Blue Ribbon
School by the US Department of Education, the highest honor an American
school can achieve. This prestigious award honors public and private
K-12 schools that are academically superior in their state or that
demonstrate dramatic gains in student achievement. The O’Bryant School
fulfills both of these requirements. The O’Bryant School will receive
this award from the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in
Washington, D.C., in November 2010.