Making the Grade (Online)

The headlines in the papers right now about constrained budgets can be troubling for anyone interested in public education – or really, all of us. Class sizes are increasing, teaching assistant and instructor positions are being cut, courses are being cancelled altogether and there are not enough books and other instructional materials to go around. Added to this are concerns over the number of students that under-perform, fail to graduate on time or drop out altogether. College admission standards are rising even though we have a lack of teachers certified in math, science and technology – especially in rural counties. We hear that the system is broken, and that we do not have the resources to fix it, at least not through traditional approaches. Therein lies a reason for hope – this crisis of fiscal and human resources may be just the catalyst needed to motivate realization of broadband’s potential to revolutionize education at all levels, in all places.

North Carolina is acting on this promise and charting a course of leadership in virtual education that is a model for the nation. Efforts initiated by then Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue in 2005 through the e-NC Authority and partnering organizations including the N.C. Research and Education Network (NCREN) have successfully extended broadband connectivity to all public educational institutions (k-20) and optimized the federal e-rate that subsidizes connectivity support in k-12 schools statewide. That is the infrastructure side of the equation.

On the content side, the N.C. Virtual Public School (NCVPS), officially launched in June 2007, is emerging as a national leader in the burgeoning field of online public education. NCVPS offers course credit to middle and high school students who want to complete core courses, advanced placement courses, honors courses, and/or credit recovery courses to satisfy requirements for a high school diploma and to enhance their transcripts for college applications. Ranked eighth in the country in state-led virtual school polices and practices, North Carolina already has over 15,300 students enrolled in online NCVPS courses. In addition to expanded academic offerings, NCVPS offers other online services to North Carolina students, such as test preparation, career planning services and credit recovery.

Other e-Learning opportunities available to North Carolina students that might be of interest include the following:

· Learn and Earn Online
· UNC-Greensboro ischool
· N.C. Community College System Online
· UNC Online

We know that online education works. Rigorous analysis of over 1,000 studies on the subject show that on average, higher-level students in online learning programs perform better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. In North Carolina, the networks are in place and the content is available but something is still missing. Too many students in North Carolina do not have household Internet access at speeds and bandwidths necessary for delivering Web-based educational applications. We know that approximately 12 percent of homes with children do not have a computer with Internet access and that approximately 16 percent of homes qualify for subsidized telephone services through the N.C. Lifeline Link-Up program. Efforts are under way in some individual school systems in the state and at the N.C. Department of Public Instruction through its NC 1:1 Learning Collaborative program to make broadband-connected computers available to all students. Another cost-effective model proposes morphing the existing Lifeline Link-Up program to a broadband platform to ensure that all k-12 students in the state have household computers and broadband access. Statewide implementation of such initiatives will more fully capture the benefits of online education for overcoming the state’s many economic and educational challenges.

Google’s Chrome OS

So, let’s imagine that your company name has become a verb. Lucky dog! You’ve just reported revenues of $5.52 billion for the quarter ending June 30, 2009 – despite the global economic downturn. You’re a key player in the search engine market. You operate a Web browser. Your Gmail service gives users more than 7,300 MB of free storage and you’ve found a clever and popular way to map the Earth. How do you top that? Well, if you’re Google, you extend your reach just a little bit farther to see if you can shake things up in the operating system (OS) realm.

In early July, Google revealed that it is developing a free, open-source, Linux-based operating system that is using the Web as its primary development platform. The fast, lightweight OS will carry the same “Chrome” moniker as the company’s Web browser and when it debuts some time in 2010, it will join OS giants like Linux, Apple Leopard, and Microsoft Windows. Chrome will run on standard x86 chips and ARM chips, and Google is working with companies like Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba to bring Chrome OS-compatible devices to market.

Chrome is not Google’s first foray into the OS arena. Android, the company’s mobile OS, runs on the G1 phone from T-Mobile. Though there will be some overlap, Google intends to keep both systems with an eye toward market segmentation. Android, as the company explained in a recent blog post, is designed “to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks.” Chrome OS is “being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and [it] is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” The company also reports that it is “going back to basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

But will it?

Critics of Chrome say Google has brand power, but lacks driver ecosystem knowledge and the type of customer support staff that an OS requires. There are also privacy concerns. Undoubtedly, Google has given these and other criticisms a great deal of thought, so Chrome OS is not likely to end up as just another heap of code on the R&D scrap pile. Google knows that Chrome has promise, and the idea of using the Web as the primary development platform seems to build on the master plan of cloud computing. This, of course, raises an interesting question: Given the way people have embraced cloud-centric e-mail and social networking, is the Internet the future of the operating system? Stay tuned. Google may very well have the answer.