Southwest Kansas Educational Consortium

A-PLUS NETWORK

Interlocal #625 • Paul E. Conner, Administrator

PO Box 400 • 407 School Addition • Meade KS 67864-0400 • 620/873-2524 • FAX: 620/873-2391

Monday, 23 October 2006

To: Jamie Murdock

Office of Educational Innovation & Evaluation

KSU – College of Education

2323 Anderson Avenue, Ste 220

Manhattan KS 66502

From: Debi Pippitt, Office Manager

A+ Network

Subject: OEIE 2006 Impact Report on Kan-ed

The A+ Network is the IDL network operating in the southwest portion of Kansas south of Dodge City since 1989. Ten schools and two community colleges are members of our consortium: USD 219 Minneola; USD 220 Ashland; USD 225 Fowler; USD 226 Meade; USD 300 Comanche County (Coldwater); USD 422 Greensburg; USD 424 Mullinville; USD 459 Bucklin; USD 474 Haviland; USD 483 SW Heights (Kismet-Plains); Dodge City Community College; Pratt Community College.

Until Kan-ed and the standardized H.323 protocol, the connectivity across the state was non-existent. Upon the advent of Kan-ed, the A+ Network was actually split with two different technologies; analog and a digital asynchronous transfer mode, or ATM. This was because the A+ Network is covered by three different telecommunication territories and in 1996 three of our schools were not offered the ability to upgrade to ATM when our network first outgrew the original analog system. The partnership of telecommunications companies to form the Kan-ed backbone and the standardization of the H.323 protocol has had a tremendous impact in the growth of IDL in Kansas.

Kan-ed enables our network to choose from an enormous list of possible classes and special programming. Mullinville and Ashland have incorporated many of the special programs from the WSU Fairmount Center for their elementary school students for the second year now. We are now able to send and receive classes with any school operating on the Kan-ed backbone. For 06-07 the A+ Network sends 21 classes over IDL during the day and 1 evening class. During this current school year the A+ Network is sharing seven of these classes with four other IDL networks in Kansas: SCKEN, HSPN, I-CAN, and Greenbush. This is an increase of 1 network to our schedule every year. The A+ Network is receiving Spanish and CAD, and sending Art for two periods, Composition for two periods, and Spanish. A+ Network classes provide instruction this year for 306 students of our own member unified school districts and to another 34 students in other Kan-ed IDL networks. Pratt Community College students receive their Spanish language instruction only from their A+ Network partner Dodge City Community College over the Kan-ed backbone. The standardization of the H.323 protocol has been a boon to the choices from which our schools can select and augment their own course offerings and especially with the expected decrease in teachers of core courses in the very near future, this avenue of receiving classes will prove to be a lifesaver to many unified school districts.

Our board of directors usually always conducts their monthly meetings over the IDL system. The school administers continue to meet monthly together in Dodge City, but with the introduction of Marratech they are now considering the purchase of a private portal to conduct their meetings from their desktops.

Prior to Kan-ed and the service they provide managing these IDL connections, I personally had to spend a good portion of each day answering trouble calls and “bouncing” connections. Since Kan-ed manages these now I only still build up the connections and pass on a few trouble calls. The Renovo scheduler runs with great predictability. I can count on our connections coming up on their own now. I can also access the conference control over the internet which is much more convenient than when I had to access the ATM conference control from a single workstation. Since the advent of the new IP H.323 technology which provides user friendly control, our teachers and facilitators are also pleased that they can hang-up and redial a connection themselves if needed.

Financial aid in the form of grant money from Kan-ed was particularly helpful for our school districts when they needed to update their technology for a second time. We knew how important a single technology is for IDL since we were simultaneously operating on two and we also knew how great the expense of technology upgrades can be. Before Kan-ed, many IDL networks in Kansas remained completely closed off from sharing classes with other networks. They continued to operate with their diverse assortment of analog networks as technology upgrades are always expensive and proved unaffordable. Kan-ed grant money made the upgrade possible for Kansas schools.

Kan-ed has been a great asset to our rural schools in Kansas and to the continued growth of IDL.

Thank you,

Debi Pippitt, Office Manager

A+ Network