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"Collaborative Inquiry in Networked Communities: Lessons From the Alice Testbed" Table of Contents Background Network Science Model Scalability The Software Innovation Testbed Projects: Developing a Model What Have We Learned About Network Science? What Have We Learned About Scalability? Summary Appendix: Description of Testbed Projects Bibliography |
The dream is that by the year 2000 there would be dozens of educational
service providers (ESPs) offering products and services based on Alice
user and host software. Such a rich set of services would be available
that schools and teachers at all levels would demand and obtain Alice
and Internet connectivity through a variety of networks; perhaps 500,000
classrooms (20% of the U.S. market) would be connected. At the same
time the large number of users continues to attract new offerings often
generated from the educational community funded by grants of various
types and then turned over to ESPs. There are several technical service
providers who, under contract from some of the ESPs, perform the
technical work associated with offering an educational service over the
network: setting up accounts, creating templates for exchange of data,
creating working groups, running the computers, keeping backups and
archives, etc. National Geographic Society, as the first in the business,
has a wide variety of outstanding curricula available, including almost
two dozen Kids Network units and the Global Lab curricula. Numerous
states have projects underway to provide pre- and in-service support for
teachers. (from R. Tinker, 1992).
The Alice Testbed aims to define the steps necessary to achieve the level of services described. Our work includes partnerships with ESPs, including National Geographic Society and BBN, and with other projects at TERC. These partnerships are providing initial assessments of the what services will be needed and how to make the services self-supporting.