Innovative broadband learning network reaches next milestone
The Scottish Executive has sealed a multi-million pound deal to link up every pupil and teacher through what is said to be the world's first national school intranet.
RM, Britain's biggest IT supplier to education, has secured a five-year, £39.5 million contract to develop the ground-breaking system, Scotland's education department confirmed on Wednesday.
The company was named in June – following an 18-month procurement – as the preferred bidder for the national intranet, which is due to go live in early 2007.
The project is part of a Scottish Executive initiative to set up a secure online learning environment connecting all schools in the country.
Peter Peacock, the Scottish education minister, described the project as the "final piece" in the digital network.
The other two components, a large-scale "content delivery infrastructure" and its broadband backbone known as the "Interconnect' , are already in place.
The Interconnect links every Scottish education authority and a number of national agencies through the JANET infrastructure.
The digital network will serve some 800,000 potential users, around 3,000 schools and 32 local education authorities.
Once up and running, the intranet will give pupils and teachers access to e-learning resources from school or at home, along with a range of communication, collaboration and conferencing tools.
Students in remote areas of Scotland would be able to use virtual workspaces to share ideas with others elsewhere in the country.
The Executive's claim to a world-first may, however, be doubtful - Northern Ireland's Classroom 2000 (C2K) project appears to have achieved all of this already.
Announcing the deal with RM at SETT, Scotland's annual educational IT event, Mr Peacock said the ambitious scheme meant that "learning will no longer end at the school gate".
The minister said in a statement: "This project is a hugely exciting development for Scottish education and one which sees Scotland leading the world."
Related Links
More about the Scottish Schools Digital Network - www.ssdn.org.uk
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