NEED FOR SPEED: We've shouted from mountaintops the importance of the work by the fellas at the EducationSuperhighway who are doing the SchoolSpeedTest. But there are two other choices for schools to check their pipes as well: SmarterBalanced's Bandwidth Checker and the SpeedTest.net. So what's the difference?
SETDA (the State Educational Technology Directors Association) just released a report from Internet services company, Netcraft, that compares and contrasts the tech specs and results between the three, getting down to some pretty gritty details. (Use SpeedTest.net and SchoolSpeedTest, it suggests.)
To reinforce the importance of this infrastructure, the United Nations released on the same day a report on how broadband access in schools can help "bridge educational divides, empower students." The numbers are pretty stark: whereas 93% of 15-year-olds in the developed countries have access to Internet at school, that figure drops to 3% in places like Kenya.
