Satellite set-up for schools

01-02-2010 | Contributor

A computer and internet connection are now considered essential classroom tools, but for teachers in some of this country's rural schools the idea of setting work based on access to the internet is little more than a dream.

The Government has acknowledged the huge need for high-speed broadband in the rural sector with its plans to improve internet connection speeds through the significant roll-out of fibre infrastructure. For many rural schools the crucial question is how quickly can broadband be put in place?

Communications and IT Minister Steven Joyce, announcing the roll-out, said that within six years he expected 93% of rural schools would receive fibre enabling speeds of at least 100 Mbps. The remaining 7% would achieve speeds of at least 10 Mbps.

Satellite technology, such as that provided by Farmside, could bring high-speed internet connections within months. So it's incomprehensible why we would ask schools to wait years when a reliable, affordable solution is available today.

Fibre will bring a huge improvement to how rural schools function, but up to six years is just too long to wait.

For a small number of schools, their remoteness or geographical position mean that fibre will never reach them. Children spend only six to eight years at primary school and for every year their school is unable to make high-speed internet connections, that child's learning is affected.

While fibre will be a huge asset to rural communities when it arrives, the use of satellites would provide a bridging technology that would give schools 10 Mbp connections before school begins this year.

In remote areas, schools will have to look to satellite rather than fibre as they will not be included in the roll-out.

Rural communities, and in particular rural schools, are already under pressure as populations in many areas drop.

Schools can struggle to provide their students with the learning opportunities afforded to city schools. While growing up in the country offers a different life experience, in today's world children need to be able to develop a huge range of skills.

In schools with small rolls, teachers are required to teach several subjects and several year levels at once. Multi-media distance learning can help expand what schools can offer. In the past, extra resources were provided to schools through specially tailored educational radio programmes. Now it could be video conferencing a Japanese class from Auckland. Distance learning is already being used by hundreds of remote schools in Australia in New South Wales and the Northern Territories.

For those farms in New Zealand too isolated to ever receive fibre, satellites could greatly enhance home schooling or in the future be used in developing correspondence schooling.

Getting a satellite link set up in a school to bring in high-speed broadband also offers support to staff, putting them in contact with not only their peers, but the likes of the Ministry of Education and the parent community. For sole-charge principals, email or social networking tools provide a huge resource for teaching and support in what can be an isolated role, albeit one pivotal to the local community.

Once a dish is up and running it can also provide out-of-hours benefits. For some families quite near to the school it would be possible to connect a small wireless network to surrounding homes. By allowing others to use this capacity outside of school hours, it would be possible to share some of the cost.

Farmside has recently upgraded Potaka School in Gisborne through a discount scheme for under $200 a month. For this they receive a free static IP address and benefit from speeds of 4MB download/1MB upload. Their data usage is capped at 15GB and 10GB of this is provided as a free school bonus.

Ministry of Education Watchdog filtering is in place.

The idea of investing in a satellite when fibre will arrive might be seen a duplication by some, but as a bridging option the costs are relatively low to get high-speed broadband in straight away. All the set-up infrastructure for fibre or satellite broadband is the same up until the point of plugging in. The extra cost to get the service as soon as possible is just the dish on the roof. That in most cases is not much more than $1300 ($1000 for the hardware and around $350 to install depending on the complexity of the job). There is an additional monthly operations fee that Farmside tailors to the size of the school.

• Tony Baird is CEO of Farmside.

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