Brad Parbs

Remember the agony of waiting for a Web site to load, before broadband was widely available? According to a recent survey, a lot of American schools and libraries are still living in that era.

Only 35% of public libraries have broadband speeds between 1.5 Mbps and 10 Mbps (a rather broad range); 34.7% have speeds lower than 1.5 Mbps, and only 24.9% have broadband speeds higher than 10 Mbps, according to data from the American Library Assocation’s Public Library Funding & Technology Access Survey (PDF). As a comparison, Netflix says that an Internet connection of at least 1.5 Mbps is necessary to stream videos at the lowest possible quality.

But keeping up with the requisite Internet speed isn’t the only challenge that schools and libraries face. With the increasing demands for data, there are also challenges of bandwidth. Multiple users on multiple machines — whether accessing the Internet through hardwire or wireless — put additional strains on resources, so that even if a library or school has high-speed broadband, a user experiences dial-up-like speeds.

The FCC has made broadband access the focus of some of its efforts over the last few years, arguing for its importance to the U.S. economy and education. It’s pushing for better access across the board, but also recognizing the importance of high-speed Internet specifically at schools and libraries.

Universities tend to have better-than-average speeds, and the FCC is urging these schools to help extend these speeds to the communities around them. The agency also wants to make sure that access to broadband at school extends to the home.

But this is still a long way off, if you consider another recent report from the Internet content delivery company Akamai, which reveals that the U.S. ranks 13th in the world in broadband adoption, trailing behind a number of European and Asian countries. Akamai released its quarterly State of the Internet report this week detailing the amount of traffic, speed, and penetration of the Internet throughout the world, including broadband and mobile access and usage.

The Netherlands unseated South Korea this quarter for the country with the highest broadband connectivity, with some 68% of its population having access to Internet at speeds higher than 5 Mbps.

Coming in at number 13 isn’t that impressive a showing for the U.S., but broadband adoption here has for the first time broken the 40% threshold, with 42% of Americans having access to high-speed Internet.

Why is knowing broadband speed important? It gives us insight into how much access to the online world Americans have. Broadband is a crucial piece of infrastructure for communication. At this point, there are plenty of Web sites and online services that simply can’t be uploaded or fully accessed with just dial-up Internet access anymore. Broadband is required to stream movies, to use VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) services like Skype, to shop and surf and, of course, study. And even with broadband capabilities, low Internet speeds make all these things incredibly frustrating.

Akamai’s statistics are averages for countries and states, and in some ways these averages obscure some of the vast differences within geographic areas. Within states, there are cities and neighborhoods where Internet speeds and broadband penetration are high; there are places where they’re frightfully low.

On a state-by-state level, Rhode Island overtook Delaware this past quarter as the state with the fastest average connection speed: 8.2 Mbps. That’s up 21% from the last quarterly report. Delaware’s average is 8.1 Mbps, followed by DC at 7.5 Mpbs, and Utah at 7 Mbps. The slowest state: Arkansas, with an average of 3.3 Mbps.

Interested in learning more about your city’s and your local schools’ broadband speeds? You can visit the Department of Education’s interactive map here for more details.

Flickr: from_ko

If Project K-Nect is proof that at-risk kids benefit from access to smart phones (many of them, the founder Shawn Gross says, have gone on to take Advanced Placement math classes), what happens to those who don’t have smart phones?

A reader asks:

My question for the group discussion is that because many of my socio-economically challenged students don’t have the capability to engage in education via smart phone technology, how do I get them to ride the wave too? I am still challenged to get many of them to do any last century style pen and paper academics.

I asked K-Nect’s Gross to elaborate, and here’s his response:

“Statistically, teenagers rank as the fast growing segment for smart phones. As a result, we will see the disparity between the haves and have-nots begin to erode. Nevertheless, a digital divide at some level will always exist. In such cases whereby a student is not able to afford access to these types of devices, school systems need to help subsidize access.

The FCC has taken the first step towards examining providing funding to school systems for use of mobile devices by students off campus. If the program is successful, schools will be able to tap into a very large funding pool to help eliminate some of the inequities.

Finally, regarding the concerning engagement, our research indicates that students feel largely disconnected in math and science when utilizing a 20th century model that encompasses paper and pencil. This is a population that seeks manipulative and multimedia and wants to use social networking as a means from which to solve instructional problems. After all, this is how they solve all of their social problems.”

The FCC reference Gross is eluding to is the $9 million program called “Learning On-the-Go” that will be “piloted in 14 states and will fund wireless broadband for 10 laptop programs, two virtual schools, three handheld device programs,” as well as one program in New Orleans that will “give third through sixth graders access to wireless data cards,” according to ReadWriteWeb.

That’s in near future. Read how teacher Bill Ferriter finds ways to include those who don’t have the phones in his classrooms today.

Another interesting point to add to the dialogue: From the Speak Up 2010 survey, parents are willing to buy their kids mobile phones — if the school allowed it.

Flickr:Williac

By Audrey Watters

• March 8 – 10 marked the inaugural SXSWedu, an education technology conference held in Austin, Texas right before the main South by Southwest event that includes one of the most popular technology conferences in the world. SXSWedu was sponsored by SXSW and TEA, the Texas Education Agency and featured three days of sessions.

• The FCC unveiled Learning on-the-Go, a $9 million program that will extend broadband Internet access to students off-campus, as well as on. The pilot will involve 20 schools and libraries and will use funds to help promote 24-7 Internet access for students who wouldn’t otherwise have Internet at home.

• President Obama unveiled a new anti-bullying campaign on Thursday. Aimed at curbing bullying and teen suicide, the President said that everyone — parents, educators, businesses — needed to help provide the support and resources to address the problem. Facebook announced its support for the campaign by introducing several safety improvements, including a “social reporting” feature that allows teens to report content violations not just to Facebook but to their teachers, parents, and others in their support network.

• Apple released GarageBand for iPad on Thursday. The $4.99 app lets you play dozens of different instruments, record songs, and mix tracks. Technologizer’s Jared Newman has a great review of the app, including its pros and cons, but I’ll echo him in saying this is a fabulous app for music creation. Although the new GarageBand was featured as part of the iPad 2′s unveiling, it actually works on both new and old versions of the device.

• And to wrap the week up, of course, the iPad 2 goes on sale today, March 11. It’s thinner and lighter, and it boasts 2 cameras — a front and a rear-facing one. The second generation iPad has received good reviews in the press.

Image credit: Flickr user William Clifford