The Schenectady City School District in partnership with the New York Institute of Technology has formed MusE Net 21 to develop a sustainable, replicable model building capacity for broadband access linking high poverty schools and communities to museums and cultural institutions to narrow the digital divide among both student consumers and museum content providers bridging the cultural resource gap for underserved communities.
MusE Net 21 will serve schools in high poverty cities of Schenectady and Albany, in New York State's Capital District and the high poverty Long Island communities of Roosevelt, Westbury, and Central Islip along with Public Housing Authority community centers in Schenectady and Far Rockaway. The poverty rates in these communities range from 60% to more than 83% and far too many students in these targeted communities are failing to meet New York State Learning Standards.
MusE Net 21 will focus on building capacity within museums and cultural institutions and will link with Project VIEW (Virtual Informal Education Web), a US Department of Education Technology Innovation Challenge Grant Project to provide teacher training, develop lesson content, and build technological capacity within schools. These linkages will provide students with live, interactive videoconference experiences with a wide range of museums to spark their interest in learning and the build foundational knowledge necessary for higher academic achievement.
1. MusE Net 21 addresses a need for enriching active learning opportunities by linking schools and community centers in underserved, high-poverty communities with the resources and expertise found in museums and cultural institutions in the US and the world. 2. MusE Net 21 provides a promising experimental model for the effective use of affordable, available IP (H323) technology. 3. MusE Net 21's approach offers flexibility in incorporating to existing technologies allowing multiple school districts and museums with dissimilar technologies (ISDN and IP) to work together seamlessly through the use of Gateway connections.
The total MusE Net 21 budget is $1,878,267 including a funding request of $749,997 and matching support of $1,128,270 from partners including NYIT, Time Warner Cable, the Tanberg Corporation and the Schenectady Schools.
