Columbus, Ohio - (February 13, 2006) - Internet2, the national high-performance backbone network for higher education and research, will be featured Monday, February 13, 2006 during an emerging technologies showcase at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. The 90-minute program will also feature Ohio's OSCnet, the most advanced state-wide fiber optic network for education, research and government.
The program is part of the annual eTech-Ohio conference, Ohio 's largest educational technology conference that takes place February 13-15, in downtown Columbus. eTech-Ohio is the state's clearinghouse and technology service provider for more than 650 K-12 school districts. The conference attracts more than 7,000 teachers, technology coordinators, administrators, students, educational service providers and exhibitors from across Ohio and surrounding states.
More than a dozen high performance networking directors and administrators will take part in a virtual panel discussion that also includes North Dakota, California, Pennsylvania, Florida and Australia. These experts will discuss how their states use Internet2 and other high performance networks to provide educational content, virtual field trips, national and international collaborations, and other learning experiences to their K-12 communities.
The program will also discuss how high performance networks allow schools to distribute and share standards-based content across school curriculums at the local and state levels, and how different states have implemented networking models that allow K-12 districts to utilize Internet2.
The networking division of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, is providing a special Internet2 connection for the event. OARnet is a regional Internet Service Provider (ISP) for Ohio's higher education communities, and also operates the OSCnet.
The OSCnet provides high performance networking services, technologies, and advanced applications throughout Ohio, and serves as the GigaPoP, or on-ramp, for Internet2 in the state. The 1,600-mile OSCnet backbone connects Ohio's universities, colleges, and trade and technical schools with each other, their business partners, Ohio's federal labs and medical centers, and starting this year will extend its reach to Ohio's K-12 school districts, research centers, hospitals, libraries, and other non-profit institutions.
OARnet Director Pankaj Shah said his agency is supporting the eTech endeavor by exposing Ohio's K-12 community to the world of Internet2 and Internet videoconferencing.
"This event will showcase some of the collaborative efforts that are already underway in Ohio between the K-12 and higher education communities," Shah said. "The attempt here is to bring enough synergy into Ohio to look at collaborative possibilities using Internet2 and other state and national high performance education and research networks."
