--- Forwarded Message from Claire Clemens <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 13:43:49 -0500
>From: Claire Clemens <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: application service provider (ASP)
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>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum    <[log in to unmask]>

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Is anyone using a Web-based server at their language facility?

AWSJ: Technology Report: Clean Out Your Desk: Class Act
Sunday, November 21, 1999 09:08 PM

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By Bill Richards

Last month, when Barbara Allen asked her sixth-grade class to compile a
scrapbook on the Sputnik space launch 42 years ago, she was, in a sense,
creating her own little bit of history.

Ms. Allen, who directs LemonLink, the Lemon Grove, California, school
district's Internet-based computer network, sent out her assignment via
e-mail to students at Lemon Grove Middle School. Her students scoured Web
sites for material about Sputnik, composed their essays on stripped-down
computers specially designed to run on Internet-based servers, and
submitted them electronically, complete with slides of the Soviet space
shot culled off the Net.

Before the LemonLink system, the school's PCs operated off desktop
software. The computers were old and it would have been costly to keep
upgrading and maintaining the system. What's more, most of the computers
didn't have the power to run new applications like Windows 95 on their hard
drives. So the school decided to turn to the Net.

After years of relying on PC-based technology, cash-strapped school
districts are at last getting their chance to cash in on Internet
economics. Instead of spending money on expensive upgrades, schools can use
their old PCs or basic computers called thin client devices to run new and
fast programs off a Web-based server at an application service provider, or
ASP. For some schools, these Web-based systems are dramatically changing
the cost of teaching and the way their pupils learn.

"School systems will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the shift onto
the Web," says Edward Iacobucci, founder and chairman of Citrix Systems
Inc. The Fort Lauderdale, Florida, company provides technology that allows
schools with older PCs or terminals to run Unix, Windows or Java-based
software applications over the Internet from an ASP's Web-based server.

"We can replace all the hardware with an appliance that's as easy to run as
a telephone," says Mr. Iacobucci. "There's no complexity at the user end.
People are just starting to grasp the ramifications of this."

The Lemon Grove school district used Citrix's software to convert its
computer system. Before it did, school-district officials faced a dilemma:
They had to decide whether to put money into upgrading their district's
aging desktop computers or pay for more immediate needs, like repairing
school buses. The old PC-based network ate up a lot of money in maintenance
costs and upgrades. By using the Internet-based program, they are saving
money that can then be used for other pressing needs.

"This is a district where 68% of the students get free or reduced-price
lunches," says Darryl LaGace, Lemon Grove's director of information
services. "We do not have an abundant amount of money, and we wanted to be
sure we wouldn't end up with a bunch of computers that were only good as
doorstops."

The problem: The old PCs didn't even have enough power to connect to an
ASP's server. That's where Citrix came in. The company's software uses
conversion language that allows older PC programs to operate over Web
servers, which in the Lemon Grove district's case were Microsoft Corp. NT
servers. Mr. LaGace cut a deal with Cox Communications Inc., an
Atlanta-based cable provider, for a model high-speed Internet link. In
addition to boosting the old PCs' capability, Mr. LaGace purchased at a
reduced rate 300 thin-client terminals from Wyse Technology Inc. of San
Jose, California.

Overall, Mr. LaGace says, the district has invested some $1.5 million in
the system. With a new traditional PC-based system, he says, "we'd pay as
much but we'd only be able to access the Internet with a third as many
computers. And we'd probably need more support staff than we have now to
maintain them."

"Three years ago," says Ms. Allen, "this technology wasn't available."

In three more years, says Lemon Grove district superintendent Lean King,
the district hopes to expand the pilot program so all of its 4,600 pupils
and 265 teachers are likely to use Web-based servers, and the district will
be linked to city officials, the police and fire departments, libraries and
even the city's senior-citizens centers.

"Both students and teachers have reacted positively to the new system,"
says Ms. Allen, a 20-year veteran teacher and administrator. Students "seem
to write more easily on the computer, and with the Internet they can be
more creative because they can find art and scan it in."

Last year, Citrix approached Michael Crovi, technology coordinator for
seven Catholic schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, area,
and asked whether he was interested in taking part in a pilot program that
would put his computers online. Mr. Crovi says he jumped at the chance.

Citrix's Internet system would replace his schools' aging PC-based network
of about 500 Dell and IBM clones. The arrangement cost $20,000, and Citrix
also offered to supply the schools with special academic programs through a
partner ASP. Mr. Crovi says he expects to save over $100,000 in maintenance
and upgrades as a result.

He says that the academic programs have had some technological glitches,
but adds that the Internet portion of the deal has transformed the way his
students use their computers. Teachers and students simply click on a
Citrix icon after logging onto the old PCs, and the computers suddenly are
running Windows 95 off Citrix's Web servers.

Last January, Charlotte Catholic High School used the system to plug its
advanced-placement government and politics class into a course offered over
the Internet by Apex Online Learning Inc., a distance-learning company
based in Bellevue, Wash. Apex has 106 high schools in 26 states using its
instructional material over the Net.

An administrator at Charlotte Catholic High School monitored the students'
progress. Mr. Crovi says the school is planning to offer the course again
in January.

"Our students were interacting through chat rooms with students in Texas
and California," says Mr. Crovi. "It takes the grading and content out of
our hands. All we have to do is make sure the lesson plans conform to our
state standards."

The rave reviews from places like Charlotte Catholic High and Lemon Grove
are welcome news to ASPs -- the middlemen between software concerns like
Citrix and school systems like Lemon Grove. James Kirchner, president of
Learningstation.com, an Atlanta-based ASP, estimates the market for
Internet-based education systems in the U.S. will include some 3.1 million
K-12 teachers and 53 million elementary and high-school students.

"This is a huge market," says Mr. Kirchner, whose company's revenue jumped
to $3.5 million last year from $500,000 in 1996. In the future, he says,
Internet-based learning programs will be piped into schools and then be
available after school at students' homes.

"Right now," Mr. Kirchner says, "you have about 389,000 of those 56.1
million teachers and students online. In five years, we estimate half of
them will be online."

Others aren't quite so optimistic. Stephen Rohleder, a senior executive at
Andersen Consulting, says his firm concluded a two-year pilot program in
August that looked at how well a K-12 school system could shift its
PC-based program to an Internet operation. Instead of incurring the large
capital expense of upgrading its PCs, the White Lake School, a private
school in Fort Worth, Texas, paid Andersen a monthly fee, like a
cable-television subscription, Mr. Rohleder says. Andersen's program linked
the White Lake computers to a Web server, bypassing their own desktop
operating systems, and helped the schools select a list of Internet-based
teaching aids.

In the end, he says, the Internet architecture worked. But Andersen
concluded that it would be difficult to standardize the educational portion
of its program for the many school systems, each with its own curriculum,
in the elementary and high school market.

"This kind of program really challenges the jurisdiction of a school
district to control which curriculum they will use," he says. "When someone
goes into that market, they're going to need a sales model that is very
focused on the mass market."

Andersen says it decided to focus on developing a "virtual university"
program because there are far fewer universities than elementary and high
schools. The company also thinks much of the college undergraduate
curriculum can be standardized.

Andersen says the market for Internet connections in elementary schools and
high schools may have more growth potential. The consulting firm, using
1998 statistics, estimates that about 65% of all U.S. public schools
currently have at least one Internet connection. The average public-school
district, it says, spends $125 per student on technology, but has only one
computer for every 14 students and one Internet connection per school.

That may change soon. The nation's newest megacharity, the $17.1 billion
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says it's preparing an "education
initiative" that will provide additional Internet connections for poorer
school districts.

"What funds many of these schools do have for hardware and software are
limited," says Trevor Neilson, the Seattle-based foundation's
communications manager. "And the technology becomes outdated very fast,
leaving a bunch of old computers sitting in the classroom."

Mr. Neilson says Internet technology such as Web-based computing can help
solve some of those problems. "We're taking a long, hard look at these
issues, and our education initiative will at least partly address them," he
says.

For a start, Mr. Neilson need look no further than the South Carolina
Literacy Resource Center in Columbia, S.C. For its 115,254 students, the
center gets about $160 per pupil in funding from the state and federal
governments. That's a third of the amount allocated to high-school students
in the state, says Colleen Clark, the center's education associate, and a
third of the amount spent on gaining literacy.

"We're trying to raise consciousness about adult education and literacy,
and so we've got to be as creative as possible," Ms. Clark says.

That led South Carolina adult-education officials to snap up
Learningstation. com's offer to set up a Web-based service at the center.
To date, the pilot program is offering Internet access at 15 of the
center's 54 adult-education sites around the state. The rest, often located
in housing projects and churches, don't have the facilities for Internet
access, Ms. Clark says.

Right now, Learningstation.com is allowing the adult-education centers to
use its applications at a reduced cost as part of a pilot program. Ms.
Clark hopes that she'll be able to winnow the cost of a broader Internet
access program down to her center's budget when the pilot program ends next
fall.

"We could definitely be missing the boat if we don't participate," she
says. "Things are changing too quickly, and our old computers just can't
keep up. This is the wave of the future."

---

Mr. Richards is a writer in the Seattle area.
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