DEFINING DIGITAL LEARNING
Digital Learning is "Learning facilitated by technology that gives students some element of control over time, place, path and/or pace."
Time:
Learning is no longer restricted to the school day or the school year. The Internet and a proliferation of Internet access devices have given students the ability to learn anytime.
Place:
Learning is no longer restricted within the walls of a classroom. The Internet and a proliferation of Internet access devices have given students the ability to learn anywhere and everywhere.
Path:
Learning is no longer restricted to the pedagogy used by the teacher. Interactive and adaptive software allows students to learn in their own style, making learning personal and engaging. New learning technologies provide realtime data that gives teachers the information they need to adjust instruction to meet the unique needs of each student.
Pace:
Learning is no longer restricted to the pace of an entire classroom of students. Interactive and adaptive software allows students to learn at their own pace, spending more or less time on lessons or subjects to achieve the same level of learning.
Digital learning is more than just providing students with a laptop. Digital learning requires a combination of technology, digital content and instruction.
Technology:
Technology is the mechanism that delivers content. It facilitates how students receive content. It includes Internet access and hardware, which can be any Internet access device - from a desktop to a laptop to an iPad to a smartphone. Technology is the tool, not the instruction.
Digital Content:
Digital content is the high quality academic material which is delivered through technology. It is what students learn. It ranges from new engaging, interactive and adaptive software to classic literature to video lectures to games. It isn't simply a PDF of text or a PowerPoint presentation.
Instruction:
Educators are essential to digital learning. Technology may change the role of the teacher but it will never eliminate the need for a teacher. With digital learning, teachers will be able to provide the personalized guidance and assistance to ensure students learn and stay on track - throughout the year and year after year - to graduate from high school. Teachers may be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.
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" The rise of Open Educational Resources as a digital learning tool is transforming the modern-day classroom. To cope with this 21st Century "sea change in education," educators have been expected to master constantly evolving technology, new sources of content and revolutionary delivery systems.
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VIEW REPORT ARCHIVES
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CONNECTIVITY AT SCHOOL - Continued
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Robust broadband connectivity is another prerequisite to  implementing a rich digital learning environment at any school. The key to delivering sufficien t connectivity is estimating current and future demand to ensure that schools have enough bandwidth capacity to serve their student body, faculty, and staff. As schools consider the various applications that will be used such as Internet research, multimedia streaming, online assessments and interactive digital textbooks, they must keep in mind both the bandwidth that is needed for those specific applications as well as the type of connectivity that is available in the surrounding area. Forecasting and supplying network bandwidth is an ongoing process and schools should attempt to design their networks in a way that allows for non-disruptive expansion and growth.
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Delivering broadband to the school district or the school
Many school districts purchase a large connection to the Internet from a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) and have a Wide Area Network (WAN) from the district to each school, between schools and to the external Internet. This section discusses network design considerations and cost management techniques that allow educators to successfully deliver broadband connectivity to schools, as well as to the individual classrooms inside. School districts have various broadband service options from copper wiring to fiber optic connections. Copper transmission linesPrevalent in communities, copper wires form the basis of traditional communications infrastructure and can now deliver phone, broadband and, in some cases, video service. For example, some rural school districts tend to rely on copper transmission lines because it is unlikely there is sufficient user density in these areas to make installing newer network infrastructure cost effective for service providers. In addition, government supported build-outs of advanced infrastructure may not have reached these communities yet. Schools' copper wire transmission lines generally deliver the same upload and download transmission speeds of 1.544 mbps. Broadband providers offer options to allow schools to order several DS-1 circuits and aggregate their bandwidth together to create a single, faster circuit. Fiber optic transmission lines  Typically, large, metropolitan school districts and rural areas with new fiber build-outs use fiber optic transmission lines instead of copper wires. Broadband providers in these areas have installed large amounts of fiber along major thoroughfares to serve a variety of customers, including corporations, state and local government agencies, schools, libraries, and cell towers. Fiber optics offer faster broadband speeds than copper wires can deliver. Fiber optics circuits, when carrying Ethernet protocol traffic, can provide a school location broadband speeds ranging from 2 mbps up to 10 gbps (gigabits per second).
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HOST LOCALLY OR GO TO THE CLOUD
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Digital content is commonly transmitted to a student's or faculty member's d  evice over the district's network as opposed to being stored on the device itself. Schools must decide whether to transmit this content from their data center or from "the cloud". Schools should evaluate which content is best served from the cloud, and which is best served locally.
Each option has its benefits and drawbacks:
Serving from a data center
This approach is good for schools intending to serve a large volume of educational content since it allows the district or school to take advantage of its WAN instead of transversing a congested connection on the Internet. Many multimedia-heavy academic applications are now available as a locally hosted or "private cloud" service for this reason. There are costs to consider including paying for the server, power to run the server, and staff time to manage the server. As a result, schools will need to carefully consider which applications should be hosted at the data center. Storing on the cloudContent providers typically offer schools the option to purchase access to educational content from the cloud for a monthly charge. Benefits of a cloud-based server include little to no capital outlay for the district or school and less internal time and fewer resources to manage the process. However, accessing content from the cloud requires large amounts of Internet bandwidth connectivity. Consider just one video stream delivered across just two classrooms of 30 students. That's 60 x 500 mbps - a temporary burst of 30 mbps on top of all the other internet bandwidth required by that school site at the data center. Securing the networkComplex security threats can lead to negative educational,  financial and legal outcomes. By taking advantage of a combination of technologies and trends, however, you can enable teachers to provide quality instruction while working in a safe and secure environment. Network security can be achieved through governance and compliance with IT policies and utilization of specific, complementary software components.
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