CASE STUDY

Huntsville City Schools

Schools all over the country are scrambling to provide advanced technology networks to ensure that their students have the resources they need to prepare for the future. The 23,000 students in the Huntsville City School District, however, are fortunate – they do not have to wait for State funding or donations from private sources – they already have access to the latest in communications technology and services. Intergraph Corporation, along with Bell South and the Alabama Supercomputer Authority, designed and installed complete electronic access to all schools in the district. Assistance was also provided by the Huntsville City Schools Computer Advisory Committee.

The school district includes five high schools, a New Century Technology Demonstration High School, 11 middle schools, and 27 elementary schools, plus several administrative buildings distributed over 90 square miles in Huntsville, Alabama. Along with Intergraph, Huntsville is home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Redstone Arsenal, and many other high-tech corporations. The community is very technology-oriented, and the school district therefore reflects this community focus. The Huntsville City School District has a reputation for excellence and was rated in the top 20 school districts in the U.S. (and best in the state) in a study conducted by Expansion Management magazine. "Huntsville is a high-tech community, and we feel our school system should reflect this," says Bill Crowson, Manager of Information Systems for Huntsville City Schools.

"We have always had five-year technology plans – this has been our direction all along – to give every school total connectivity to the world. We believe that every student and teacher in our district should be able to take advantage of the opportunities available on the Internet, and we wanted to do it now. Intergraph provided a superior solution that not only establishes a solid foundation for our five-year goals but also complies with emerging state guidelines," says Mr. Crowson. "Our objective is to have Internet capability in every classroom this year." Since the school district has about 2500 classrooms, this is quite an undertaking. Mr. Crowson adds, "A key advantage to this school district is having a superintendent and school board that support the infusion of technology for student and teacher use."

To ensure that technology is incorporated into the school system in an organized manner, the Intergraph-led Enterprise Internet Access System team designed a system to provide connectivity from the school buildings to the central administrative site at the Annie Merts Center. An Intergraph WebServer, running at the central administrative site, provides Internet access, Web page hosting and e-mail accounts to teachers and administrative staff in the district, with a plan to add student e-mail accounts in the future. This server also functions as the WindowsNT domain controller for the school district, and provides controlled access to shared files for all teachers. Classrooms will be equipped with PCs with browser and e-mail software. "Safe surfing" is provided by a program running on the Intergraph firewall, which blocks access to inappropriate Internet sites. Additionally, Intergraph provided Raptor’s WebNOT product as an integral part of Huntsville City School’s security system. WebNOT downloads a comprehensive Internet block list from Raptors’ home site in Massachusetts every night. The block list, which is also used in the industry's leading Internet filter, Cyber Patrol, currently includes more than 9000 websites. The list is updated every six days (or sooner as inappropriate sites are identified), thus keeping up with the web’s explosive growth. Sites are categorized into particular levels of protection and the central site administrator can selectively allow or deny access to the various categories.

Intergraph’s design included modular, state-of-the-art networking components to allow for future system growth. All remote sites are connected to the central site through ISDN lines installed by Bell South, which provide 128Kb of bandwidth to each school. Intergraph selected Bay Networks as the network technology partner because of the superior performance and scalability of their routers and switches. Schools may add or upgrade service as demand increases, without affecting the existing system or requiring major equipment replacement. The central administrative site connects to the Internet through a dedicated T1 link provided courtesy of the Alabama Supercomputer Authority. The central site network and server environment can grow as the school district strives to meet the demands of a high-tech school system serving 23,000 students looking toward the 21st century.

The Intergraph Systems and Network Services group, in cooperation with Intergraph’s product maintenance and support team, continue to work closely with the Huntsville City Schools Information Systems staff to ensure smooth and efficient system and network operations. Intergraph’s commitment to this partnership will help the Huntsville City Schools provide a technology-based learning environment in the coming years that will increase the effectiveness of teachers and the learning productivity of students.

Some Huntsville City schools already have home pages, and many classrooms even have student-created home pages. Currently, a login and e-mail account are available for each teacher and administrator, and there are plans to extend this to include students. The teachers and administrators use these accounts to share experiences, find lesson plan information, and develop new programs.They use their Internet connections to maintain professional contacts, obtain legislative information that affects education, and participate in on-line workshops to enhance their skills.

Teachers are also using on-line news services to bring up-to-the-minute worldwide events to their classrooms, just as in the past, students have used newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs. One class used a number of weather-related websites to learn about hurricanes, tropical storms, clouds, weather predictions, and other meteorological topics. The unit included learning how to become a meteorologist and creating graphs of local weather – all using information obtained from the Internet. Another class sent letters of support by way of e-mail to students in Japan after their area had been hit by a serious earthquake.

Students at Farley Elementary School used e-mail for a year-long study of Africa, according to Principal Debbie Beaupre. "As part of a multi-cultural study unit on Africa, fifth-grade students corresponded by way of e-mail with students in a similar class in South Africa, exchanging information on geograph, culture, hobbies, and sports." Other classes use home pages to feature student science projects, artwork, and other school assignments.

Visit the Huntsville City Schools home page at www.hsv.k12.al.us

Intergraph, the Intergraph logo and TD are registered trademarks of Intergraph Corporation. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Intergraph believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. Such information is subject to change without notice. Intergraph is not responsible for inadvertent errors. Copyright 1998 Intergraph Corporation, Huntsville, AL 35894-0001. Printed in USA. CS985004

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