Earlier this week I wrote about the mixed reviews of programs that put computers in homes to boost grades. One issue that came up was that sometimes those programs weren’t enough – that students not only needed a fishing pole, they needed someone to teach them how to fish.
Well I just read an article on the Case Connection Zone in Cleveland, where the city and the university have teamed together to deploy 1 GB per second Internet access to more than 1,500 facilities. Their focus is a little different.
Apparently they had hoped for ARRA funding to expand a program already in place. They didn’t get funding but have forged ahead with their plan. The network has been built and now the university plans to study the impact on the neighborhoods.
Here’s a snapshot of the neighborhoods they are reaching:
72 percent of the households neighboring Case Western Reserve lacked Internet access; 60 percent of the residents were on food stamps, and 80 percent of young children were enrolled in Medicaid. “Most of these people who live in the homes are not the owners of these homes…”
They plan to look at…
four areas: neighborhood and community safety; health care and wellness; energy management and sustainability; and improving the competency of high school-age students in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math).
It doesn’t sounds as if there’s necessarily an emphasis on training folks on how to use computers – but there was mention of how they are making the network immediately useful. The homes have been outfitted with smart metering technology, which researchers hope will help with smart grid planning. Also there is an emphasis on health care…
Certain residents will be able to use networked medical devices like scales, glucometers and blood pressure cuffs to see if they improve home health care.
It will be interesting to see what the researchers find in each of their areas of investigation. Will the fast network also boost education and safety? The plan reminds me of the folks from Einhoven talking about their network at the 2009 Blandin Broadband conference. I remember them saying that they served every home because of the savings the government was able to recoup both in terms of remote healthcare monitoring and things such as smart grid management. (You may recall that Eindhoven made the Top Seven Smart community list determined by the Intelligent Community Forum. The connection appears to be no accident at the Case Western Reserve CIO Lev Gonick wrote a paper for the Intelligent Community Forum when the Cleveland network was being built.)