March 19, 2008

By Mike Stone, News@Cisco

Something BIG is happening to education in Bulgaria. Students at three of the country's schools are benefiting from a project backed by Cisco Systems, Inc, which aims to put the kinds of technologies usually seen in big business at the service of the educational sector.

The Bulgarian Internet Generation (BIG) Project allows students to be taught specialized subjects by teachers from other schools, helps ensure parental oversight of student attendance, assists teachers' professional development and streamlines school management and administration.

This is all achieved through a range of IP technologies including videoconferencing, Unified Communications, wireless and more.

"With the new technology we can record a lesson and then go back to it and watch it later. Wireless technology allows us to participate in lessons from anywhere in school," says Dimitar Dimitrov, a 12th grader from Sofia who is participating in the program.

"Also, the network promotes easy communication between students and teachers, as well as with the school administration. For quite some time our school has had a computer network, accessible to all students and teachers.

"However, this new equipment is years ahead in terms of quality and speed."

Dimitar is one of more than 1000 students at the National High School of Mathematics and Science (NHSMS) in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

NHSMS runs networking courses as part of the Cisco Networking Academy® and launched BIG in November 2006, in a ceremony featuring Education Minister Daniel Valchev, along with two non-Academy schools.

One of these, the Technical School of Electronic Systems, is also based in Sofia while the third, Hristo Botev high school, is located in the city of Kardjali in the Rodope Mountains.

This institution's strengths in language teaching have been complemented by the lessons from the other two schools. A particular success has been the specialist mathematics lessons, transmitted live from Sofia via high-speed video link.

In fact, all the schools have benefited from this link, even enjoying a lecture from Cisco networking engineers.

Another major administrative and safety advantage that BIG brings to the participating schools is computerized class attendance records, which teachers can update using IP phones or computers with special software.

Keeping these records accurate and up-to-date is a legal requirement in most countries, and Bulgaria is no exception. More importantly, the records are vital to ensure student safety and commitment.

BIG also allows assessments and exams to be closely monitored and parents to be kept informed, alerting them to potential problems as necessary.

Parents are given a password to access the school register, so they can check remotely on whether their children are at school, as well as their marks. Other technological innovations being piloted within BIG include:

• Student-to-student conference calling between schools.
• Voicemail messaging to and from parents.
• Short message service communications from IP phones to students or parents.
• Electronic communications between principals and teaching staff.
• Automated parent communications on grades, attendance, conference calls and upcoming tests.

The advantages to Bulgarian students, parents, teachers and school administrators seem clear. But Cisco and the other BIG partners also have a lot to gain from the project.

Dragostina Grancharova, Cisco business development manager for education, explains: "The participating organizations see this pilot scheme as a testing ground for practical applications of their technologies in an educational environment.

"Of course, they want to demonstrate the power of these technologies. The eventual aim will be to expand into 1000 schools, eventually linking all educational organizations.

"This pilot is to see if the idea works in a living, breathing environment and the Bulgarian government is keen to roll it out across the whole educational system."

Besides providing equipment worth USD$270,000, Cisco is supporting BIG indirectly through the Networking Academy, whose students have helped to install the equipment and cabling. One student has even become the system administrator for a BIG school.

In addition to Cisco, BIG is being backed by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, the State Agency for Information Technologies and Communication, the municipalities of Sofia and Kardjali, the Bulgarian Association of Networking Academies and Sofia University.

Bulgarian Telecommunications Company, the main telecommunications services operator in Bulgaria, has also provided support worth more than $45,000 in creating a 2 Mbps metropolitan area network plus 45 broadband connections for teachers taking part in the project.

The integrated software for school administration and student information management for BIG was developed by the Bulgarian company Expert Vision and includes XML modules for IP phone use and Web-based applications.

The methodology and the electronic content of the mathematics lessons were developed by a team of NHSMS teachers and the project is headed by Peter Nedevski, principal of NHSMS and a noted Bulgarian mathematician.

Mike Stone is a freelance journalist located in Barcelona, Spain.