The Allen County Indiana schools and State of Indiana invested in the future through an historic collaboration. The Allen County Education Network (ACENet), Indiana's only county-wide schools and libraries broadband network, was officially launched in January 2005 as the foundation stone for a northeast Indiana regional broadband infrastructure linking schools, libraries, universities and other partners.

ACENet is a collaboration between 5 Allen County Indiana public and private school districts, Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, Region 8 Education Service Center and the Allen County Public Library to provide broadband access to improve education and communications across the county.

It is supported by technology from a variety of service providers, including Comcast, Tandberg USA, Verizon Fort Wayne, the Indiana Data Center, IPFW Information Technology Services and Unitedstreaming.

The network provides high speed internet access and a range of electronic resources, including streaming video and videoconferencing capability, to school children and teachers in the county.

The fiber optic Ethernet network has been built using a Cisco Gigabit platform with an aggregate throughput in excess of 5Gb. The 'Layer 2' network allows district-level control and intercommunication without third-party intervention.

Schools opted for bandwidth ranging from 100Mb to 1Gb, according to their needs. Members of the network are connected to each other at more than 10 times the bandwidth of its connection to the state's Internet service. They link to the state's Internet service through a connection point at Indiana Data Center.

The state of Indiana contracted with Comcast to build the Allen County Education Network for $400,000. About one-third of the cost was covered by the network's members, one-third by state grant funding and one-third by other grant funds. School districts bore the cost individually of connecting their buildings to the network. It connects 89 schools in Allen County, serving 54,000 students and over 3,000 teachers in the K-12 system.

A hallmark of the project is increased efficiency and cost savings. Schools achieved significant savings on equipment and Internet by requesting proposals as a consortium. They also share training, project management and content knowledge and costs.

Brian Smith, Superintendent of Southwest Allen County Schools, and Wendy Robinson, Superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools, were co-chairs of the Invent Tomorrow Education Consortium which originally formed the cosnortium. A key accomplishment toward increasing use and effectiveness of the network was achieving a Foellinger Foundation grant to create a Content Coordinator for the consortium. This phase of the project also took on a separate identity--ACELINK.

The mission of ACELINK, which has a dedicated content coordinator, is to organize activities to promote the culture of using Internet Technology in learning, sharing, and collaboration. Projects and content that expand access, share resources, overcome limitations, increase expertise and ignite opportunities for learning with emerging technology among the ACENet partner districts and beyond are the priority for the funding.

IPFW Division of Continuing Studies partnered with the consortium to hire the ACELINK project coordinator in March 2005.

Sandy Schaufelberger, project coordinator who was charged with coordinating a vision for the use of broadband in schools, describes the launch of ACENet as a defining moment in realising that dream.

"This is going to change the lives of students and teachers in this part of the State in coming years," Schaufelberger explained.

For more information about the Allen County Education Network, contact Indiana Data Center at 260-407-7474.