6.8.1 Community On-line Wideband Project Details:

Description:

This will make wideband (wireless or otherwise) available to all members of the community. A suggestion was made by Hinurewa Te Hau, Trade and Enterprise NZ on 14 May 2004 as an opportunity we could think abou, at which time our kura along with the Tuhoe Education Authority already had it in the pipeline..

Our Kura already operates laptops in a wireless network and on 7th Oct 2003 our senior students presented a collaborative computing paper at the Toshiba "Expanding Horizons" conference for teachers in Taupo. Our Kura is participating in the "Computers in Homes" programme and running evening classes in computing for parents to encourage computer literacy and student support at home.

Our community was served by very erratic telecom voice modem connections that support only low bandwidth with no access to ADSL services. Our Kura as an interim measure tried high speed inbound satellite communications but this does not provide the outgoing bandwidth needed for videoconferencing and sharing their lessons externally.

In 2003 we volunteered to be a pilot wideband rollout school. The Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard at the opening of our merged Kura on 31 Jan 2004 stated that "Wideband will soon be right through to Ruatahuna." With the merging of our two sites it was necessary to include wideband interlinking with Minginui Kura site as well. We have worked with Waikato University who have designed a special service for our location and in May 2005 this is operational so we now have video conferencing and other wideband services. A pilot has been set up with five homes in our community which can be expanded to provide radiopoint access to every home in our village.

We thank our local farmer Andrew Macdonald for offering the prime and very accesable hilltop site on his farm, without which the task would have been much more difficult.

Our thanks to the WAND Network Research Group at Waikato University whose CRC Connecting Rural Communities team have taken us on this learning journey, and involved us in its implementation and support.

See photo gallery of the solar repeater installation in our valley

It was a heavy lift to the hilltop which commands a great line of site view of the valley to Te Whaiti Kura

.... and back up the valley to the Minginui Village and our Kura site there.

See the Te Whaiti Technical Proposal.pdf which gives details of the system being rolled out to interconnect Te Urewera Schools

Outcomes expected:

• Ability to beam out our Kura programs and lessons to other schools
• Ability to allow visitors anywhere to e-visit our community and forest
• Ability to start up information age enterprises in our valley

Start Date: Mid 2004
Largely Completed: May 2005

Budget: This was financed as a pilot rollout project where we were guinea pigs

Nominal Project Leader: Local Community Liaison Chris Eketone - Chairman school Board of Trustees.

Project Team: WAND Team from Waikato University

Issues Register:

• Flag	Date:	Issue:	Action	By	Signoff
  	May 04	No wideband acess	Try to get us nominated as a pilot wideband community.	CE	sorted

Progress Log

• Date	Details of event or action	By
  14/05/04	Hinurewa Te Hau, Trade and Enterprise NZ suggested a possible community wideband project
  May 04	Enrolled as a pilot school for wideband with Waitato University Government funded project
  June 05	Wideband operational with ability to extend to community educational use.
  June 06	A number of key community locations aon line as well