God bless the Scots. Scotland has unveiled plans for a national schools intranet digitally linking Scotland's 800,000 teachers and pupils. The intranet will feature virtual learning and collaboration tools that cut-across geographical distance and location.

The intranet plan is a five-year £37.5 million contract (that’s roughly US$80 million). Who said Scots are cheap!?

The intranet will be the first of its kind in the world and when it goes live will:  

·         Offer pupils and teachers access to a range of learning and teaching resources from their computers at school or home

·         Allow teachers to maximize the use of internet technology such as video clips and high-quality graphics, making lessons more exciting for their pupils

·         Enable every pupil and teacher to communicate and collaborate electronically with one another, sharing ideas and resources

"In schools across Scotland I have seen at first-hand how technology is transforming learning and teaching,” says Scotland’s Education Minister Peter Peacock. “I am determined to see that continue which means we must maintain our investment in technology as it advances and presents new and exciting opportunities.”

In western countries that can’t compete with wage prices of the developing nations and China, education and innovation becomes one of the last if not greatest competitive advantages. Clearly Scotland understands the value of networking students and schools as an investment in the country’s future.

"Linking every school, every teacher and every pupil via a single intranet accessible from any computer means learning will no longer end at the school gate,” adds Peacock. “Pupils will be able to do more meaningful work at home and parents will be able to take a much more active role in their children's learning.

The interconnect, in place for two years, is a large-scale broadband network that connects all 32 local authorities together, and includes links to Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. The interconnect is linked directly to the JANET network, the massive UK-wide broadband network that serves higher and further education across the country.

CDI is currently being implemented. This is a national network of specialised servers that, once fully implemented, will make it much easier for teachers and pupils to gain access to rich learning resources such as video and audio clips and graphics.).

The interconnect and CDI will be largely invisible to teachers and students across the country, but working in the background to carry out highly important tasks for the overall system.

The national intranet will be the final piece of the initiative. Following many months of detailed negotiation, the Executive decided to award the contract for the delivery and operation of the intranet to RM. The intranet will establish a highly secure online environment that will offer a range of applications and tools for teaching and learning in Scotland.

Within the intranet there will be a virtual teaching and learning environment which will allow teachers to set up lessons that use the power of internet technology to make the work more interesting, in a way that is difficult to achieve at the moment. In addition, there will be a range of communication and collaboration tools that allow teachers, pupils and others across Scottish education to share ideas and resources, to build online communities and to set up video and audio conferences between teachers and learners in different parts of the country (or across the world).

Who has the biggest? 

It’s the intranet for the US Navy and Marine Corps and you can access the home page (and some cursory areas) on the public Internet at www.nmci-isf.com.

For those not familiar with the project, EDS was hired on a multi-billion dollar contract (yes, that’s right, BILLION) to work with the Navy and Marine Corps to build a "comprehensive, enterprise-wide initiative that will make the full range of network-based information services available to Sailors and Marines for day-to-day activities and in war.”

Affectionately referred to by a user-friendly, common folk acronym, NMCI features more than your average run-of-the-mill secure access to US Armed Forces information and systems and “universal access to integrated voice, video and data communications. But you can get to it from the Internet...

While it is not complete the Navy Marine intranet will "afford pier-side connectivity to Navy vessels in port. And it will link more than 360,000 desktops across the United States as well as sites in Puerto Rico, Iceland and Cuba.”

The Navy and Marine Corps use the NMCI to achieve "a number of critical objectives:

• Enhanced network security
• Interoperability with CINCs and other Services
• Knowledge sharing across the globe
• Increased productivity
• Improved systems reliability and quality of service
• Reduced cost of voice, video and data services

Wow! The security of the free world is being influenced by major intranet activity... more to come on this one.