Testing the Internet for schools

For Education Guardian, 1997

Using the Internet ought to be easy, you connect up, sign up and surf away. But as this months ‘Which’ magazine reports, one in three attempts to connect up to a new service fail, while one in twenty never, ever touched surf.

With over a hundred firms offering different Internet deals and ease of access, here is for sure another consumer maze. Some firms offer local calls, some even free calls. And with a choice of using telephone lines, digital or cable television lines, not everyone is buying the same Internet.

Timely then, that NCET, the National Council for Educational Technology, is doing an education users survey of the Internet business. While the ‘Which’ report interestingly found users excited about email but disappointed by Internet content, the new survey is about other expectations, like connecting up and getting up to speed. As Director, Fred Daly points out "This is not about educational content, it’s about testing the things that are important to busy teachers and pupils".

As teachers head for the beaches, NCET’s computers will run the Internet services through a series of tests. Specially written software will run a daily schedule comparing how long it takes to access a Web page. They will check how these pages are sent through the system since some page requests go first to US computers instead of taking more sensible routes. NCET’s schedule will dipstick the services on quiet mornings as well as the busy afternoons when the Americans sap much of the energy from the Internet. Most importantly, as those who snatch minutes to pick up their mail will appreciate, they will check how reliably they can connect to providers’ systems. Busy tones, or where the service does not have enough modems, no tones at all might be found.

NCET stress they are not making league tables - more finding out what there is to find out. Indeed the industry is sceptical about testing with its many variables. For example, it is easy for a new service, with few customers, to come top in a test.

So putting the joy of specs to one side, NCET will also assess how everyday users manage. Their senior programme officer, Zinat Merali explains that they will call on their network of 160 schools, a sort of focus group, to report on how easy it is to digest instructions, install software, and get help. The reasoning is clear, as she reminds that teachers are the most ‘time-poor’ and ‘telephone-poor’ of professionals. In other words, they haven’t the time to use the phone they don’t have.

The report, due in January, while not the first to chart the area, may be a first in helping to shape services that sell to education. As suppliers of school computers and CD-Rom software have come to learn, school imperatives differ. Some want smart service and some want the fastest Internet plumbing they can get for their cash.

With the government looking seriously at the Stevenson Report, raising its ‘email for all’ call so adding 5 million new users to the system, schools can safely guess that the Internet providers will want to shape up.

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