Recipient Institution:
Robotic Strategy Vending Pte Ltd

Project Leader:
David Stone

Amount and Duration: US$ 29,775.25 / 15 months

Commencement Date: 1 June 2003

1. Project Background and Justification
Over the last year great leaps have been made in wireless communication technologies. While most of the technology world was lamenting the death of WAP or anxiously awaiting the arrival of 3G telecommunications, a small revolution was happening in a relatively old and open standard 802.11. There have since been many projects that have utilized community wireless 802.11 based communications, however we believe that our project is both unique in scope and architecture than any existing or previous ICT projects.

We intend to create a complete platform for delivering e-learning technologies to teachers and other educators in remote and rural schools and village community centers. This platform will comprise of a central software repository based on freely available sources and utilizing the Linux operating system. In addition using our newly developed free and open Mesh software we are able to offer a substantially new architecture that can both address the issues of scale as well of those of future funding and sustainability.

We believe that a focus on ICT based teacher training in needy environments has a more immediate impact on quality education for children than simple Internet access. Our project proposal is therefore geared toward teacher training. A highly valuable yet low-cost spin off is its enabling factor of the wider Internet for school children or indeed anyone within our total mesh range.

2.Project Objective

This project will provide a total e-learning platform designed specifically for teacher training and school curriculum design in remote and rural areas. Our platform will support multilanguage curriculum building tools and other localization utilities.

Delivery of our e-learning platform will be via 802.11-based wireless communications using our meshing technology. This technology allows for automatic authentication and bandwidth sharing as well as providing a gateway to the wider Internet. Using the Linux operating system and simple cost-effective hardware our meshing software allows for full application deployment for web browsing, email, news, instant messaging and other common programs. In addition our client/server architecture can deliver free and open source office and productivity software for teachers and students alike.

3. Project beneficiaries

Initially our project will design and build an e-learning platform delivered via our mesh architecture to 50 schools in Bali, Indonesia. Our principle education team The Bali Childrens Project 1 is led by Joyce Scott & Dr. John Cooke who have been involved for more than six years with education in rural Bali. These 50 schools will be networked together via our mesh software. A fully scalable and multi-lingual e-learning platform forms the core application upon which teacher training programs and other school curriculums can be designed and delivered.

Our mesh software architecture will cover the whole of Bali, Indonesia enabling us to scale the project across the whole island. In addition, a non-profit yet commercial business plan will be presented to hotels, villas, dive shops and other tourist locations to join our mesh for Internet access, providing additional bandwidth as well as the source of future funds for the program.

Our project is designed to be multi-user and multi-purpose. By utilizing freely available sources and a sustainable yet scaleable architectural design we intend to make our solutions available to all countries and jurisdictions.

4. Project sustainability

Our project intends to offer not-for-profit Internet access to businesses and other users, the funds from which will be used to scale the mesh architecture as well as provide additional funding for curriculum development. Our primarily e-learning platform will be available online from any location in the world where interested parties can follow the progress and success of the project.

5. Project methodology

Our project is based on two separate yet intertwined systems. The e learning and curriculum building client/server architecture and our wireless mesh 802.11-based hardware and software solutions.

The E-Learning Platform
Our e-learning platform is based upon the .LRN project developed and deployed at MIT 2, which is in turn based upon the OpenACS project. Mr. David Stone, our lead cocoordinator for this project, has been engaged in the development of the OpenACS project since Jan 2002.

Knowledge organizations recognize the need to support a variety of applications and tools to foster learning and to promote collaboration. Just as users rely on the "Office" suite of applications (word processing, spreadsheet, database, presentation, email) for basic productivity, .LRN contains an integrated suite of applications to support distributed collaborative communities engaged in learning and research.

As new technologies and tools emerge, ranging from P2P to wireless, organizations need the flexibility to stitch together various solutions and products. Based on the Web Services paradigm, .LRN will deliver a componentized architecture to permit horizontal integration of best of breed open source and proprietary technologies.

The Mesh Architecture
Our wireless architecture is based upon the current work of Mr. Jon Anderson and Mr. Mark Malewski amongst many others 5. Mr. Malewski is our hardware coordinator for this project.

The aim is to set up a single community broadband network using license exempt Wireless LAN technology. (Also known as WLAN, IEEE 802.11 or Wi-Fi) with simple tried and tested methods.

In its simplest manifestation a Community WLAN starts with a HUB - a single strategically placed, shared wireless Access Point (AP) connected to an omni-directional community antenna located at some common vantage point. This allows at any one time up to 128 computer users with wireless LAN transceivers at any line-of-sight visible distance of over 10 miles, to interconnect free of charge to an 11Mb/sec local area network hub.

A Wireless Ethernet Hub may seem no big deal, but as a means to an end is an enormous life bringing and wealth creating community asset.

Once the basic network hub is set up, the aim will be to extend its coverage by adding more identical nodes and connecting with peering arrangements to any other similar neighboring groups. This is the foundation of the mesh design with secure authentication and bandwidth optimization.

All facilities normally available to users of a wired network and especially broadband internet gateways to the outside world, neighboring community networks, multiple video conferencing nodes, independent community TV & Radio web casting and file servers may be added.

School & Community Computers
A donated central client computer (PC) will be deployed in 50 schools and communities in Bali, Indonesia. This computer will be a donated and refurbished PC and will be capable of running a modern OS. This PC will be re-engineered to act as a radio repeater by attaching a high-gain antenna to an 802.11-based Wi-Fi card. Our mesh software automatically handles secure authentication and negotiation with any other Wi-Fi device within range.

The client computer will also be capable of acting as a gateway/router for other computers on a LAN. After the deployment of our mesh our local staff can obtain additional PCs from other donated sources to increase the number of computers connected in any one school via standard Ethernet 100 mbps LAN technology.

Our donated central server will host the e-learning application framework as well as provide a gateway for the email, news and web browsing. We will also provide a standard Microsoft compatible office application suite via our client server architecture. The current software applications would include Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations etc.

We recommend that access to the Internet for school age children should be supervised at all times. However, this is not always possible. Recognizing the need for parents to assure that children only access appropriate material, we have designed a special filter system that uses an advance proxy server. 7 While this system is not perfect we feel that the extra effort goes along way to allay parent fears  and it is the right thing to do.

Software Benefits
We are also acutely aware of the problems associated with Intellectual Property especially as it pertains to Asia, therefore each computer will be loaded with the Linux operating system and the following software applications:

Optimal Deployment
The following image represents our analysis of the optimum school or community deployment locations.

Each location will have one donated client computer that acts as a mesh repeater bridging and extending bandwidth across an area of up to 30km. As can be see from the graphic we intend to cover the whole of the Island of Bali bringing e-learning within reach of every teacher and every child.

Other Benefits
In addition, all tourist locations, hotels and villas, dive shops and other businesses can join our "mesh" architecture for a small recurring fee with a simple and cost effective retrofit of any existing computer.

Even a visiting tourist with a wireless enabled laptop or PDA can sign on to our "mesh" network and gain Internet access. All revenue from these commercial sources will go towards the project's future, its funding requirements, ongoing teacher training and school curriculum development.

6. Project time-line