 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing this morning and then it's posted to our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the archived recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. Here at the Nebraska Library Commission we provide services and to all types of libraries in the state, so you will find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public K-12, academic, museums, corrections, archives, anything and everything really. It just runs the gamut. We do book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products. You just never know what you find on the show. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that do some presentations for us on services or resources or resources or things we're offering through the Library Commission. But we also have bringing guest speakers as we have today. And today we have a team, a group, I don't know what you guys call yourself, from the University of Nebraska. Brett, Bieber, and Neil Brown and Ben Nelson to talk to us about this connected Nebraska, which I think is really an awesome thing that libraries need to jump on to to help our students get better connected and be on the internet. So I'm just gonna hand over to you guys and I think Brett, starting with you to take it away and tell us all about Connected Nebraska. Absolutely. Thank you, Krista. And thanks for having us today. Krista mentioned that I'm with the University of Nebraska and I'll introduce myself, but we also have some colleagues with us, Neil Brown, who's also with the University of Nebraska and Ben Nelson, who's with the state, who is a project manager for this project that we're going to introduce to you all today called Connected Nebraska. So great to be with you all and we'll jump right in. So first, I'll give you a little intro of myself. I've been with the University of Nebraska about 16 years, mainly in the IT space and in particular, identity, federated identity and allowing users to log in and access services. I guess that's kind of how I got tied into this. The University is a participant in a program that called Edgerome that we're going to be talking about today. But it's great to be here and it's great to be with you all. I spent a lot of time with the University and worked a little bit with their libraries there, especially with some folks. I'm kind of an amateur genealogist, so I have some fun there. But anyways, that's enough about me. I want to give you all a little bit of background around just to set kind of the stage of why this program, why this project is so important. And so just give you a little bit of data here. 37% of rural Nebraskans do not have access to high-speed internet, and that's from the Nebraska Rural Brad Band Task Force. We also have 42% of Nebraska students that are on free or reduced lunch. So those that are living below the poverty line and also affordability, of course, impacts whether or not someone can pay for having internet access at their home. That's from the Department of Education. And then also this, from the FCC, 12% of Nebraskans under the age of 18, so our primary students there do not have access to a reliable internet connection at home. So in the beginning of 2020, in the beginning of the pandemic, the Department of Education sent out a survey to parents, administrators, et cetera, to the state, and they asked them, what's the top need? And they were hoping to get some information on where they should spend some of the CARES Act funding that they were going to receive. And the responses that were provided to the survey identified that the top need was enhancing technology infrastructure, e.g. broadband for students and families. So that was identified as the top need. In that same survey, they had a number of comments that came in, but these ones, I think, were speak directly to what we're talking about today. The first one here, internet access is key from Michelle. The next one from Tracy, I am devastated. I can't be a teacher right now. Also, when directing us to do online teaching, realize outside the big city, students do not have access to quality internet. We have students who stay after school and do online homework before going home. We have others who go to local gas stations that offer free Wi-Fi to do their homework. That isn't going to work. And then this one from a teacher, I do not have internet service, nor can I afford it. I am a first grade teacher. What do you suggest? So are these comments specifically from Nebraska or just from the whole nationwide survey? This is from Nebraska. The Department of Education, this is the Nebraska Department of Education. They're not this survey. So these are our, these are folks from across the state. Some of you may have seen a press release that was announced in July of this year. And this was really our big splash where we announced the program and our project and what we want to work on over the next few years. And it's called Connected Nebraska. And the headline here says Connected Nebraska offers free wireless internet to Nebraska schools. And that's really the big splash that we announced at the end of July. And we timed this for the annual conference that the Department of Education and the NCSA, they host an annual conference for school administrators in Carney. And this was timed so that we could announce the program and then be there to present to superintendents and technical directors at all of the ESUs across the state about what the program is. So what the program is, is it's called Connected Nebraska. And it's simple, secure, easy to use Wi-Fi powered by Edge of Rome. And we're going to walk through what this is and what it means for our K through 12 students and also how libraries can participate. I want to give you a little bit more information around who actually is promoting this, because I think there's some people that are suspicious of this, that this is a commercial entity or we're trying to sell you something. This is not. This is a collaboration between the Department of Education, the State of Nebraska Office of the CIO, the University of Nebraska and the ESUCC. So if you're not familiar with that, that's the Educational Service Unit Coordinating Commission. And they work together to coordinate how IT is delivered to K through 12 schools. But we have a number of partners here all supporting this mission. And in case you aren't aware, Network Nebraska is this backbone that connects nearly all of the K through 12 schools. And in fact, some of the libraries across the state as well with their internet connectivity, with all this collaboration and coordination, we're able to offer really discounted rates on internet connectivity and help help schools get connected. This project is really, I think, going to be one of the most visible to the actual students. This project has the potential to be the most visible delivery of what Network Nebraska has provided for many, many years, which is that fiber internet connectivity backbone for the state. So that's a little bit of back in the behind the scenes that, you know, the students and sometimes maybe even the teachers and definitely the families don't have a clue how it all who does it, but they just know it works. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's that's good when it's working and bad when it's not. But it should be, you know, it is one of those foundational technologies that is so important and delivers that internet connectivity to so many of the K through 12s across the state. So why do we want a little bit more about why do we want to have this project? What does it help do? We want to allow for equity of access. So regardless of a student's or their family's financial status, we want to make sure that they have access to the internet. We also want to provide an improved user experience. And by that, I think you'll see there's a lot of potential with this to improve user experience with how users connect to Wi Fi. And also we want to leverage the existing investments that we have. So libraries, the K through 12 schools, these are places where we've invested in internet connectivity. And we can leverage them to deliver a lot more connectivity. If we can make it easier for students and staff to all access this. And also we want to improve security. So one of those comments from I think it was Tracy who provided that comment saying that students have to go to public wireless gas stations, other locations. And many times those are open free Wi Fi networks where anyone can can snoop on your traffic. The program and the project that we're talking about would be a secure wireless offering. So just to tell you about how the university got involved in this, I want to it starts a little bit with when the University of Nebraska Lincoln, when the Huskers joined the Big 10. And this is kind of our our own personal story about how we got involved with what's called edge room and known across higher ed as as edge room. So in 2010, you may have seen some of these articles about the Huskers joining the Big 10. And you may you may not be aware that while we compete on the field, there is a significant amount of collaboration that happens within the area of it. And other another academic studies and programs, there's a lot of collaboration that happens behind the scenes amongst the Big 10 as well. And one of the examples of that is when our CIO first got to go to the quarterly, I think they are quarterly CIO meetings with all of the Big 10 CIOs. They usually host those on one of the campuses within the Big 10. And when our CIO got to go to his first one, I think it was in 2011, maybe, maybe 2012. He was the only CIO who had to ask what the Wi Fi password was. Everyone else in the Big 10 was a member and participant of edge room and offered that service. So every other school and CIO was able to connect automatically at that host institution. But Nebraska, our CIO wasn't able to connect because we weren't participating yet. So you could bet the first one of the things that he had a project for us when he came back in 2012 was to get the University of Nebraska as a participant edge room. And we've been a member since 2012. And we we broadcast this technology across all of the University of Nebraska campuses. So any student that gets connected can connect to whether they're at Carney, Lincoln, Omaha, or the Med Center. Once they get connected to edge room, they can travel and access the internet at any of our of our schools and also other locations across the Big 10 and across the country. So what am I, what am I really talking about here? Literally, this is this is what it is. Here's some screenshots from my from my cell phone. And when I go to access the Wi Fi networks, I see something called edge room. And for my username, I put in my email address that is associated with a member of edge room. And here the Nebraska edu we're a member of this. And so I put in that and my password. And then I get connected. There's no additional software that needs to get installed on the end users devices. This is a technology that's been around for a very long time. And in fact, edge room was invented in the Netherlands and it was in 2002, I believe. So this has been around for a for a very long time, and actually really popular in Europe. It's just in the United States that we're, that we're just now beginning to see a lot more broader adoption, and also moving into the K through 12 space. So there are some that recognizes you based on your the email, the Nebraska.edu part. Yeah, exactly. So that is what helps the authentication servers identify where your home institution is. And all of your communication, the communication about your password is securely transmitted all the way back to your home institution to verify that you are an authenticated user, and then you get connected. And typically you only have to do this once you set this up once. And then when your device comes within the broadcast range of a participating site that's broadcasting edge room, you just connect automatically and you don't have to do this ever again. So you don't even have to enter your password that saved on the other. That's right. It's saved in your device. Yeah, saved in your device. So there are some benefits for our administrators of the K through 12 schools and also of the the participants. You've got one solution. I was I was talking to the technical director for ESU six and he has three schools that he supports. Milford, Malcolm and all of those schools decided to use MPSM as in Mary MPS as their Wi-Fi. Well, when one teacher goes from Milford to Malcolm, they see the same network but they can't connect. So if they've had to work around that and tell people, well, forget your network and then reconnect again. This is one solution. So if they broadcast edge enrollment, all of those sites because it uses your domain name for your email as your home institution, it allows us to have one solution that can accept users from all across the country or across the globe. It's reliable and scalable. And when I say scale, I mean serious scale. This is this is operating it at within all of the. Of course, I mentioned already the Big 10 institutions, but there's a significant number of higher ed institutions across the US and it's very broadly deployed across Europe. If you go inside airports, museums, libraries and all those other host institutions, they're using this and they're broadcasting it in many different locations. In fact, Cape Town, South Africa, this is part of their municipal Wi-Fi. They broadcast edge room. So it's a simple way to get folks connected. You've got the reliable, you got a scalable solution here. If you're sending users out and you want them to connect, many times you might have to send them out with a hot spot or something like that, which costs extra money. This can save them time for configuring and getting their configured devices configured once. And also they don't have to use their hotspots if they don't have to. And this is that concept of your home wherever you roam. So if you're having a professional development event, you're bringing in a lot of teachers or students travel to conference sites. A great example of this was at the UNIS Conference Center in Carney. When we went there for the Administrators' Day's conference, we worked with Dan UNIS and he was able to turn on Edge of Rome with their existing infrastructure and broadcast it at the hotel conference site. And everyone that was from a participating institution could automatically get connected at the UNIS Conference Center. They didn't have to ask for any username or password. They just automatically got connected. So it can really help improve connectivity and simplify the access there. For the students, it's seamless. You set it up once and then you can connect at all these other sites, connect at any time. You've got that continuity of access. And I'll show an example here from Utah, where they have this deployed through a number of K through 12s, how that continuity is achieved at one of these institutions, one of the schools that are there. And it's this home wherever you roam concept, whether they're at school, whether they travel for athletic events and potentially if we can get libraries and museums to broadcast as well, continue that connectivity at all these sites as well. So I'll share right now our early adopters. And these are folks that have signed on already. As I mentioned, we kind of made our big splash in July. And so these are folks that have either participated with us, have helped us begin some of the initial discussions and now have signed on. We've got 31 locations across the state, 31 K through 12s in all of these different communities here, and ESUs that are actively working on deploying this. So this is our current map of our early adopters where we have 31 within the K through 12 space. But the potential is pretty incredible when you start thinking about what this could mean if we if we were able to deploy this across the entire state. So this would be a map of edge of Rome at all, just the high schools. If we were able to get this broadcast at every one of the high schools across the state. If you include the public libraries, we have a number of those sites here as well that could offer this seamless connectivity for students. Now I mentioned before that this isn't this isn't something that's just for Nebraska. This is already an existing program that's rolled out across the entire United States. These are all of the existing sites that are broadcasting edge of Rome right now for students. Many of these are higher ed institutions that have already signed on. It started in higher ed. We have a lot of collaboration between research collaborators. So if you're a high level of an institution that has a high level of research, this is one of the first things that you're going to be needing to set up is edge of Rome so that all of your research collaborators can come in and get connected without without any issues. I'll dive right in here to Utah because this is an example of where they've started rolling this out at K through 12. Utah started this. This is the Alpine school district and there's a significant number of schools that already have it deployed within the state of Utah. This was the pilot to bring what we have within the higher education into K through 12 space and Utah has been doing a fantastic job at deploying this within their key through 12s. Nebraska actually had to write up a proposal. So we worked together with the ESUCC, the state of Nebraska, the University of Nebraska and all those folks to write a proposal for Nebraska to be one of the next states to roll this out and against 19 other states that wrote proposals Nebraska was selected along with Arizona to roll this out to our K through 12s. So we've got really three states right now that are currently rolling this out to K through 12s. Utah, Nebraska and Arizona and we're coming up towards the end of the year. This is an annual proposal process. So the next round of states are going to be coming in. So I don't know who will be next from the states but they had 19 proposals last time. Two were selected. I believe we're going to have a lot more states interested in this as we continue to roll this out. So open rural areas like us, like Nebraska that don't have that broadband availability. They're going to be looking at this first just like we did, I'm sure. Yeah, well and leverage those existing investments where we have great connectivity, fiber internet to libraries or K through 12s where we've already made those investment investments. Let's make it easier for students to connect. So I've got a video here. We'll see if the audio comes through well that this is a video from that Utah produced about a rollout. And this is one of their superintendent speaking here. You can just go in. It just connects and it works. Didn't choose edge your own when they travel to visiting schools. For example, when students in our buildings, they obviously have connectivity. Then we put them on a bus and we have connectivity on our buses as we travel students to visit school. When they step off the buses, then they go into those other buildings and they can connect to those internet connections through edge your own outdoor access points. So that way anyone that can come can connect and enjoy its benefits. It's seamless opportunity for me to just connect. I don't even know what it's really happening. It's just that I always have Wi-Fi used edge your own wherever I travel and know I'm going to be able to have connectivity. They just show up, it connects, it works and they don't have anything to worry about. There's seamless transition for students to stay connected no matter where they're at. So that was Ben Dalton, superintendent at the Keen School District in Utah talking about how they've been able to deploy this and really some exciting opportunities. When you think about that seamless connectivity, students connect at their home school, they get on the bus. The bus is broadcasting edge your own so they don't lose connectivity there. They'd ride on the bus to wherever they're traveling visiting. They're visiting another school for an athletic event or a competition or something like that. They step off the bus and then they can connect to edge your own with that host institution without having to ask what's the Wi-Fi password. How do I get connected here? That's that seamless connectivity that can can really benefit and give all that equity of access. Let me show you also I mentioned that this is this isn't just the United States. Edge Rome is deployed in I think 106 territories across the globe heavily in Europe. And if you download an app, there's an app called the Edge Rome companion that you can get on your mobile device. And you can just sort of look around there, look around the globe and see all of the locations across the globe that are already broadcasting edge Rome. The United States is kind of playing catch up here in Europe, especially with Europe because they have they have this delivered in so many different places. So if you think about the potential here, and I want to highlight that Alliance in particular, this is this is where my my mother was from. And would love traveling out here have some friends from Alliance to this was this is what it could be if we were able to get edge Rome broadcasting at all of these sites here, the early childhood education center, both the elementary is the middle school and the high school, the public library, the night museum frontier town Boxview County Extension office, all of these places already have investments in connectivity. If we can make it more seamless for those students to access anywhere they're learning. So whether it's a four H event at the county extension office, or it's at the museum, or it's at the library, or it's at the school, they would have that seamless connectivity. So the vision here is, you hand a student, a device, whether it's a Chromebook or some other device that is connected to edge Roman, and you've got it set up at their home institution, they can take that device. And they can connect across across the state of Nebraska across the globe, anywhere they're learning and get connected. So our current stats, just to let you know where we at with our rollout, we have right now 11% of our school districts in the state that have signed on and have started their rollout. 25 districts in nine different ESUs, if you aren't familiar with that term, that's the educational service unit. And that's typically how technology is supported across the state. It's a group into 19 different ESUs that support a region of the state for technology in K through 12s. 30% of the ESU offices are also working on this or have it already broadcasted within their within their ESU administration office. There are 52 sites across the state that are broadcasting edge room. And right now we've got 21 participation agreements signed and seven agreements that are in progress. The agreements are very simple. If you're from a library that wants to sign on the service provider just to broadcast this, that the agreement is very simple. The administrator signs it. That goes to the CIO of the state of Nebraska, Ed Toner, and he signs it. And it's a very simple setup. All we're talking about here is configuration of usually what what is your existing wireless infrastructure, the existing infrastructure you have that's broadcasting your wireless network, you just add in edge Rome as another SSID. And that's what we're talking about here. So for the 52 sites where it's all software, not hardware, there's no equipment, no special that's right. And that's right. And usually all that you've done on that previous either that's just since July when you first announced it. Yeah, we've had a few that were that we're working closely with us. Um, before we announced, but I we've had a significant number of these that have signed up just within the last few weeks. That's awesome. Monday this jump in real quick, you need to do it. Yeah, go ahead. We've had three additional sign in just this week. So we're at 20, I think 24 now. Agreement 24 agreement slides. Yeah, so we're making really good progress. And thank you, Ben for jumping in there. Ben is a project manager, and he's the one who also helps with a lot of the back end work here. He's really keeping everything on on track here with us. But this map that I have here shows our 52 sites across Nebraska that are currently broadcasting edge of Rome. And there's 12 in Lincoln. And I want to highlight a little bit about what what we're doing in Lincoln because I think it's a very interesting opportunity with with an ISP that has some connections to Nebraska. So within within the city of Lincoln, Allo has decided to broadcast edge Rome at 10 sites across the city of Lincoln. And they selected a number of sites that they thought had kind of a connection to the community to pilot this. Allo has been a great partner. They've been interested in figuring out a way to help education. And this is one way that they thought that kind of aligned with their mission of trying to deliver connectivity and help out education. So they decided to. Identify 10 nonprofits in the city of Lincoln to try this out and see how this would work. And so the locations across Lincoln are the Barnabas Community Center, big brothers, big sisters, boys and girls clubs of Lincoln Lancash County, Civic, Civic Nebraska, the Clyde Malone Community Center, Good Neighbor Community Center, Matt Talbot Kitchen and Outreach, the People City Mission, Willard Community Center. And then they have it at a couple of other locations, the Mill, also known as the Bay, which is Skate Park, Indoor Skate Park. And they have it at their their offices, the Allo Building in the Telegraph District. So they were able to broadcast edge of Rome, starting, I think, in July, the middle of July, they were able to get it up and running. And they received the first report and the first report gave them a summary of where all their visitors were coming from and how many people connected to those nonprofit locations where they're broadcasting edge of Rome. So in that first partial month of July, they saw 22,000 connections. And those were people that had seamless connectivity, brought in their device and automatically connected at one of those nonprofits across the city of Lincoln. So whether it was the city mission or one of the, you know, the the soup kitchen, any of those places, those those users, those students would have been connected seamlessly and they saw 22,000. So I think the results exceeded their expectations. So some some good news there too. Allos been a great partner and they're working right now with the manufacturer of their home modems, the modems, the fiber modem that they put inside residential spaces to see that edge of Rome installed on those as well. So they're they're targeting a consumer rollout and we're going to see within the fourth quarter of this year testing that. But that would give us the potential of broadcasting edge of Rome and allowing a student to connect at any consumer that would that wanted to participate here. So some really have that at home, the students at their home, they have the allo modem. Exactly. Yeah, so think about that in terms of a, you know, urban location where you've got a number of folks all inside a an apartment building or something like that edge of Rome, as long as they were within range of a of a site that was broadcasting it, they could get seamless connectivity there. We also have a number of other service providers that are just broadcasting it and you don't have to be from a K through 12 to broadcast it. Actually, anyone can broadcast edge of Rome. If you want to provide that to that service to students and let let students access the internet. So we've got a number of places, coffee and tea shops, the Greenleaf Tea Company here in Lincoln is interested. The Pizza Kitchen in Milford, one of the ESU technical directors, he said, you know, we're going to have a meeting with all of our superintendents at the pizza kitchen. And we approached the owner and said, Hey, could you broadcast edge of Rome here? Explain what it was, got them on board, and we're going to have edge of Rome broadcast at the pizza kitchen there. So I'm going to get out there and test it out as soon as we get it up and running. Churches can sign on if they want to broadcast this as, you know, if they're a center for the community for students to to get connected. There's a lot of opportunity here. I also will mention that in the month of October, we're going to begin the conversations with the Omaha Metro, our mass transit systems. So Lincoln Star Tran and Omaha Metro start the conversation around getting edge of Rome on the buses as well. They're already doing this within Gainesville, Florida. They've they've been in conversations with their their city and making sure that the provider that they've selected for connectivity on their buses can support this and it and it can. I think the last piece is they're working with their the cellular provider that connects those buses waiting for that contract to get signed. Then they'll have this within Gainesville, Florida. So really exciting opportunity here. And we're seeing a lot of uptick in and interest. So if you're interested, so libraries, definitely we want to get this connectivity anywhere students that are anywhere students are learning. So we have a website. The website is connect ed Nebraska dot com. And don't be scared by the dot com there. We're not a commercial entity. This is all nonprofits connected Nebraska dot com. There's a lot of a lot of links to the same place. So up on the top, it says, how can I get connected Nebraska contact us? And then there's another link, get connected, get in touch. All of those go to the same place where you submit an interest form. And that goes to a Ben Nelson, our project manager, and he makes sure to coordinate and help answer any questions. So the the first thing to do if you're interested in this is to submit that interest form, start broadcasting edge of Rome at your site and become an ambassador, you know, just like just like Jayman Hall, the ESU technical director for ESU six, he went to the pizza kitchen and said, can you are you interested in this? It would be great if you could do this. Become an ambassador, reach out to those locations or those sites where students learn or are important to the community, just like Aloe has done with those nonprofits and see if they can get signed up as well. So for next steps, and if you're interested in talking more, here's my contact information. This is my email address. And I also have Ben Nelson's up there. Ben Nelson is as I mentioned, the project manager for this and the link to our website there. And we're available to of course answer any questions that you all have and and continue this conversation. So with that, I don't know, Krista, do we have any questions or can you think of anything else that we didn't cover today? Sure, yeah. If anybody just we do have a question, we do have one. But if anybody has any questions, go ahead and type into the questions section of your go to webinar interface. I'm monitoring that here. And I can grab it, grab any questions we have. Somebody please go ahead and start typing in there. I did just want to mention, yeah, when you're talking about libraries getting involved in helping this visit, I think, I guess it's a little out this, I think this is like a no brainer. It's free. Do it. You just kind of get it done. Our public libraries do off many of them struggle in the afternoons. After what you were talking about how this that one teacher commented their students go to the gas station, but the public libraries once they don't have the school closes at three or four when the afternoon, there's a huge influx of students coming to the library because that's the next place where they can gather that has that's broadcasting Wi-Fi. And many libraries struggle with providing that. Do they have enough bandwidth to do it? It slows down everything else. And so it's definitely something. And now that's a question somebody does have to what how. So I'm looking at the technical side of this. So this would be a separate Wi-Fi connection from the libraries, one that it has also so that if the students come in and use this, then it won't slow down the one that other users may be using. Is that correct? That's a good question. That's a good question. It also kind of touches on, you know, how would how would we roll this out, especially if you already have a guest wireless system? You know, what what does this mean for that? This doesn't make more Internet. So I'm sorry if that's a letdown. It's not going to make it's not going to try to start with is the speed does their current bandwidth can it handle? Oh, you know, what they're with the users want and oftentimes it's fine until you get so many more people. And yeah, you know, so that that obviously is a an ongoing issue, especially if we don't have great connectivity to to the library. So one of the suggestions that I would have there, I know, Krista, you're you're familiar with a lot of this process as well, would be to reach out to Tom Rolfes and talk about how you can get your your library connected to network Nebraska. And increase the speeds that you have there. That would be one great suggestion is to work on getting getting getting an upgraded connection because it is really important to have that connectivity there. I know a number of schools and K through 12s also participate and and support the libraries. So that may be another option as well is to work with your local K through 12 or ESU to figure out a way to get connectivity there to increase it. This project doesn't make more Internet. It leverages your existing connections and the investments that have already been made. He already have to have this being to do that. Yeah, I think that's the benefit, right? I mean, obviously, Brett did an excellent job presenting on the benefits in what what that will mean for the students. But, you know, if you're a library person and you're watching this presentation, you know, so what, so what for me? Or what do I get out of this? I think part of that influx, right? Of of what comes with that three o'clock rush of a massive amount of students. No longer are you trying to onboard that students device? No longer are you trying to hand out a username password? No longer are you worried about it? You know, somebody an open SSID that somebody's just joining automatically that seamless connection is what is going to allow users to congregate, come to the library, participate in being able to get onto a seamless connection. And so I think that's a huge thing to get them connected because it ought to just connects automatically. Yes, that's right. But the additional security as well. An additional security you're going to know exactly. And I know you said earlier that is secure is what are the security concerns for hosting edu Rome are there? And so still your home institution, any content filtering, any of the stuff that you already have in place for your home institution would still follow for whatever your current processes are. So if there are certain sites that are restricted to the library, that would still follow and still like Brett said, it didn't make a new connection. It didn't, you know, all of a sudden circumvent anything or route traffic back somewhere that you're not anticipating. It's still going to follow all of your current processes and rules for your current content filtering or security for that for your outbound traffic. But what it will get you is you won't you no longer you will get to know okay, Neil Brown is coming from at Nebraska.edu. He is I can definitely track that guy as part of the University of Nebraska or the student was part of this ESU group or the student was from school. It's going to provide a bit more insight on exactly who's connecting to your network as opposed to Joe, Joe Smith that made up email.com that joined your joined your network. Right. And that's the one of you should have the security concerns about. Okay. Another question came in. Let's see. I'm making sure I've got them all here. You mentioned this is free to the libraries and schools. And so who is paying for it is just all of the none of the university and you know, who's putting up the funding for this is that who it is the university and the state and CIO's office. Yeah, where the money is coming from. It's not, you know, it's not a commercial operation, of course, but here it is. Absolutely. So that's a good question. Who is first and foremost, if you're just broadcasting, there are no costs at all. If you are an institution that has identities. So for us at the University of Nebraska, we have Nebraska.edu email addresses and we have unl.edu and you and Omaha and lopers.unk. We've got all those different domains to be a member of edgerome and actually have your user identities routed back to your home institution for the authentication. There is a cost associated and you pay with a membership fee. And it is it is very minimal. And with the University of Nebraska, we've been a member of it for since 2012. And there's there's it's it's not expensive. And with what we've done with this contract, we're able to sign up with Network Nebraska as the regional education network operator to get a very discounted rate on this. The Department of Education is the one who has sponsored the first few years of this program. And going forward, there is a board of Network Nebraska that is going to determine the sustainable funding for those K through 12 schools that have all of their domains and they want to have all of their email addresses for the authentication routed back to their home institution. What we're talking about, if we spread it out over all of the Network Nebraska members, this is a very, very minimal fee. If we if we spread it out equally, I was I was thinking we were looking somewhere at the $200 range per year. If you if you look at it per learner, I think it was less than 15 cents per year per learner. So it's a very small fee to be a member of this at all. And there's no costs for someone who just wants to broadcast this such as schools and the libraries that want their students and staff to be able to access it. They pay their fee and in libraries just send out the signal will make it available so that when those people come to the library, they can use it and the library doesn't have they're not the ones. That's right. Taking it out. Yeah. Makes sense. I think the other and I think the other point that you made that was a really great point was that the like you said is slam dunk. The work's already been done. We've already gone through the presentation or the the process to get applied. We had the state of Nebraska get accepted, competed against 19 other states for this opportunity. We got that. We've only got funding for it from the Nebraska Department of Education. I mean, it's kind of like we are offering this great service that we've kind of lined all the ducks up on already. So that that I think is a huge testament to the support and the where this where we think that this project and effort can go. Yeah, I think it matters too that this isn't like, you know, we are one of the first states doing it. But as your previous maps and expression, this isn't a new concept. It's it's it's a proven it everyone knows exactly how it works. It's all figured out already from across the whole world already. And now we just have to join as well. Yeah. And I think there were last I checked 270 higher ed institutions that are already participating before they started doing statewide network acceptance with Utah and Nebraska and Arizona. Oh, just individually universities were doing it on their own type. Oh, yeah. And that's just in the United States. That's just in the United States that was mentioning there. Yeah. All right. So anybody have any other questions? Go ahead and get them typed in. We still have time here this morning. If you do have anything desperate, you want to ask. Get typed in there. I do want to mention you did mention Tom Tom Ralfus about getting connected with a network of Raskin he's actually here today. He's on line with us. Hi, Tom. I've got you so you can unmute yourself, Tom, if you wanted to talk a little bit about network Nebraska. Actually, you guys have been doing a superb job. So I really don't have much more to add. Because I did type in if you may not have seen it. But to remind all of our library participants and those watching the recording that the special construction matching fund for fiber for the first time will still be in place for this year in the next two years, at least excellent opportunity for libraries to, you know, improve their their broadband situation. And that'd be a great dovetail for a Jerome as well. That's what I was thinking about. Yeah, I did see your chat there. Tom, it hadn't yeah, I had to open that up. Yeah, I guess I was thinking about with talking to you about the fact that we're talking that libraries already have to have the fast enough internet to handle all the kids coming in in the afternoon. And and I think you mentioned getting bread that we do have some of our public libraries that are have already joined network Nebraska. Correct. So that roster right now includes Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island and Beatrice, but it doesn't have to be just the larger libraries were ready to work with medium and smaller libraries for sure, and can be a great support mechanism for them. Yeah, anybody who yeah, Neil and public libraries are interested can, you know, reach out to Tom about that. But then there's the special construction for fiber that we are helping libraries to apply for. And Tom and I and other staff first near the Library Commission, Holly Wolt are involved in that project. It's done via the E-Rate program where libraries in schools receive discounts on their internet connections and the equipment to get that internet connections, a federal program to get discounts. And there's this special matching fund, a special matching program part of it where if your state some provides some assistance to get fiber run to a library or school that doesn't have it yet, then E-Rate will help with some of that cost as well. So in some cases makes the cost to run the fiber to the library nothing or only like 10% of the cost, very, very minimal. We started this last year and we've got six libraries who have successfully applied and received the discounted funding getting their fiber run as we speak, some of them. And this the funding is through the Public Service Commission. They have a million dollars set aside for four years to get this fiber run out to libraries using E-Rate discounted funding to run it. So definitely there are and I'll show you. We did we get a bit. We did a recording about it. We have information, our website about it. You can reach out to me or Tom or Holly have helped know more if you want if you're a library who doesn't have fiber yet. That's the key. You have to not have a fiber connection at all. And then this can get you a fiber run from wherever it is in your community to the library at very, very discounted or if you're lucky free cost. With our help and with Public Service Commission's help. So that would get your speed up. And we were usually getting libraries at a minimum a gig, I think, some more very high speeds. I think we did as our minimum 100 megabits per second. I can't remember Tom, but where requirement was. But they're getting whatever their provider will give them. So definitely getting enough speed to the libraries to be able to handle all these students coming in the afternoon. Yes, and infinitely scalable for the future. That's probably the most important part if the libraries on a DSL or cable modem connection, there is an upper limit to that technology. So once they make the leap to fiber, skies the limit. And so we want the library to be the center of the community and in rural areas, putting a high bandwidth connection at the library would be an extraordinary demonstration tool for patrons that have been sufficient internet at home. And then it just starts the whole conversation. But other than their cell phones, many rural citizens have never ever seen or experienced extremely high bandwidth connections like we have at schools and colleges. Another item I just wanted to throw in real quick is I know we speak heavily of students because they are our main focus. But every school has teachers and staff that will also be able to participate in Edge of Rome. So you're not helping just the students, but you're helping those teachers and educators and the staff for those schools making their lives easier as well. Yeah, significant opportunity here for for us to leverage the existing investments or identify where we have investments and we could make that connectivity just seamless. The vision, I think it's really exciting to to kind of think about how that could really impact our state. And I think it does. I think it's got a lot of opportunity to really help a lot of students across our state. When you when you picture that in your head, you could hand a hand a laptop to a student and to be able to know that they could get connected at all of these places across the state without having to ask for what the Wi-Fi password was or go to an insecure public public Wi-Fi where someone else could see their content or see what they were doing. So I'm really exciting opportunity there to to help to help students and our educators get connected. So thank you, Krista. This has been fantastic. I'm excited to share this and I'm I'm hopeful that we can get some libraries to participate in this as well. As I mentioned before, we just submit the contact us form that will go to Ben and the rest of the team. We've got regular technical calls where we can answer questions. Of course, there's a lot of different existing technologies that are installed out there. And so we we're almost playing matchmaker. If you've got this type of hardware and access points, here's how you can get those configured. Some are automatic, some are set up guides are actually provided by the manufacturers. So Cisco, if you have Maraki hardware, that they already provide a how to get connected to edge room instructions. So manufacturers are aware of this as well. It's a it's a very broadly deployed technology. We're just hoping to get more people signed up and and helping students get connected. Yeah, like I said, I think it should be something. Yeah, there's no no reason any library shouldn't do it. Just got to reach out and get it set up so that you're broadcasting that. And yeah, whatever. I think it's something many of our smaller, especially the smaller libraries do not have a lot of they don't have tech support of their own. They don't have a tech guy or an IT department. So I think having knowing that there's going to be instructions for whatever you use that all of you are available to guide them through and handhold them through what it takes to get it set up is I think going to make a huge difference because many times they hear the about these things and even about the special fiber, we're trying to get them on and most men of the children fear is I don't know anything about that. I don't even know what's in my network closet with all those cables and wires and things. And it's like, don't worry, we got people that can help you with it. We will make it happen. Yeah, you don't have to know. Yeah, and especially as we get more and more schools and more and more places that are signing on, I think we'll see a lot of expertise and a lot of others that are willing to help, you know, and once you once you experience it, it's pretty fantastic to be able to just go and travel and just get connected seamlessly. So it'll be fantastic. It works. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you, Brett and Neil and Ben and Tom for being here with us this morning and talking to us about it. You connected Nebraska. We highly encourage all libraries reach out. I'm showing here. This is the session page for today's show where we have a link to their the connected Nebraska website. So you can go there and contact them and get connected and get in touch whatever you need to do to reach out to them to get your library helping out with this. So thank you everybody for attending the show. Is been recorded and will be available on our main website. This this same information will be with along with the recording. This is our main Encompass Live page. We have our upcoming shows, but our archives link is right here at the bottom. And I do have Brett's slides as well. So those will be included. It'll be a link to those when we put up the recording. It'll be the top of the list here. Our most recent shows are at the top. They'll be a link to recording on our YouTube channel and a link to the slides in our slide share account. So you'll have access to all of those. Everybody who attended today and register for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when it's ready. By the end of the day tomorrow, as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me, you should have a link to the recording. It's and like I said in the beginning, everything is free and open to everyone our recording. So share with all of your other library colleagues, get the word out and schools for the schools that have not connected yet. Have not joined in. Share the word, spread the link around to anybody who you think would want should be involved in this. While we're here on our archives, I'll show you a search feature here. So if I look through our show archives to see if we've had a show on any topic you might be interested in, you can search the whole archives are just most recent 12 months. If you want just something very current. That is because this is our full show archives. I'm not going to scroll all the way down because there's too many, but you can see it's a giant page. We have our full archives going back to when Encompass Live premiered in January 2009 are all here. So when you are watching recording, pay attention to the original broadcast date. Many of our shows may will stand this test of time and still be good, valid, accurate information. But some things will become outdated. Services and products may have changed drastically since we broadcast links, URLs may be broken or no longer work anymore. So just pay attention when you are watching and recording of what the date is on it. If you do just search here. We do also have a Facebook page. I've got a link here and I've got it open over here. If you like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. We remind about when we're doing shows, there's a link to log on to today's show on the fly. Little. Well, here's our presenter for the day or when last week's reporting is available. So if you do like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. We also use our hashtag Encompass Live to blog, to post onto Twitter and Instagram. So if you like to follow us over there, we do the same kind of announcements there as well as you can keep up with what we're doing on the show. So that wraps up for today. I'll hope you join us next week when our topic is it's pretty sweet tech day. The last Wednesday of every month is Amanda Sweets who is our Technology Innovation Librarian comes on Encompass Live and does her pretty sweet tech session. So it's always something more techy leading. We have other shows that are like that, but it's always going to be on the last Wednesday of the month. So next week, she'll be talking about gadgets and gizmos of the Team Makerspace Edition. Lots of Makerspace going on. People getting their Makerspaces done, getting equipment. We have a grant right now that's wrapping up. We put Makerspace equipment in libraries. And now some of these libraries you're working to figure out what do I do now? What do I buy? She's going to talk to you about so many things that you can do ideas and what tools to buy, what equipment. We also have grants available right now from the Library Commission that you can use to purchase some of this stuff. So we'll talk about that next week as well. So that wraps up today's show. Thank you, everybody, for being here with us this morning and I hope to see you on a future episode of Encompass Live. Bye.