The Grant Wood Area Education Agency is seeking bids for additional Internet access, an Internet server, and all necessary additional hardware, software, and support to serve video, audio, graphics, and text to remote sites via the Internet. These elements are aimed at facilitating a proposed Internet multimedia project as described below:
Cataloging and Delivery of Digitized Supplemental Support Material
1. Introduction
Grant Wood Area Education Agency has a large library of 60,000 items to support teachers and teaching. A wide variety of formats are supported (e.g. VHS, Books, CD-ROMs, Science Kits, Journals, etc.)
The library uses Medianet, a product of Dymaxion Research Ltd, to catalog, manage, schedule and distribute this material. Medianet provides a WEB Public Access Catalog (PAC) and Booking Interface for direct Teacher access.
2. Project Purpose
Enhance the effectiveness of collection by supplementing it with Digitized Support Material directly available to Teachers over the WEB. Material that enhances the usefulness of the current holdings includes:
- Video Clips
- Images
- Teacher guides and student work books
3. Requirements
- Integrated within the Medianet Web PAC module so there is
a single location in which Teachers can access AEA material, whether
physical or digital and teachers can use the full capabilities
for searching by keyword, subject, title, etc. and limit by language,
format, grade level, etc.
- Integrating digitized material into the catalog must be an automated
process (e.g. no hand entry of URLs in each title record) (It
is preferred that automatic notification of non-operational URLs
be integrated into the system)
- Response time for staff using the back-office modules
and for Teachers using the Web modules must be maintained.
- All approaches must be scaleable
4. Medianet Enhancement Components
- Auto linking to digitized material
Digital objects placed on the NT server must be automatically linked to the appropriate title record. This must include identifying icon and optional descriptive text.
- Searching by specific type of digitized object
A teacher needs to be able to restrict their search to just materials that include a specific type of support material (e.g. with an image)
- Analyzing Usage
A process must be implemented to analyze the Web server logs on a regular basis to track usage
5. Minimum Equipment Components
- Upgrade of Medianet server to a DS10, 256mb, 2*9gb disk in
a RAID configuration to support the increased load
- Addition of W2000 server with at least:
- 600mhz
- 512mb memory
- DLT 35/70gb tape with backup software
- RAID 5, hot swap
- Three 36gb disk drives and one spare
- W2000 server with 10 clients
- UPS (20 minutes with controlled shutdown)
- Video to digital conversion workstation to allow creation of clips and images where distributors provides rights, rather than the digital product.
6. AEA's Services
- Acquire the digitized support material, including all necessary
distribution rights.
- Evaluation of cost/benefit of various formats and resolutions.
7. Vendor Services
- Supply hardware
- Enhance Medianet
- Provide maintenance and support on the solution
8. Other Project Components
- Additional T1 line to support the increased line traffic
without impacting the other mission critical applications of the
AEA.
- Quarterly project review sessions in Cedar Rapids to supplement
the monthly conference call sessions
9. Follow-up Phases
It is expected that a future project may be proposed to build upon the expected success of this project. Components may include:
- Streaming of full productions for preview or personal, small
group viewing
- Delivery of full productions using a scheduled download and
store on system local to the teacher. The Teacher would enter
a reservation to show a digitized production on a certain date.
Medianet would automatically transfer the video from a centralized
disk farm to a local server using the more available nighttime
bandwidth.
- Support separate cataloging of digitized items which can be
used as standalone resource material (e.g. a 15 second clip used
to give a feel for a 20 minute video tape on wolves is a useful
resource in itself for students preparing a project on wolves).
Grant Wood Area Education Agency reserves the right to award the contract for this project to a single vendor, or to multiple vendors. We also reserve the right to refuse all bids.
The awarding of a contract for this project is contingent upon Grant Wood Area Education Agency receiving full funding of eligible discounts from the Universal Service Fund.
There shall be no compensation made to companies that submit bids and are not awarded this order.
The successful vendor must be prepared to split the billing process. The vendor will be required to invoice the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for the discount portion of each bill, and to invoice Grant Wood Area Education Agency for the non-discount portion of each bill.
All quotations and questions should be addressed to:Dr. Cliff Ehlinger, Director of Operations |
For specifics on network design, contact: Ray VanderWiel |
The following Board policies apply to the bidding process for Grant Wood AEA, and will be taken into consideration when determining award of contract:
The Agency shall purchase goods or services from vendors located in Area 10 unless the interests of the Agency are better served by purchasing from vendors located outside of the Area.
The Agency will attempt each year to purchase at least 10% of its goods and services, including construction, but not including utilities, from certified targeted small businesses located within Area 10.
Return to Old RFP page