The term "wide-area network" doesn't exactly get the heart pounding.

But Janet Dubble couldn't be more excited about the WAN — a network of high-speed Internet connections — she's helping develop for local schools.

Dubble is instructional technology coordinator for Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13, which on Monday landed a $400,000 state grant to implement a WAN for schools in Lancaster, Lebanon and Dauphin counties.

The network will give students, teachers and administrators access to resources that have never been available before, Dubble said.

Science students, for instance, could watch a medical examiner perform an autopsy from their classroom or participate in a live discussion with NASA astronauts — from space.

History students could tour a Holocaust museum and ask questions of their tour guide without leaving their school. And English students could learn Shakespeare by reading lines, live, with Shakespearean actors from across the pond.

"You know what? Geography doesn't matter," Dubble said. "There are just databases of partnerships where you can find information" to use in the classroom.

IU 13 is in the second year of a three-year, $1.3 million state-funded project to develop the network, which many schools could not afford to install on their own.

"We have some very rural districts in Lancaster County, and some of them were struggling to get telecommunication companies to install networks," Dubble said.

"We were able to provide a totally fiber-optic network for every single district from Solanco to Lebanon at a cost that was lower than any other consortium in the state."

Every Lancaster County district, with the exception of School District of Lancaster, Penn Manor and Ephrata Area, is participating.

In addition to the regional network, the program is providing videoconferencing equipment, training and teaching resources to the 19 participating school districts.

Most of the hardware was installed last year. This year's grant will pay for additional equipment and training; next year, the focus will be on helping schools develop content for use in their classrooms.

But already, the WAN is paying dividends. Hempfield School District uses the network to share a Chinese language course taught at its high school with students at Garden Spot, Manheim Township and Conestoga Valley high schools.

"That's going to happen a lot more, and it's going to happen with hard-to-find subjects and teachers," Dubble said.

At Landisville Middle School, seventh-grade reading students have been linked via video cameras and the Internet with their eighth-grade peers in a Canadian classroom, sharing their views on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and discussing their cultural differences.

"It's an exciting time in the field of videoconferencing in education," Sue Allen, Hempfield's secondary school technology coach, said.

It's a bit overwhelming, too, Allen said, because of the staggering amount of materials available online. Some are free, while many others are available for a fee.

"It's all across the board — from kindergarten to AP courses," she said. "It's finding something that matches your curriculum, your schedule and your budget."

Once the local network is fully operational, it will be linked with seven others in the state, giving IU 13 the leverage to negotiate statewide contracts for Internet-based educational resources.

For instance, the IU could make thousands of educational videos available to schools online, with no delay and at lower cost than what districts now pay, Dubble said.

Beginning in January, the program also will give districts access to Internet2, a faster, noncommercial version of the Web that includes only educational, government and research sites.

While the grants are paying for installation of hardware, participating districts pay monthly fees for Internet service and other recurring costs.

The fees range from $27,000 to $67,000 per district, depending on its size and the amount of Internet bandwidth it uses. Those fees are expected to drop slightly next year.

The next step is to train teachers and administrators in using the technology, Dubble said. Workshops are scheduled for February through April.

After that, the network "will take on a life of its own," she said.

The IU will purchase some teaching and training materials for use by all districts, but it will be largely up to each district to decide how it wants to use the technology.

E-mail: bwallace@lnpnews.com