As students begin the new school year, several thousands will be joining the nearly 750,000 Ontario students with ultra high-speed access to ORION, bringing next-generation teaching and learning resources to classrooms across Ontario.

Three more school boards are joining ORION, now providing more than 740,000 elementary and secondary school students with access to new and exciting, interactive resources and programs.

The Waterloo Region District School Board, one of Ontario's largest boards with over 56,000 students, is the latest board to connect to ORION. The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board and the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board, representing nearly 50,000 students combined, are joining the network in a few weeks.

"Technology has forever transformed education and the way we teach and learn. We need to prepare our students for the new global economy, and ORION is a vital tool to ensure Ontario has the means to deliver high quality education so necessary for our future," said ORION President/CEO Phil Baker.

"ORION helps address a critical need for school boards that require a high-speed infrastructure in order to prepare students with the necessary skills for the digital world that we live in today," said Ron Plaizier, Chief Information Officer of the Kawartha Pine Ridge board. "Interactive, multimedia content is being introduced to the Ontario curriculum at a rapid rate, requiring stable and reliable access to new standard tools and resources, such as advanced videoconferencing, that provide students with access to distant resources and expertise."

"We are very excited at the prospect of connecting our students to the ORION network," said Sean Heuchert, Manager of Information Technology at the Peterborough Catholic board. "This resource will put our students at the cutting edge and give them access to learning opportunities never before possible."

"We are enjoying the improved access to Internet resources," said Mark Carbone, Assistant Manager, IT Services, at the Waterloo Region board. "The bandwidth increase has been a significant improvement for the staff and students in our Board."

A total of 16 boards have now joined ORION, which is moving closer to its goal of providing all of Ontario's 1.9 million K-12 students with access to the network and the special resources and capabilities that it enables, including innovative learning programs from the Canadian Space Agency, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Royal Conservatory of Music, and more.

Technology and next-generation network tools and resources are changing profoundly the world of learning. One classroom in Dryden recently used ORION to participate in a live, remote open heart surgery conducted at Mount Carmel West Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. The Royal Conservatory of Music relies on ORION and advanced networks to provide real-time music lessons.

Several ORION-connected schools participate in the annual global Megaconference Jr., linking schools and students from all over the world by multi-point videoconferencing technology. Boards can access unconstrained bandwidth to participate fully in such innovative programs as the Virtual Researchers on Call (VROC) and Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) programs. School boards gain the ability to share a high-bandwidth platform with other boards to collaborate and share resources and achieve savings and efficiencies.

ORION has made it easier for more school boards to connect to the network, by adjusting its 2008 access fees to encourage more of Ontario's 72 school boards to connect. "We responded to the education community, who asked that we look at our fees to make sure they are not a barrier to connecting to the network," said Baker.

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