Brief History of Waimea College's involvement in the Loop

The Loop started life with an offer from the visionary CEO of Network Tasman, Wayne Mackey, to provide “dark fibre” from Network Tasman’s proposed fibre pathways to connect the Richmond schools.

Waimea College, the largest school in the Richmond area, was approached and the College's then ICT Director Richard Dykes, met with Wayne Mackey and Chaz Price, the College's ICT Network Manager. From this meeting it was realized the potential for this scheme was greater than just the Richmond area and would be of significant advantage to the whole of the Nelson regions schools. The Waimea College team then spent some time assessing the possibilities and approaching schools in the area.

A "proof of concept" was organized on a small scale involving Waimea College, Waimea Intermediate and Henley Primary School ("the campus group"). This was to demonstrate to the MOE and others that the concept would work and the advantages from this cooperative approach to schools. The campus group received a 1 km “off cut” of fibre donated by Network Tasman and applied to various trusts for support with funding to lay and connect the schools. The three campus schools then shared Waimea College's 2mb Radio link for Internet access. A vast improvement from Dial-up and ISDN that they were using.

Around the same time, Richard Dykes applied on behalf of the local campus schools to MOE for ICT Cluster funding to provide a full-time coordinator to assist teacher professional development in these schools. The application was successful, again showing how a cooperative approach to ICT could benefit all. Salisbury school was then also added to the campus project.

"The Loop" Project over recent years has been driven by Charles Newton (Principal) and Geoff Scrimgeour (ICT Director) from Nayland College as they have been the most suitable people to manage the project for many reasons, including their knowledge of resources and community connections. This has resulted in an increasing involvement of the regions colleges and schools culminating in the recent connection of the Marlborough Colleges.

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From an article on NZine 16/06/2006 - by Shelley Grell:
The Nelson Loop is a unique and inspirational story of a committed band of enthusiasts who pursued a dream to connect their educational community with an open-access fibre network. Despite the challenges of funding, physical distance, red tape, and uncharted territory, the Loopies persevered and today have one of the most advanced and unique light-speed networks at their disposal - the backbone of which uses state-of-the-art Allied Telesis switching technology. 
    
...more information Read Article at NZine

The Loop today and Future directions

The Loop has been successful in obtaining recognition from the Ministry of Education and Private Enterprise by winning the prestigious Computerworld Excellence Award for "Excellence in the Use of ICT in Education: Primary & Secondary". 

...more information Read Article at ComputerWorld 

The continuing development and use of Theloop as a resource provider of Services from within the loop to the smaller schools is the most promising growth area. The ability from early on for Theloop to be a gateway to National and Educational resources online as well as the World Wide Web is the key underlying strength to its success.

The emergence of other community based projects similar to the loop has lead to the creation of a Super Loop group to assist and help other Loops through support and guidance.
The long term goal is to be part of the Governments Karen project which links all the Universities and Research Centre's throughout New Zealand to the worlds Universities through a dedicated ultra fast network.

...more information visit Theloop online

The Loop Sponsorship & Support

The Loop has been successful in obtaining support and sponsors for its development: