Students grab their rojo (red) crayons and line up at the door to their classroom at Southern Elementary School at Blue Springs. Crayons in hand, the second-graders make their way down the hall to the library for their weekly Spanish lesson.

Today's lesson is on how to say it's hot or cold, as well as learning the words for animals and colors.

During the next 20 minutes, the students respond in unison or individually go to the front of the class to answer their Spanish teacher Eryn Sunday's questions.

Nothing out of the ordinary for a teacher leading a group of second-graders, except that Sunday is in Beatrice.

She is teaching the class using desktop conferencing technology from the Educational Service Unit 5 building through a distance learning network. The students can see and hear her and she can see and hear them.

Distance learning isn't something new, the distance learning network Sunday is teaching through was set up eight years ago by the Southeast Nebraska Distance Learning Consortium.

But there are several unique things about the SNDLC network that puts it on the cutting edge in distance learning technology.

"People just can't believe what we're doing here in Nebraska," said Charles Doyle, SNDLC director.

First, SNDLC's 90 schools are linked through a fiber-optic network that makes use of Internet protocol, meaning that connecting sites is similar to connecting to the Internet.

Doyle said four years ago the consortium, the largest in Nebraska and possibly in the United States, made the change from the previous technology used for distance learning connections to this newer technology.

"This continues to be the newest technology," he said. "We're on the cutting edge."

The advantage is that the old technology, called analogue, required all the connections between sites on the network to be scheduled because they were limited in how many and which connections could be made at any particular time.

"With IP we don't have to schedule anything," Doyle said. Before SNDLC made the change the ESU, as network administrator, had to do the scheduling for the network.

Doyle compared the IP connections to telephone connections. Each site has an IP number and just like calling someone on the telephone, all it takes to connect to them is knowing their number. The difference is, this connection includes both audio and video.

"The only thing that prevents one school from connecting to another is if it's (that number) already in use," Doyle said.

While the consortium's network is not the same as the Internet because it is a protected network, schools can connect to the Internet through the network.

Doyle said one of the interesting things they are working on is linking up to the National Parks and other sites of educational interest like the Henry Doorly Zoo, giving teachers the opportunity to bring interactive learning opportunities into the classroom that reinforce what students are being taught.

"You can't just hop in the bus and go to the zoo," he said, but with a couple of mouse clicks a class can connect to the zoo, giving them the chance to see what they learned about and talk to experts at the site.

As an example, Doyle said one school recently connected to a site in Connecticut where they were able to see how a tree is tapped for sap, the process of making syrup, and ask questions of people involved.

Along with the increased ability to connect to other sites, the consortium is also developing distance learning carts, so that in addition to the static distance learning classrooms schools already have, teachers will have the opportunity to bring distance learning to their regular classrooms.

"A teacher can pick up this cart just like a VCR and TV, hook it up in their room, and have access to interactive learning services," Doyle said.

Each cart has a desktop computer with flat screen monitor, a video projector, a mounted camera and wireless microphone system, all the equipment needed to connect for distance learning.

"This system is designed for indoor desktop conferencing," he said, adding that it works the same and has most of the same features of the static distance learning classrooms, with the advantage of being portable.

"It literally can go anywhere," said Don Ferneding, director of the K-Nection project.

K-Nection is a partnership, administered by ESU 5 in Beatrice, which includes the Southeast Nebraska Distance Learning Consortium as well as the Kansas Distance Learning Consortium, and the Tri-Valley Distance Learning Consortium in Nebraska that received a five-year, $9.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2000 that has been used to fund these advances in distance learning. such as the Spanish program being tried by the SNDLC.

Ferneding said they are also working on taking all distance learning equipment and collapsing it to a mobile kit. So, for example, it can be taken out to the middle of the tallgrass prairie at the Homestead National Monument of America to allow rangers to do classes from the site.

"There are unlimited applications," Doyle said, but added that this technology is not a replacement for classroom teachers, it is a tool that teachers can use in teaching.

Also making the consortium or K-Nection different is the range of grade levels it is incorporating.

"What makes us unique is that we are doing distance education beyond high school," Doyle said. "We want our system to serve kindergarten through grade 12."

The carts were initially distributed to the seven schools, including Southern, Adams Freeman, DeWitt Tri County and Daykin Meridian, that are involved with the trial Spanish elementary program. The Spanish program was set up to see if and how well the new distance learning technology would work.

By the time they are done, Doyle said they hope to have about 100 carts out in the schools, that can be used for distance education in addition to the static classrooms.

The idea is to continue to expand the applications for distance learning into other subject areas, such as math and science, he said.

"There's tremendous future opportunities to expand this," Doyle said. "A lot of the things we're doing will have a tremendous impact on education.

"It will be interesting to see how it grows."

Ferneding said one of the best advantages of this developing distance learning program is its flexibility.

"We haven't found anything we wanted to connect to that we couldn't find a way to do it," he said.