At this time next year, some Allegheny County schools will be traveling in the fast lane on the information superhighway.

The Allegheny Intermediate Unit has received bids from five different companies to construct a $10 million Regional Wide Area Network that would connect nearly all of Allegheny's 42 school districts on an "ultra high-speed" computer network.

"We're connecting those district networks so that all of them can share beyond district lines," said Tim Devlin, program director of instruction and media services at the AIU.

The new network will give schools about 100 times more broadband capacity than they have now, allowing for virtual field trips, debates and instructional video collections that are not possible under the current system.

The network would also give county schools access to Internet2, a private, high-speed network for education and health organizations.

To fund the network, the AIU has applied for a $2 million Act 183 E-Fund grant from the state and for $4 million from the federal E-Rate program. The remaining $4 million will be divided equally among the 41 participating school districts and 4 vocational schools participating in the project.

Of the 42 school districts in the AIU, Allegheny Valley is the only one that has chosen not to participate. Pittsburgh city schools are not part of the AIU but do have access to Internet2.

The state began funding the construction of Regional Wide Area Networks in 2004, with the establishment of the E-Fund program through Act 183. Rural districts with limited Internet access got first priority, and for that reason, all the counties surrounding Allegheny already have their regional networks up and running.

Intermediate Unit 1, which covers Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, has had its regional wide area network up and running for about a year. In that time, the network has been used more than 200 times for virtual field trips and other cross-district video conferencing activities, such as a virtual debate.

On one virtual field trip, a group of fourth graders was plugged in to a curator at the Indianapolis Zoo who took them behind the scenes of various exhibits and answered their questions.

Students have also taken "field trips" to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Baseball Hall of Fame (for a math lesson) and to Iraq, to talk to Marines currently serving there.

"You're able to show students examples of academic principles in a way you can't do it out of a book," said Larry O'Shea, executive director for the intermediate unit. "It's a powerful learning device."

In Butler County, which is part of the Riverview Intermediate Unit, the school districts have acquired an impressive collection of digital videos that teachers can now access online to show their students, said Mr. Devlin.

The AIU is planning to have about 20 school districts wired for the 2008-09 school year, 14 wired for 2009-10 and the remaining 10 or 11 school districts the following year.

All of the Allegheny districts will have video conferencing capabilities, and Mr. Devlin hopes to be able to offer digital video collections, as well as other programs that haven't been tried yet in Western Pennsylvania.

"The other side of this is the ability to share curriculum resources and distance learning teachers from district to district to district," said Mr. Devlin. "If there's some teacher that has a specialty, like Arabic or French 5, we could do video conferencing."