Going wireless

August 19th, 2004 | by Tim Wilson |

By the end of next week all seven of our elementary schools will be completely wireless campuses. This project is part of our district one-to-one computing pilot project that I mentioned previously. Creating a wireless campus presents all sorts of opportunities and challenges. Ubiquitous access to the network (in conjunction with the 1:1 pilot that will provide the wireless-enabled laptops) is certainly the most important part. I’ve been asking this question a lot lately: How will a classroom operate differently when a teacher can say “open your laptops” as easily as “open your textbooks”? I think I’m going to write a bit about that in the coming months.

What else needs to be considered in a wireless environment? Security is an obvious factor. How do we balance resource accessibility and security? How do we properly supervise students when they may be using the network or internet in a much less supervised environment such as the lunch room or the far end of a hallway? Lots of questions to be answered here. Stay tuned.

  1. One Response to “Going wireless”

  2. By Craig Nansen on Sep 5, 2004 | Reply

    We have been wireless in all 18 of our buildings for several years, but not even close to a 1:1 laptop ratio. It would be nice to deal with those problems.

    But there will be problems to be solved. We migrated from Apple Airport access points in all 18 buildings to using Cisco access points in a few buildings that had problems. We are now going with Aruba access points and wireless management, which provides security and automatic load balancing.

    Both Aruba and Cisco access points provide more range than the Aiport access points.

    A problem that schools have that business environment don’t have is the constant moving of the wirless laptops in clusters. That is why automatic load balancing is important.

    What about battery life? Will the laptops be as useful in the afternoon as in the morning? This is my major concern about making a commitment to a 1:1 environment.

    Do you have a firewall and filter in place? What about the neighbor across that street that can pick up your wireless network, or the students in the parking lot evenings and weekends? They are inside your firewall. What about students in the school that can pick up the wireless signal from a home across the street? They are outside your filter.

    Just some things to think about.

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