The Central Kitsap School District is embarking on the final leg of its journey to wireless education.
“We’ve been very excited about it. We’ve seen some very positive results in the schools,” said Mark Summers, director of information services for the Central Kitsap School District.
“Eventually, a student who has their own smartphone or iPad can come into the building and access resources from their own device while the y’re doing homework and school work.”
The purpose of the Wi-Fi project is to offer wireless connectivity in all buildings in the district, wether it be a school or an administration building. Staff and students will then be able to access the Internet from wherever they are.
“We go through each of the buildings in the school district and we run network cabling into the locations on the ceiling or where we need to install wireless access points and connect it all to our network,” he said. “That gives a wireless device, with authority, to connect to the Internet from anywhere in the building.”
Central’s Wi-Fi project has been funded by a 2011 capitol projects levy. It has been implemented in three phases, the third of which is just now beginning.
“We started with our secondary schools. The high schools first, we did some elementary schools in phase one,” Summers said. “In phase two we did the junior high schools, our support offices like transpiration, food services and maintenance.”
“In phase three we’ll finish up with eight additional elementary schools,” he said. “So every building in the district will have Wi-Fi access.”
The district aims to use the Wi-Fi system, not only for staff, but in the classroom. Students will be able to learn and work using modern technology easier than they previously could.
“It gives us the opportunity to use mobile devices in the classroom,” Summers said. “So instead of students having to get up and go to a computer lab to do work, we can hand out laptops in the classroom and they can do work there.”
“It gives us a lot more teaching flexibility,” he said. “Nowadays, a lot of research work that used to be done in an encyclopedia, sitting at tables in the library, can now be done with research materials online, ones that are specifically tied to the education realm with news sources and stuff like that.”
Only staff and students with a registered account at the district will be able to access the wireless system, therefore, it won’t be available to the general public.
There are also limits on the system. The entirety of the World Wide Web won’t be available within the school district.
Summers said that the wired network already in place sits behind a filtering device, blocking access to content that is not appropriate for a school setting. The Wi-Fi network will also sit behind that filter.
“It’s a project we are pretty proud of because it’s stayed on schedule and under budget,” Summers said. “We’ve been good stewards with the funds that were given to us by the capitol projects levy.”
The school district’s internet is wired via fiber wire which it mostly owns; some connections are leased lines. All district buildings’ internet is served via its data center at Central Kitsap High School.
