Last Mile Connectivity

So your school or district has a T1 line...does that mean teachers and students have high speed access at their desktops? I'm working on an article about what kind of connectivity schools really have and how we should be measuring it. Please let me know if your school has enough bandwidth. Have you had to limit access to certain applications to maintain bandwidth? Is your bandwidth reliable? What do you believe is the minimum connectivity requirement for a classroom? If you are outside the US, how does your country measure classroom bandwidth and connectivity?

Thanks!
Karen
415-296-9343

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Karen Henke on November 1, 2007 at 11:35am

My article on this topic is in the October issue of Technology & Learning Magazine:
How fast is fast enough for learning in tomorrow’s classrooms? I spoke to CTOs, state technology directors, industry experts, and a classroom teacher to find out whether or not a bandwidth crisis is looming for our schools. The answer? That depends… There are many different components to the network that could be slowing down your access, but all agree, the more access you have, the more teachers and students will use it. Get the details from my article in the October issue of Technology Learning Magazine.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jeremy Aldrich on November 1, 2007 at 12:47pm

Great topic! I am interested in this and look forward to your findings.

At our public middle school, bandwidth is usually okay. We share our connection with the other public schools in our city (4 elementary and 1 high school) as well as our central office. There are two times when bandwidth is an issue. One, in the afternoons (especially Fridays) the network slows to a crawl - teachers using high-bandwidth sites (streaming videos, games, etc.) with their classes? Also, the division asks us to not use any high bandwidth sites during the time of year when we do online testing in the spring. That has grown in the past years as more courses and more grades use online testing for their state-mandated exams. So while a few years ago this meant watching our bandwidth use for 2 or 3 days of the year, now it's more like a window of about 3-4 weeks when online testing is going on somewhere in our division.