Wireless Networks in the Classroom: Mount Vernon School District has recently met the challenge of bringing technology to its classrooms, both to support student learning and to ease administrative burdens such as state-mandated record keeping. In 2004, Mount Vernon began an ambitious plan to upgrade its network foundation and bring wireless networking to its schools. Read more about campus network design solutions and wireless networks in the classroom.

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by Fred Sandsmark, photograph by Joan Beard. iQ Magazine

A wireless network helps Mount Vernon City School District in New York enhance education opportunities, improve communications, and more.

Located just north of the Bronx, in Westchester County, the Mount Vernon City School District serves 10,000 students in 11 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, 1 comprehensive high school (with academics, vocational education, art, and athletics), and 1 alternative high school for at-risk students who need a second chance. Its approximately 650 faculty and 260 staff members serve students from 98 ethnic groups; about 10 percent of students are learning English. Some students are homeless. Per-capita income is well below that of Westchester County.

From Cisco: Airespace Helps Broaden Cisco Wireless Offering In March 2005, Cisco Systems acquired Airespace, a provider of wireless LAN access points, controllers, and software. Adding Airespace products to Cisco's existing Aironet wireless product line helps Cisco deliver the power and convenience of wireless networking to small and medium-sized organizations. Aironet and Airespace products use the same industry-standard protocols for secure, high-speed connections between wireless devices-such as laptop computers and personal digital assistants- and the wired network. They differ primarily in the way they distribute the work of making that connection: Cisco Aironet access points are autonomous: Each access point does all of the computing necessary to provide wireless network access. Airespace access points rely on a central wireless LAN controller on the network to do some of the computation. When wireless intelligence is centralized, security, mobility, service quality, and other functions can be managed more efficiently. The centralized model results in what's sometimes called a lightweight access point. Because multiple access points can use a single controller, a smaller technical staff can configure, update, and manage more lightweight access points. Technicians rarely, if ever, need to work on lightweight access points once they're installed, so they can be positioned in hard-to-reach places. Both Cisco Aironet and Cisco Airespace product lines offer comprehensive, industry-leading security features.—F.S.

"We're basically a poor district operating in a wealthy county," says Lou Adipietro, the district's former executive administrator for technology. (Adipietro worked to design and implement the district's technology plan but recently accepted a position as assistant principal for another district.) Yet student attendance is 91 percent or better, and the dropout rate for 2004 was less than 5 percent. And beyond the numbers, the New York State Education Department selected three of the district's elementary schools as model schools.

The district has recently met the challenge of bringing technology to its classrooms, both to support student learning and to ease administrative burdens such as state-mandated record keeping. In 2004, Mount Vernon began an ambitious plan to upgrade its network foundation and bring wireless networking to its schools.

Now a Cisco Systems wireless network featuring Airespace products blankets all of Mount Vernon High School, much of the middle schools, the libraries in elementary schools, and the district office. (Cisco recently acquired wireless technology provider Airespace.) When the new school year begins in September, Mount Vernon will increase wireless coverage and provide network-based applications.

The network presents new opportunities for many of the students. To compete for 21st-century jobs, students need to get comfortable with technology and learn to work and find information online, but some of these students had spent little time at computer keyboards.