Networking & Wireless

Oakland USD Beefs up Network for Personalized Learning

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 11/20/14

The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is improving its broadband infrastructure to better support personalized learning curriculum and applications.

With 35,000 students and 5,000 staff members at more than 100 sites and several new technology initiatives, OUSD sought to upgrade its existing 50 megabits per second network. With the new network, provided by Comcast Business, the district will provide 1 Gigabit per second speeds to elementary schools and 5 Gbps to most of its middle and high schools with the option to scale up to 10 Gbps in the future.

In addition to personalized learning, collaboration tools, streaming HD video and access to online learning resources, the district will now be able to provide virtualized desktops from a centralized data center to provide more resources for students and faculty.

"Our goal is to prepare our students for the future and provide them with the educational tools and resources that will help them succeed," said John Krull, information technology officer at Oakland Unified School District, in a prepared statement. "Our use of Comcast Business's technology and infrastructure is enabling us to create an equitable, supportable, customizable learning environment that empowers our students and our staff to drive the learning experience and ensure Oakland's schools are competitive with the best in the world."

"Comcast Business's broadband solution will not only enhance the technological capacity of our school district, but also has broader positive implications for our community members, businesses and local economy, added Barbara Leslie, president and CEO of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. "It's imperative that Oakland's technology infrastructure be state of the art to prepare our students with cutting edge knowledge and expertise necessary to transition into Oakland's growing workforce."