Miami-Dade County Expands 1-to-1 Program
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
(M-DCPS) has completed phase two of its 1-to-1 computing initiative, providing
every student in elementary, seventh and ninth grades with Microsoft Windows 8
devices.
To support the increased number of mobile devices connecting to the
district's WiFi network, Miami-Dade expanded its deployment of the
Meru Education-Grade (MEG) WiFi
solution and added Meru Identity Manager to automate network access for
district-owned and guest devices. According to the company, the wireless network
"currently supports about 150,000 students" and "when the rollout is complete,
it will connect all 345,000 students and 40,000 teachers in 392 schools."
Students in Miami-Dade classrooms use their mobile devices to access
educational applications on the network, including e-textbooks, Edmodo social
learning platform, Discovery Education content and iMath. Faculty and staff use
their devices to access administrative applications, including student
information systems, financial applications, and systems for managing food
services, transportation and facilities. The expanded wireless network is
intended to provide increased bandwidth and density to support these
applications as well as online assessments.
"Miami-Dade is providing students from very diverse backgrounds equal access
to state-of-the-art technology for learning," said Sarosh Vesuna, vice president
and general manager of Meru's business units, in a prepared statement.
Along with the MEG WiFi network and Meru Identity Manager, the district has
deployed Meru E(z)RF Network Manager, which provides a Web-based interface for
network-wide monitoring, end-to-end visibility and control of wireless
deployments, as well as "access to real-time and historical performance metrics
on each managed controller, access point and client," according to the company.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].