Health & Fitness
High Schools Set to Get Wireless Upgrade
School board approves measure for new wiring.
It’s about to get a whole lot easier for students, faculty and staff to sign online at Highland Park and Deerfield high schools. On Monday, the Board of Education approved a proposal for a new wiring system to improve both high schools’ wireless network.
“Wireless will be a core part of how technology progresses,” Ron Kasbohm, District 113 Director of Technology, said. “It’s a fundamental building block.”
The upgrade will expand the high school’s current wireless access points from 110 to 275. The network is projected to be able to power 10,000 simultaneous wireless connections in the district.
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“When you’re looking at 21st century technology, we know that every student is probably going to have some sort of computing device, what it looks like, we’re not sure yet, but everyone is,” Kasbohm said. “Basically when it’s done, we should be able to support every student having a
laptop, their iPhone, iPad, everything.”
Even more than being prepared for the future, Kasbohm emphasized the district’s need to be able to support faculty and staff’s needs now.
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“All of our teachers have laptops. When a teacher can’t use a laptop consistently throughout the building it causes significant problems,” he said. “This is really building a foundation.”
District 113 has been working on its wireless system for the past two years. According to Kasbohm, a third of the network has been upgraded each year. This new wiring is the final stage and will take about 40 days to install. The installation will cost approximately $170,000 and will come out of the district’s technology budget.
Kasbohm said these improvements have been at the top of his list for years. “Wireless was just such a critical concern,” he said and stated the upgrade will better prepare District 113 for technology advancements in coming years.
“Classrooms aren’t adequately equipped for multi-media. Only some classrooms have a projector but even those rooms don’t have good speakers in there…They don’t have a DVD player,” he noted as some examples of issues at both high schools that teachers would also like to see improved but explained those changes would cost significantly more.
“This will now allow us to pursue more classroom based technology in the future,” he said about the upgrade being a good first step.
