UPPER MISSISSIPPI ACADEMY
EDUCATION
RECONFIGURED NETWORK RESULTS IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE WI-FI
Upper Mississippi Avademy is a tuition-free public 6-12 charter school located in St. Paul, MN focused on fostering student creativity and student achievement through dynamic teaching and learning with an interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional instructional approach. UMA operates multiple mobile carts of laptops and Chromebook devices for student learning, so they rely heavily on wireless internet connectivity daily.
Situation
UMA had an existing wireless network (Wi-Fi) infrastructure installed by another IT provider, but the school was experiencing speed and connectivity issues in many of their classrooms when connected to Wi-Fi. These issues were negatively impacting both teacher and student classroom technology use and thus hindering learning outcomes.
Strategy & Solution
Technology By Design was enlisted to investigate the ongoing network issues. Technology By Design assessed the current configuration and deployment of the wireless access points (WAPs). Many of the WAP’s were misconfigured causing interference and conflicts. Technology By Design resolved these issues by obtaining architectural drawings of the building and analyzed and corrected the system design. The resulting plan included both adjusting Wi-Fi access point signal strength and suggested physically repositioning some of the access points to offer better coverage to required learning spaces.
Success
Technology By Design’s understanding of wireless infrastructure showed significant improvement in both Wi-Fi coverage. The newly reconfigured network resulted in high-performance Wi-Fi connectivity throughout the building, providing teachers and students the tools they need to teach and to learn.
