Alcatel-Lucent K-12 User Manual
Laying the groundwork for
tomorrow’s digital schools
K-12 Education Networking Guide
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
Advanced technology in elementary, middle, and high schools creates
new ways for students to learn, and changes how teachers plan and
deliver lessons. It also provides the digital tools for school
administrators to simplify operations, better comply with regulations,
and deliver a safer environment for students and teachers.
Is your K-12 network ready for the digital education innovations of
the future?
This guide provides school administrators and IT teams with
information and strategies for designing efficient and cost-effective IT
networks that enable dynamic and engaging digital learning
experiences. This secure, high-performance platform supports
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
administrative innovation for today and into the future.
2
Changing realities for students and learning
Today, most K-12 students have never experienced life without the internet or smartphones, and this reality is
reected in the classroom. Digital learning processes and experiences are enhancing traditional textbooks and upending
conventional classroom teaching methods. Online lessons, hybrid classrooms, testing, and assessments are now part of
most curricula. Laptops, tablets, and smartphones have become primary instruction tools for students, who are
downloading an increasing number of online apps to enhance their digital learning experience.
The underlying IT network that supports these innovative K-12 educational
advances must be a cost-effective investment today, while also extending value
into the future, as a platform to support new technologies entering the educational
space. These include:
• Robotics and other STEAM initiatives (science, technology, engineering, arts,
mathematics)
• Maker spaces
• Learning experiences in coding
• Augmented and virtual reality
• The Internet of Things (IoT)
In today’s educational facilities, the network must address the needs of school
administration, staff, and IT departments. For these audiences, data privacy plus
network and device security are of primary importance. Other considerations include:
• Deployment and procurement costs
• Ease of device onboarding
• Network performance and coverage
• Training and operational simplicity
Pervasive wireless connectivity is required to support these diverse user cases. Wi-Fi
is the dominant wireless networking platform as it allows users to be located virtually
anywhere and to employ any device. However, as use of mobile devices increases,
existing networks can easily be overwhelmed with increasing bandwidth demands.
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
Getting your network ready for tomorrow’s digital advances in learning, teaching,
and administration requires a thoughtful approach and a comprehensive strategy to
ensure investments are future-proof and ensure optimal interoperability.
This document provides eight tangible recommendations for K-12 IT departments
when designing efcient and cost-effective school networks that enable more
collaborative digital learning experiences, support more creative teaching
methodologies, and empower administrators with the latest monitoring, analytics,
and management tools.
3
Market trends
K-12 schools are undergoing a digital transformation. Technology is the driving force
for enabling more personalized and dynamic learning experiences for primary and
secondary students. These advances are impacting the classroom in a variety of ways.
• Digital and immersive textbooks: Today, digital textbooks have displaced
paper textbooks in many K-12 classrooms. They have advantages over
physical books, including instant availability, ease of updating, and the
ability to store many e-books on a single device. However, digital textbooks
are in turn being displaced by immersive textbooks that employ interactive
technologies, advanced user-experience design, and gamication to
enhance instruction, make learning more engaging, and address different
learning styles.
• Game-based learning: Game-based learning blends video game technology
and online learning tools to make teaching and training more engaging.
These technologies are designed to take advantage of virtual and
augmented reality to increase student engagement and content retention.
• Blended learning and the ipped classroom: The blended learning model
combines classroom and online learning to give students more control
over the time, pace, and place of their instruction. Blended learning is
ceding importance to the ipped classroom model in which students watch
video lectures on their own and then attend class for discussions and
collaborative activities.
• 1:1 student to device ratios: Many educational districts have made the
commitment to a 1:1 ratio between students and devices. This is now
shifting to a one-to-many paradigm where different tasks require different
devices, and students need access to laptops, tablets, and smartphones
depending on the project.
• Digital testing: Online testing and assessment technology helps teachers and
administrators more accurately and meaningfully measure student achievement.
Digital testing can provide detailed insights into the success of learning methods
and offer detailed metrics and analysis for developing remediation solutions.
These platforms provide visibility into how individual students are interacting
with online content, enabling the ongoing monitoring of individual learning.
• Predictive assessment capabilities: At the cutting edge of assessment
technologies is the development of predictive assessment capabilities that can
track student prociency without actual testing. By monitoring how individual
students are interacting with educational content and relating that data to past
testing scores, advanced analytics platforms can make predictions about the
progression of students without having to submit them to constant testing. The
same platform can also provide teachers with targeted recommendations and
relevant lessons to address the needs of individual students.
• Bring Your Own Device: With the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement
students and teachers bring their private devices to the network. This may
be a boon in districts that can’t afford to equip classrooms with a 1:1 ratio of
devices, but implementing BYOD securely and effectively can present challenges.
Many conventional IT networks weren’t designed to support a diversity of
devices and protocols, and the school’s underlying infrastructure must be sound
enough to support multiple disparate devices and networks while guaranteeing
interoperability and security.
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
4
The role of technology
The role of technology in K-12 education has moved beyond
substituting physical textbooks with eBooks. To take advantage
of the opportunities offered by these advancing technologies
will similarly require moving beyond the constrained IT
networks found in most schools today.
IT networks that keep pace with today’s students
The advances mentioned above are moving so fast and are proving effective
because today’s students are more technologically sophisticated than ever
before. These students expect to experience the same innovations in their
classrooms as they do in social media and entertainment.
Students today also understand that familiarity with advanced technologies is
important beyond the use for teaching. Gaining prociency with a variety of
device types and having experience with applications such as augmented or
virtual reality help students prepare for success in tech-intensive university
education.
According to a 2017 survey of 43,559 undergraduate students in 124
institutions in 10 countries conducted by EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis
and Research, 96 percent own a smartphone, 93 percent own a laptop, and
85 percent use their laptop for academic purposes in most or all courses.
Students surveyed also approved of teaching methodologies that embrace
technology. Forty-six percent of respondents said they get more involved
in courses that use technology, and 78 percent agreed that the use of
technology contributes to the successful completion of courses. Eighty- two
percent preferred classroom methodologies that feature a blended learning
environment.
1
IoT supports institutions educational, safety and
operational needs
Connected teaching technologies and IoT are already prevalent in the classroom and in use
for campus security and administrative purposes.
Smart audio-visual equipment such as interactive displays, smart boards and digital
projectors have been xtures in classrooms for some time. Apple TV is also popular in
classrooms for online streaming content via Wi-Fi. This technology makes it easy to mirror
screens from student iPads; watch streaming news, videos and other content; and take part
in group video calls via services such as Rainbow™ by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
and FaceTime.
Science classrooms and labs are increasingly connected. A growing emphasis on STEM
education plus interest in encouraging maker culture requires the support of new device
types, including robotics, Raspberry Pi and other development platforms.
IoT has a growing presence in education, particularly in campus security applications. These
include surveillance cameras, smart door locks, and connected buses. In addition, integrated
school safety technologies provide students with smart ID cards to strengthen facility
access management systems. IoT also offers easier management and cost containment of
infrastructures such as HVAC, lighting, and landscape management.
A more connected K-12 infrastructure requires a more
powerful IT network
Supporting these innovations in teaching, learning, and administration requires high
performance connectivity across the entire educational facility. In the classroom
teaching apps that are cloud-based and tailored to mobile devices underscore the need
for pervasive Wi-Fi. The use of IoT (including surveillance, sensors, and wearable tech)
requires that schools provide a network that can securely support this new generation of
technology. Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 11.2 billion IoT devices will be in use worldwide by
the end of 2018, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020.
1 EDUCAUSE, Technolog y Research in the Academic C ommunity, Student and Faculty Tech nology Use Study, 2017
2 Gartner Says 8.4 Billion Conne cted “Things” Will Be in Us e in 2017, Up 31 Percent From 2016
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
As students bring more specialized and diverse devices to the classroom as part of the
BYOD movement, the proliferation of device types requires a platform that is device
agnostic. As demands on the network continue to expand, will they overwhelm existing
school networks?
5
PAULDING COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT
LOCATION: PAULDING COUNTY, GEORGIA
The Paulding County School District is the 13th largest school district in the State of Georgia.
The K-12 District has 19 elementary schools, 9 middle schools and 5 high schools.
Current enrollment is 28,500, and there are 3,400 employees.
There are between 8,000-10,000 wireless connections on the District’s network at any given time.
Challenge
The school district faced
bandwidth shortages in the
classroom, and wireless
capabilities were limited and
unable to meet demand. Also,
networking technology varied
from school to school. The
district wanted a standardized
network solution to deliver
consistent wired and wireless
connectivity across all schools.
Brochure
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
K-12 Education Networking Guide
Solution
Dedicated switches in each
classroom offer reliable
bandwidth to support
e-learning while access points
in the hallway deliver quality
wireless services for BYOD
devices. A central management
suite provides unied
management of wired and
wireless networks.
Benets
Financial: Implementing managed
switches in classrooms reduced
maintenance, local travel needs
and costs. Upgrading the wireless
network qualied the district for
federal and state matching funds.
User experience: Students can
securely connect their devices to
the network, promoting anytime
anywhere digital learning.
Educators have greater bandwidth
to support teaching and e-learning
tools and devices.
We’re progressively putting the
solution in place at each of our
“
schools and we’ve been getting a lot
of great feedback. The infrastructure
is simple to implement and its
benets are immediate.
JULIE ACKERMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
TECHNOLOGY, PAULDING COUNTY
SCHOOL DISTRICT
“
6
6
Facing the security challenges
of a connected school
Connected schools that offer more innovative, digital content can provide more
engaged learning experiences and improve the outcomes of K-12 schools. However,
reliance on connectivity also brings network security challenges to these schools.
Growing use of mobile devices and IoT systems increases the exposure to, and
possibilities of cyber-attacks. These risks include a higher threat of ransomware
attacks and other cybercrimes, as well as the exposure of sensitive data and private
information such as student and school employee records.
In fact, education is the second most impacted sector — behind healthcare — with lost
or stolen records globally.
According to Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, which provides
a snapshot of cybersecurity incidents across the country, 819 “security incidents”
were recorded in the education sector in 2020, with 228 conrmed data exposure
incidents. In addition, ransomware was responsible for 80% of the malware incidents
in primary/secondary institutions.
One of the reasons that hackers increasingly targeting schools is that the networks
contain valuable data, and their systems are relatively easy to crack. According to a
Miami Herald article, many school districts have set up systems to make connectivity
easy, unlike corporations with trade secrets and data to protect. “With free Wi-Fi in
school buildings and a generation of students glued to their smartphones, there are
thousands of opportunities for a hacker to gain access to a school network. Students
downloading free apps on their phones or hopping from one school computer to the
next can spread a computer virus faster than the u during u season.”
For hackers, school networks are a gold mine. As quoted in the Miami Herald, Michael
Kaiser, the executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, stated, “If
you’re trying to steal identities or cobble together identities, if you can get a person’s
name, date of birth, home address, you’re starting to get a fairly complete record.
Think of the data school districts have — it’s more than many businesses.”
Three examples highlight the types of attacks that have occurred:
• In 2015, three high school seniors from Commack High School in Long Island, New
York, were charged with hacking into their school’s computer system.
• In 2017 hackers inltrated a Montana public-school network. The hackers sent
texts and emails threatening military style mass killings unless it was paid
$150,000 in Bitcoin. The school was disrupted for nearly a week affecting more
than 15,700 students.
• In 2019, a student hacked the Wi-Fi system and shut down the internet and phone
system at Baker County School District in Florida. The school’s online services were
affected for several weeks.
Beyond the safety risks, lost school time, and ransom payments, school districts also
nd that after-the-fact remediation of school IT networks is a costly way of xing
security problems. Data breaches can cost schools up to $300 per compromised
record.
10
In addition, some state legislatures are considering making school ofcials
accountable for security breaches in their schools.
3 Digital Education: Data Brea ches Cost Education Com panies $300 Per Record, St udy Finds, 2015
4 Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investiga tions Report, How long sinc e you took a hard look at your cyb ersecurity?, 2020
5 Miami Herald: “Hack attack s highlight vulnerability of Florida sch ools to cyber crooks” 2017
6 Ibid
7 ABC News: “NY High Schoo l Students Accused of Hac king Computer System to Change G rades” 2015
8 Flathead Beacon: Autho rities: Overseas Hackers S eeking to Extort Comm unity with Cyber Threats 2017
9 First Coast News (NBC /ABC) – “ Student hacks schoo l network to avoid doing school wo rk”
10 Dig ital Education: Data Breach es Cost Education Comp anies $300 Per Record, Stu dy Finds 2015
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
7
Federal programs promote classroom technology
State and federal initiatives are available to improve the education experience in publicly funded schools, with
a focus on technology investments.
In the United States, for example, e-Rate funds, which are
administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company
(USAC) under the direction of the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), were established in 1997 to provide discounted
telecommunications, Internet access and internal connections to
eligible schools and libraries. The discounts range from 20 percent
to 90 percent of the costs of eligible services.
The E-rate Modernization Order of 2014 established ve year
budgets and commensurate budget cycles for schools and libraries
to acquire the internal connection services needed to serve their
students and patrons. Changes in the 2021 Funding Year include:
• Start of a new ve-year budgeting cycle
• School districts are no longer locked into budgets per school
• Three new classications of instructional facilities were dened
Brochure
K-12 Education Networking Guide
8
Loading...