Fort Worth, Texas, Schools Delay Broadband Expansion
School officials have delayed a plan to bring broadband to students in underserved parts of the district, planning to build towers that provide public Wi-Fi access to neighborhoods where students lack service at home.
May 17, 2021 • (TNS) Fort Worth school officials have pushed back a plan to bring broadband internet service to students in underserved parts of the district.
School officials plan to build towers across the district to provide public wifi access to neighborhoods where many students don t have high-speed internet service at home. In November, Fort Worth Superintendent Kent Scribner told the Star-Telegram he expected the first towers could be completed in six months if voters approved a property tax increase. But six months later, a district spokesman said last week the project is currently on a new timeline following the hiring of a new chief information officer in Janu
FCC Announces New Program, Guidelines for School Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission has announced rules for its new Emergency Connectivity Fund, which will distribute $7.17 billion announced earlier this year for school broadband and devices.
May 12, 2021 •
Shutterstock The Federal Communications Commission this week released the guidelines for its new Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF), which will use $7.1 billion approved earlier this year to assist schools and libraries in connecting students to broadband Internet for remote and hybrid learning.
Though the funding has been lauded as a step toward closing the digital divide, ed-tech policy advocates from the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition said its current regulations still leave much to be desired in terms of flexibility for schools seeking to apply for the program.
05/13/21
Students have been moving around quite a bit during remote learning
sometimes studying at friends houses, sometimes studying from
multiple states.
That’s one of the ancillary findings of a report the Consortium for
School Networking (CoSN) issued this month, the Student
Home Connectivity Study. The findings are based on data collected from 13 school districts representing some 750,000 students.
According to the report: “During the study, many students
participated in online school activities from locations outside of
the student’s home. Students accessed school learning resources
from other student homes and even other cities, states, and
countries. In the study, many students shared an IP address with
05/13/21
More than 9-in-10 students learning from home are using WiFi rather
than wired connections. But the quality of their wireless connections
varies greatly. According to a new report, there are steps schools
and districts can take to help improve their students’ home WiFi performance some at a cost, some using
IT staff expertise and legwork.
The report, the Student
Home Connectivity Study, from the Consortium for School
Networking (CoSN), studied data from 13 districts representing some
750,000 students in the United States. Among many significant
findings, the researchers discovered that 92% of students working
from home use WiFi rather than wired connections for their internet
Study: Device Quality Impacts Remote Learning
05/11/21
Broadband access and speed aren’t the only technological concerns
for students engaged in remote and hybrid learning. The quality of
the student device itself also plays a key role, according to a new
study.
According to a report
released by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), an
association for IT leaders in K–12 education, two factors
significantly affect the experience students have with remote
learning: the age of the device and device specifications.
According to the report: “… [U]pload and download speeds during
online classes/meetings can vary significantly by the age, type, and