Blended learning classrooms, equipped with digital curriculum and other modern learning tools can better engage students and assist educators to be more effective. But they can also fabricate new challenges for both schools and their overtaxed IT teams. Existing technology urges to get more and more advantages by addressing wireless technology in classrooms. Anytime, anywhere it provides the students to remain within the range of their designated wireless base, they can use wireless accessories to access the internet from just about anywhere. Students can save valuable learning time when the technology comes to them. Also, it adds high comfort level for both students as well as teachers and diminishes the feeling of overwhelmed by big computers and complex network of wires around.
For instance, Le Jardin Academy in Kailua, Hawaii, developed a cloud-managed networking solution by increasing the bandwidth to support BYOD and 1:1 Chromebook programmes, consequently helps to save time and money in managing the network. The installation of Extremewireless and above 600 Wi-Fi access points (APs) at San Diego Community College, Calif, enable indoor/outdoor wireless coverage to more than 30 thousand students within all campuses anytime.
According to the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), Broadband and network capacity are the top priorities for Primary education IT Administrators. Conducted in 2016, CoSN survey revealed that 90% of the K-2 IT administrators expect their curricula to be at least half digital in next three years. More than 12.6 million mobile devices were shipped to schools around the United States by last year. Wireless technology can support the institutional mission and provide cost-effective and reliable access to wireless broadband connections. By providing flexibility, collaborative training, dynamic interaction and adaptive architecture, Ad-hoc wireless network (One of the types) can solve various necessities in an educational territory where the challenges are swelling. Wireless classrooms need only the installation of the access points, which can be placed strategically throughout the building and can usually be installed without interruption of the regular classroom schedule. A fair example of McMinn County School System in Athens can illustrate the whole picture where they are developing end-to-end networking solution which supports more users per access point, and in turn, improving network performance by 97%. Similarly, with a new entirely unified network-including core switching and routing, the network of Nazareth College in Rochester is more resilient and able to handle a large amount of multicast IPV6 traffic generated by connected devices.
Being so advantageous, this can have some worse points as well. A glance over some of its downsides can explain its better future. The lack of fixed infrastructure in wireless networks generates new research problems. Another downside of the digital learning is that just stick digital accessories in a classroom and expect the students to automatically enhance learning is not sufficient but they require trained, motivated and experienced mentors as well as supportive and flexible administrators. The foremost and elementary consideration for the use of technology in education is the way of its usage and training for both staff and students. For this, some mandatory terms and conditions for its use should apply. They should know their responsibilities and rights in its care and use. To put the whole above discussion in a nutshell, the use of technology is somewhat expensive and its implementation takes time and money, however, with this transition, the blended learning environment elevates the classroom for both teachers and their students.