Brian+-+Wilford

Hi. Just a note to let you know what's happening at the moment at Wilford. I've begun researching the feasibility of wireless for the school. Looks like we'll need about 5 access points including the hall. We have an issue of sideband interference from Weltec's beam to Massey.Apparently we can fit filters to fix the problem. With all staff now having TELA laptops, and our mobile COW of 15 wireless laptops, wireless is the obvious next step. By the way we want an access point in the hall because we are making presentations each week at Assembly, and we want to jump between stuff like powerpoint and web features. (At present I have to rig a **very** long cable to the staffroom- the nearest available port.)

Update about wireless: in the term 2 holidays I bought a Ruckus wireless system from New Era IT. Excellent result. For $8300 I got a switch upgrade and strong coverage around the whole school- including the hall. Total install time, including cabling and tech time, was 1 day plus 10 minutes at a staff meeting to configure teacher laptops. Teachers are liking it - a lot!

I'm setting a small goal of replacing our "new" ( 6 year old ! ) vidcam. If possible I will buy a hard drive vidcam to get rid of the need for tapes. I also plan to buy a USB hard drive on which to archive all the photos/videos that teachers are currently storing on the server (and slowing our server down ) I bought the vidcam and 120 Gb USB hard drive in week 7, just in time for our wearable Arts / Matariki celebration in week 8. Works great, good software suite with it. The hard drive works like a big flash drive, easy peasy.

Term 3 goal is to install Audacity on all laptops for blogging. ( I see it's on the latest CANZ DVD )  Sounds like the hardware side of things are sorted! Could you elaborate on the impact that has had on teaching and learning for you and your kids? Nigel@Korokoro