| | April 20169we can accelerate learning and help our students reach their full potential for college and career readiness. To date, more than 15,000 FCS students have received devices as part of their school's Personalized Learning device rollout, paving the way for students to receive customized learning that meets their individual needs, skills and interests. All 65,000 devices will be deployed across the district by September 2017.While most school districts only allow their schools to choose from one device, FCS solicited a Request for Proposals (RFP) at the District level for student devices. This RFP allowed FCS to select multiple devices that meet the district's requirements for personalized learning. These devices are listed in a "marketplace" of options from which schools can choose. Keeping with FCS' philosophy of local school autonomy, schools make the ultimate decision on which option best meets their students' unique instructional needs. The four devices in our marketplace include the Apple iPad, Dell Windows Notebook, Microsoft Surface, and Dell Chromebook.The Information Technology department owns the complexity of supporting this marketplace of devices that operates on three different operation systems: Windows 10, Chrome, and iOS. With the rapidly changing pace of technology, we must proactively explore ways to ensure that each device is operable and secure on our network. In addition to mobile devices, our tools in the classroom include interactive projectors and flat panels, digital content and curriculum, games, videos, graphics, assessments and analysis. Behind all of those things we can see, there's a robust wide-area network and wireless access points, managed through a modern datacenter equipped with monitoring and protective layers.Our personalized learning initiative requires a network that can support 65,000 student devices and over 7,000 teacher devices all working at the same time in different classrooms on a wireless network. This required us to make substantial network upgrades to deliver scalable bandwidth connectivity in schools up to 10Gb. We also tripled the number of wireless access points in classrooms to ensure readiness for the device deployment and a stable network to support uninterrupted student learning.We also custom designed a redundant data center and invested in the most cutting-edge equipment that our server vendors could provide, including energy-efficient cooling components for the hardware racks and a brand new VMware NSX technology software system. Each of our district's 101 schools has vastly different needs and progresses at different rates. The use of SDN technology allows our server-side technicians to respond to individual needs and paces by manipulating infrastructure much faster. FCS is one of the first organizations to fully embrace the system and are on the bleeding edge of implementing SDN and the technology we put in the network. We also improved network security be using virtualized firewalls and F5 Silverline services to mitigate DDOS attacks. Throughout this process, we have been laser-focused on addressing the challenges of keeping up with the updates from three different operating systems to ensure information security and student safety. We also work closely with our Academics department to help parents feel comfortable with this new way of learning for their children. As technology becomes more mission critical to teaching and learning, there is a much more enhanced focus on providing schools with easily accessible digital content and curriculum.Ronald E. McNair Middle School was one of our first schools to deploy devices to students. Eighty-eight percent of McNair students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and many don't have access to the internet at home and have never used a tablet before. When FC Sprovided every McNair student and teacher with an iPad this past fall, teachers talked about it as a paradigm shift. Access to technology allows teachers to use new tools to differentiate instruction and better meet the needs of students. They expect this to improve student achievement, and also to open up a world their students never had access to before. In the words of one teacher: "for a child who's never been out of College Park, GA, an iPad can take him or her around world."
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