Bishopsteignton School choose WiFi SPARK for WiFi solution throughout the school for staff and pupils.
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Profile
Bishopsteignton School was opened in September 1973 to provide a school for the villages of Luton, Ideford and Bishopsteignton. The School caters for approximately 150 children aged from 4 to 11 years in 5 classes.
The teaching and support staff are deeply committed to ensuring that each child is cared for, happy in school and develops a love of learning. The school has a broad curriculum where a range of teaching styles are used so that every child’s needs are catered for. Each child deserves the best that can be offered, and being a small school every staff member knows each child and works towards making every day a positive learning experience.
Business Situation
Like many other schools Bishopsteignton School is embracing IT and investing in laptops for pupils. Laptops on their own represent a significant investment for the school but are only part of the mobility goal of providing network access for pupils. The laptops cannot be cabled to the network, it just isn’t practical. So a solution for WiFi access was required. Local companies and education IT specialists were invited to propose a solution.
Challenge
The challenge in this environment was to provide the right level of functionality and security within the available budget. Zyxel access points represented an excellent price performance choice and having WiFi SPARK apply their 8 years of WiFi installations experience to this enterprise class product really meant that the school got everything they required. On specification, on time and within budget.
Solution
In February 2011 the school chose WiFi SPARK to deploy a school wide WiFi network. The brief was to ensure that every pupil and staff member would be able to access the network securely and wirelessly with no need to do any more than an initial set up of each device.
WiFi SPARK deployed a network of 12 Zyxel access points, each with stringent security and excellent wireless performance. Layer 2 managed PoE switches provided the backbone connectivity into the school’s network.
Functionality
The pupils can now use a secure WiFi network to access the VLE and other educational resources. Providing wireless access to the SWGFL network means that the connection is every bit as good as an Ethernet cable but with none of the practical limitations.
In addition to the fast network connection, WiFi SPARK configured the access points to support roaming, whereby pupil laptops can switch between access points with no loss of data integrity.
Security keys and encryption are provided as standard.
Conclusion
Bishopsteignton School is representative of many smaller primary schools in their needs for reliable and cost effective internet connectivity. Whilst most company’s solutions would have been way over budget, WiFi SPARK was able to provide the right choice of equipment along with their trademark fantastic support. Zyxel and WiFi SPARK are a very powerful combination and one that head teacher Louise Prywata was extremely happy with.
Click here to download the mini case study
