BTI Communications Group Ltd.

Scope Of Work

Technology at northern California's Oakland Unified School District has fundamentally changed over the past few years and is continuing to evolve and meld into every aspect of learning. Moving from a pencil and paper model to an online technology model, which promotes fast-paced education and collaboration, is one of the key motivators spurring schools to rethink how they structure their curriculum.

Oakland USD's Chief Technology Officer John Krull is well aware of just how quickly changes in technology and education can happen. At Oakland USD, the 2013-2014 school year marked the initial implementation of the new Common Core testing standards, a state-mandated online learning and testing initiative setting standards for mathematics and English. To support this initiative, Krull needed a network that could support hundreds of students simultaneously taking online tests. "I came on board in August 2013 and Common Core testing started in April 2014," explained Krull. "We needed to move and we needed to make a decision fast."

Oakland Unified School District provides educational services to over 37,000 students annually and is comprised of more than 120 K-12 schools and child developments centers. When Krull joined the district, he discovered that while the previous network was functional, it was only meant to support the laptop of the occasional roaming teacher. Its intended use was not for classrooms of students using mobile devices for collaboration, and certainly not for supporting hundreds of students accessing online tests all at once.

Krull knew that major technology changes were needed in order to successfully meet the April 2014 go-live date for the first round of online testing. Before the 2013 upgrade, each site had varying levels of wireless infrastructure, as well as varying quantities and ages of mobile devices. The result was that each site generally lacked both continuity in technology offerings and the ability to support them. "There was inequality across the sites when facing online testing," Krull explained. "We had 10,000 computers to use for testing, but the computers were all different makes and models. The network had the same problem." Students and staff had been using an aging computer system to integrate technology into the classroom, but it was not robust enough to meet the new education requirements.