Over Spring Break, Olathe South as well as Olathe West and California Trail had a new wifi system installed.

These three schools were selected to test a new network to see if it is better than the existing one.

Josh Anderson, executive director of technology, said that “we have seen better performance” from the new network. “However, these are only test networks, and we are still evaluating long-term performance.” His goal is to ensure that when students and teachers get their laptops that they work 100 percent of the time.

“When we hand a student a 1:1 device, we want it to automatically connect to printers, to the wireless network, and to dozens of other systems,” Anderson said.

They also want it to have the correct security settings, to disable other features, and to enable certain administrative features. “We want to ensure that nothing that happens on the student machine that could infect our networks,” Anderson said.

He wants users to have the ability to download “some excellent software programs from the web,” but not programs that would damage the computer. “We want to make sure you have filtered access at school, but also at home,” Anderson said. They want users to be able not to login into the Wi-Fi more than once.

The Technology division is working as hard as possible on providing 1:1 devices that work as soon as they are in the hands of students and teachers, so 1:1 devices won’t be deployed until the district is sure they will work properly.