The district is attempting to ensure equitable access to learning materials. To understand the task that we have takien in you have to understand a little bout how the internet work.
The Internet is a collection of networks made up of cables and fibers. Connected together with switches and routers. To get access to the internet, sometimes referred to as the information superhighway. You need a signal coming into your house. It can come in one of three basic ways. Through a cable company like Spectrum Communication, through a satellite dish antenna like Hughes Net, or through a cellular connection from Verizon.
Spectrum Communication runs down many roads in Orleans county but not all. If you are lucky enough to have a cable line on the telephone pole infront of your house, Spectrum can tap into that line and hook your house up to the internet. They place a Modem/Router/Wi-Fi access point in your house connected to your cable line from the pole. When you plug in a computer or attach to the Wi-Fi. Signals from your device are routed out to the internet through Spectrum equipment. Connection are generally fast and reliable.
If the cable company does not run a line down your road. you might be able to use a satellite dish to get your internet signal from a satellite in orbit around the earth at a distance of about 22,000 miles directly above the equator. These radio dishes back in the day were about 10 feet across. New Antennas operate at higher frequencies and require smaller dish antennas. A Modem/Router/Wi-Fi access point is still required. These connection are typically slower and designed to primarily bring information to you. So they have ok download speed but very poor upload speeds.
This is the same system that brings the internet to your phone. In our case it will bring the internet to a Mi-Fi device that can then act as an access point for your Chromebook. The quality of the connection varies based on your distance from a compatible cell tower. The farther away the slower the connection. Speeds are typically slower over the cellular network but it is much better than no connection at all.
If you have access to Wi-Fi at your home from either cable or satellite, you can connect your Chromebook to that signal and you will get very good operation from the device. If you do not have access to Cable or Satellite, then the district can currently provide you with a Mi-Fi device from Verizon to connect to your Chromebook. The Mi-Fi unit will only connect a school owned Chromebook. It will not connect other devices. This ensures that your Chromebook gets sufficient bandwidth to do school work.
We are looking into some other solutions, to ensure equitable access. This includes district provided access via Spectrum, District Provided Satellite and even district provided cellular service. These all require very careful consideration as they would use tax payer dollars to provide a service to the community. As other options are explored they will be brought to the Board of Education for further consideration. There is a new satellite service using low earth orbit satellites a few hundred miles above the surface of the earth. This new service might provide an access point option of a new network. Look up STAR-LINK.