District Combines the Power of Cisco, Pearson and Samsung to Enable Award-Winning 1:1 Learning Initiative

CASE STUDY: RICHLAND TWO SCHOOL DISTRICT

Needs

• Robust broadband infrastructure to support an “always-connected” learning environment

• Versatile and affordable student computing devices with a low-touch support model

• Engaging digital learning content that supports a blended learning model and a range of student proficiency levels

Solution

• Cisco broadband and wireless infrastructure in classrooms

• Samsung Chromebooks for students in grades 3-12

• Pearson enVisionMATH and Pearson digits content

Results

• Cisco infrastructure provides reliable and robust connectivity for 26,000 computing devices throughout the campuses

• Samsung Chromebooks provide students with a personal computing device at a very low total cost of ownership

• Pearson math curriculum enables every student to stay on track

POWERFUL CONNECTION1

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Richland Two is a nationally recognized school district that serves nearly 27,000 students in the suburbs of Columbia, South Carolina. The district operates 39 elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, magnet centers and alternate schools. The diverse student body speaks 45 native languages and nearly 50 percent of students qualify for the Federal free or reduced lunch program.

The district is a pioneer in using instructional technology and digital content to drive a learning culture at school and at home. It has won numerous national awards including the prestigious Sylvia Charp Award for District Innovation from ISTE (International Society for Technology and Education). Richland Two is also a member of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools, a coalition of school districts in 25 states that fosters innovation in education.

The district seeks to cultivate an immersive and interactive learning experience in every classroom. “Today’s K-12 students were born in an “always-on” era of digital devices and digital content and we needed to adjust our education delivery model,” says Tom Cranmer, CTO of the district. “We also recognized that we needed

to accommodate a variety of learning models including collaborative learning and individually paced learning.”

A one-to-one computing program (“1:1”) would enable a personalized learning environment but there were infrastructural, budgetary and resourcing challenges to making the 1:1 initiative a reality.

In order to support 22,000 student computers that would operate in an “always-on” mode, the broadband and wireless infrastructure needed to be significantly upgraded and had to be reliable and scalable.

The student computers needed to provide a full computing experience (e.g., screen size, processing power, battery life, applications software, keyboard) but with a radically lower acquisition and support cost compared to traditional desktop and notebook PCs.

Finally, the district wanted to move to a “blended learning” model where students use a variety of modalities at school and at home, including teacher-led instruction, self-paced learning and group-based projects to consume engaging digital content.

The district’s first challenge was to upgrade its network and wireless infrastructure so that students and teachers had stable and high-speed connectivity throughout the school. “We knew that transitioning to a 1:1 computing program would require first upgrading our network to handle the immense traffic that would flow from the 22,000 devices that would always be on,” says Tommy Carter, Senior System Engineer.

The district implemented a robust backbone between schools with Cisco’s 10Gb aggregate switches at the distribution layer and Cisco’s POE-enabled, “gig to the desktop” stackable switches at the edge. “Using Cisco gear was an easy call given that we have always had great results with their products and services,” says Cranmer.With the robust backbone in place, the district architected

the wireless infrastructure. “We had limited wireless infrastructure in the hallways that covered multiple classrooms and only supported five or six devices

per classroom,” says Carter. “We knew that if we were going to go to 30 devices per classroom, the current infrastructure would not be sufficient.”

The district embarked on a six-month project to install a wireless access point in every classroom for a total of 3,000 access points across the district using Cisco’s Wireless solution. This

solution leverages advanced technologies like 802.11n, 802.11ac, Clean Air, ClientLink and many others. “We determined that with the newer technology, we could install an access point in each classroom and it would provide the bandwidth we needed from both a coverage and density perspective,” says Carter.

WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE: CISCO LAYS THE FOUNDATION

PROFILE: RICHLAND TWO SCHOOL DISTRICT

The district faced the daunting challenge of finding a computing device that met student needs without breaking the budget or straining the IT support staff. The device had to provide a “full” computing experience with a large screen, full-sized keyboard and powerful processing. In order to implement such a large-scale deployment, the realities of budgets and support resources were also at the forefront. “We knew that to succeed, we would need to dramatically decrease the service and support overhead because we were adding 22,000 devices but not getting a commensurate increase in field support staff,” says Cranmer. The district chose Samsung Chromebooks to deliver the full computing experience. They boot up in fewer than 10 seconds and have up to 8.5 hours of battery life for all-day computing. The entire fleet of Chromebooks can be managed centrally via a web-based console, so they are always up to date. And users have access to tens of thousands of Apps in the Chrome Web Store.

The Samsung Chromebooks are designed to deliver a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) without compromising on functionality. “The Chromebook gets our TCO as low as we could possibly get it,” says Cranmer. “It is about half the price of a traditional desktop or notebook PC, takes care of itself in terms of OS versioning, doesn’t require virus scanning and, if a student breaks it, we can quickly swap it out with another device without disrupting instructional time.”

COMPUTING DEVICES: SAMSUNG DELIVERS 1:1 SCALABILITY

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DIGITAL CURRICULUM: PEARSON ENABLES BLENDED LEARNINGWith the wireless infrastructure in place, the district needed a partner with comprehensive solutions, including digital curriculum, assessments, professional development and student information systems. The district had already deployed Pearson PowerSchool, Scott Foresman Social Studies and Realidades.

With the focus on the Common Core State Standards, the district sought to deploy a digital content solution for math that would help students learn, master and apply real-world mathematical concepts and skills in a blended learning environment. The district chose the Pearson enVisionMATH curriculum for elementary schools and the Pearson digits math curriculum for middle schools. Both were developed from the ground up to comply with Common Core State Standards.

Pearson enVisionMATH enables teachers to match the teaching cadence to the needs of each elementary

school student. Instead of teaching to the “middle of the pack,” teachers can provide accelerated lesson plans for advanced students and remedial lesson plans for struggling students.

“We are definitely seeing higher engagement with our elementary school students with the combination of the 1:1 program and the Pearson enVisionMATH curriculum,” says Donna Teuber, Richland Two Team Leader for Technology Education. “Students like having more control over their own learning path and it makes them work harder and improve their skills.”

Pearson digits combines a comprehensive math curriculum with teaching best practices and easy-to-use technology to deliver personalized instruction. The curriculum streamlines instruction, optimizes effective time-on-task and enables teachers to address the individual needs of every student.

RESULTS: PEARSON, CISCO AND SAMSUNG SUPPORT “1:1” SUCCESS The combination of Pearson’s rich content, Cisco’s robust infrastructure and Samsung’s affordable devices has dramatically improved the student learning experience. “Our students don’t know life without the Internet or mobile devices. They are heavily engaged in multi-media interactive technologies when away from school,” says Cranmer. “We were asking them to come to school and ‘power-down’ but now, we can keep them in a ‘power-up’ mode.”

The Samsung/Pearson combination enables tailored learning experiences that meet the needs of the individual student. “We now have more opportunities to mix several different learning modalities – from lecture, to independent work, to collaborative work,” says Teuber. “Teachers can zero in on the specific needs of a student and tailor and customize the learning experience for students.”

“With Chromebooks, we can push together the tables in the classroom or gather in a circle on the floor to allow students to easily work together on a project,” says Diane Gilbert, a sixth-grade English teacher at Kelly Mill Middle School. “This is a much different experience than working on desktop PCs, which took up a lot of space and couldn’t be moved easily.”

The 1:1 program has dramatically impacted student engagement enabling them to be more focused on learning. “Discipline issues – especially in the middle schools – have gone way down since we implemented the program,” says Carter.

The district continues to be very happy with the performance, reliability and ease of management of the Cisco network and wireless infrastructure. Students and teachers can interact with multi-media at any time without any degradation in performance. “The technology allows students to go above and beyond what they would

normally experience in a traditional learning setting,” states Cranmer. “It takes away a lot of boundaries and enables students to get unprecedented access to information.”

“When you have these three companies come together, you have a perfect trifecta of very high-qualityinfrastructure, affordable computing devices and compelling, personalized content that supports new learning models,” says Cranmer.

The three companies, working in tight partnership, are using their unique experiences in helping thousands of school districts optimize their technology and digital learning investments to impact learning outcomes.

“Making sustainable investments in technology is always an issue with school districts with limited budgets and resources,” says Cranmer. “This partnership will help districts make smarter decisions.”

© 2014 Samsung Electronics America, Inc., Pearson PLC and Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. All products, logos and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Screen images simulated. This case study is for informational purposes only. Samsung makes no warranties, express or implied, in this case study. CASEST-COM-RICHLANDTWOSD-SEP14-KC

For more information, visit www.PearsonSchool.com/ciscosamsung