Quickly pivoting between learning models is a challenge for any district, but for rural districts, this challenge is amplified by distance and spotty connection issues. 

Take, for example, Bunker Hill CUSD #8, a remote and rural PK-12 system of 600 students 30 miles north of the Metro-East area in Macoupin County, Illinois. In a continued effort to ensure the district was meeting the needs of all students, the district has had to pivot between hybrid, full remote, and face-to-face learning throughout the year. 

“At the beginning of the school year, our county had a surge in Covid-19 cases,” says Superintendent Todd Dugan. “In efforts to keep students six feet apart, we began the school year with ‘blue and yellow’ teams, with 50% of students physically in attendance while 50% logged in from home via Go Guardian Video Conferencing with Google Classroom. 

“One hurdle right away was struggling to make the students at home feel like they were in the class participating, instead of just observing. The same was true with the students in the room,” Dugan says. 

One new tool that Bunker Hill used to address this issue was the Nureva HDL300 system. This audio system, designed for classrooms, captures the audio of everything happening in the classroom so the students at home can clearly hear what the teacher and in-person students are saying during class. Teachers can stand and walk around, and in-class students can share their feedback with students learning from home, who can hear everything without any feedback or delay. The system installs on the wall in minutes and its plug-and-play connectivity and auto-calibration makes setup simple. 

“All of the students in the classroom could clearly hear the students from home, avoiding the need to use online chat and have the teacher repeat out loud what the students at home said,” says Dugan. “This led to increased student engagement and interaction with one another, which was the major piece of the classroom environment that was lacking during the hybrid periods.”

Challenges and Solutions

In remote rural schools, bandwidth is a huge barrier. Many times, it is not an issue of being able to afford the internet, but rather if broadband is even offered to outlying rural areas. Parents using satellite internet providers find that monthly data allowances are exhausted in a couple of days. Others report not being able to participate in Zoom or Google Meet due to upload speed issues. 

Because of these issues, many students were forced to turn cameras off to conserve bandwidth, leading a few teachers to feel remote students were not engaged. Having the Nureva system in the classroom resolved this. Even though remote and in-person students could not see one another, they could clearly communicate through the HDL300’s live audio connection without any audio delays or issues related to the in-person students’ distance from the system. Offering a compromise of live audio connection through the Nureva system was a way for students to have their voices heard and remain part of the conversation. 

The teacher who piloted the HDL300 confirms that the device worked amazingly well at bridging the divide between remote and in-person learners. 

"My students absolutely enjoy being able to hear and communicate with their classmates at home as if they were in the room with them,” says teacher Katherine Sutton. "As a teacher I like the freedom of walking around my room. The Nureva system allows me to move around and engage with all students instead of feeling tethered to my computer."

Unexpected Results

Focusing on improving communication between face-to-face and online learning environments has paid dividends. 

“Using our own assessments, we found that K-2 were the only grades showing a significant ‘learning loss’ with grades 3-12 showing very minimal loss,” says Dugan. “However, grades were highest in K-3, and lower in 4-12. This suggests that there is an inherent flaw in how we are assessing students’ content knowledge and skill mastery. 

“We had been focusing on ‘work being completed’ and not necessarily on ‘standards/skills mastery being demonstrated.’ In other words, our current grading practices favor compliance and completion over competency. This should be one valuable lesson learned from the pandemic. The integration of communication technology could be one bridge to better allow students to demonstrate their mastery of these necessary standards and skills.”

PD Tips & Other Creative Solutions

Dugan says professional development and community partnerships were key to their success. 

He reports that Bunker Hill CUSD #8 professionally trained all their teachers in remote teaching best practices, such as using breakout rooms in Zoom. Recognizing that a typical 48-minute class period is too long to be effectively engaged for students on screen time, teachers set “timers” for shorter direct instruction sessions. Communication technology that allowed for ease of conversation helped make the most of these shorter instructional periods. 

The district also partnered with area businesses and redefined traditional learning spaces to ensure more students had the access they needed for remote learning. 

“We offered cellular hotspots to all students, but the weak cell signal would prevent them from using video conferencing,” says Dugan. To help solve this issue, the district offered their school libraries as ‘WiFi laboratories’ for small numbers of students, created a drive-up public WiFi hotspot at two buildings, and even had the public library and local restaurants let a small number of students use their spaces to connect to their classrooms via video conferencing.

What Not to Do

Do not teach passively to any students, advises Dugan, even at times when 50% of students are remote. In other words, using a hybrid model of primarily note-sharing or lecturing to all students in person, while allowing the remote learners to only view/hear the same experience, is not helpful. “It’s a step backward by decades in terms of what we know about effective pedagogy,” says Dugan. 

“Learning equality has been a challenge and a hallmark of this new era we find ourselves in as modes of educating can turn on a dime,” says Dugan. “Key to making that transition seamlessly, and achieving fully engaged students regardless of where their learning might be taking place, is to make all students feel equally heard. Using communication tech such as the Nureva HDL300 system helps all students use their voice to feel a true part of the class and equal participants in the learning experience.”

The best WiFi extender won't necessarily give you the best WiFi signal in your home. Unfortunately, networking remains a complicated beast that can be tough to tame, which is the last thing you need when trying to teach a class remotely. So you've come to the right place to learn how you can improve WiFi for the ultimate connection speeds all over your home.

When it comes to streaming live video, your data connection at home is going to be tested. Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom are all efficient but you still need a decent data connection to get a smooth and clear video.

Since WiFi has a limited range, especially when it comes to stone- and brick-built homes, you may need an extender to make sure your entire property gets a decent enough connection. These devices work by picking up signal from your router then repeating it to other areas, with renewed strength. 

But do you go for more antennas or just more extenders? What do you spend? Are they brand agnostic? Where do you place it? There's a lot to think about.

Here's everything you need to know to improve WiFi extender performance for online teaching and beyond.

• Remote learning: How to best connect with your students
• Google Classroom review

How do I setup my WiFi extender?

The first thing to do is take a test to see what speed you're getting right now. This is ideally done using the device and location where you're going to want to teach online from.

Open a browser window and head over to a speed test site, such as this one, to see how fast your download and upload speeds are. This will provide a baseline so you can see how the WiFi extender improves that number.

Next you need to buy an extender. We won't go into too much detail here but the easiest option is an extender that plugs directly into a power socket. Some allow you to plug in an Ethernet cable, although most will simply repeat the signal wirelessly, making it stronger over longer distances from your main router.

Where do I need to place my WiFi extender?

The general consensus is that the best place to plug in your WiFi extender is halfway between your main router and where you want the signal to go. The extender needs to be close enough to the router to pick up the original signal but near enough to the signal dead zone to be able to fling the newly boosted signal.

The key is also to avoid obstacles. If the power socket is behind the fridge or microwave, don't expect to get much of a result as that big metal box will block any signal in or out. So an open space is what you're ideally looking for. That's why a WiFi extender in a hallway can often be one of the best places.

How to create a spot without a socket

One issue you may run into is finding that ideal halfway point between the router and the dead zone but there in no electrical socket available. Rather than go further toward the router or away, you can just move the socket. No we don't mean tearing it out of the wall.

You can buy a power socket extension that will allow more flexibility in placing your WiFi extender exactly where you need it to live. This means you can place the extender higher, or further away from objects, to get the best possible signal.

Just keep in mind you might want to go for a cabling shield or staple gun to help tidy away the cable so this looks alright even as a permanent feature. Or perhaps run it through the wall for a totally seamless finish.

Boost the WiFi extender itself

Some WiFi extenders come with antennas that can be angled to better help you direct the signal where it needs to go. With multiple antennas you might want to point one toward the router and another at the signal target location. 

In some cases the antenna can be swapped out, meaning you can invest in some more heavy duty antennas with higher gain or amplification to get more range. Some people even create their own WiFi reflector using foil, or half a can, to point the signal in a certain direction. 

Improve your upstairs WiFi signal

For those in a multistory property, one floor might be fine while the other suffers with signal loss. This can be a problem where the signal strength is lost as the wood, cladding, metals, and plaster between floors absorb the WiFi signal.

In these cases it can often be best to place the extender directly above the WiFi router. It can then take the signal that makes it through, but is weakened, and boost it anew for that floor. 

Name and adjust your WiFi extender

Rather than simply plugging in the WiFi extender at that halfway point and hoping for the best, you can test and adjust. Name the extender first, so it's easy to find, then test the signal using that same speed test you used at the start. 

If it's not improved much then try moving the antenna or the extender itself, then take another test. Keep up this process until you're happy that you have either wide enough coverage or specifically enough speed in the room you're going to be working in.

Depending on your extender there will be different ways to name your device. The easiest is usually using the app that works with the device. This should be as simple as entering settings and inputting the name. Failing that, you may be able to connect directly using the setup website as instructed in the installation booklet of your extender.

If all else fails, go mesh

If you've tried everything and still just can't seem to get a good enough signal for stable online teaching, then you might want to consider a mesh WiFi network. 

A mesh, as the name suggests, uses multiple points to create a web-like signal that interconnects your entire home. This is a more advanced system and will cost you more, but the end result is usually very impressive with strong signal in every room, even for larger homes. 

A setup such as this typically comes as a package deal, in which you buy the mesh kit that includes a main router and any required extenders. You plug in the router, then setup each mesh extender according to the installation guide. Since most systems are designed to simply plug into main power, setup can be as easy as plugging in and everything else being done via the app.

What is the best Wi-Fi extender for me?

As you've probably gathered by now, there are many options for WiFi extenders. But if you want to keep it simple then a known brand is a good bet. Netgear is the big name in networking and one of its best options, making it one of the best WiFi extenders right now, is the Netgear Nighthawk X6S EX8000 Tri-band WiFi Extender. It's not cheap but if you want performance then this is the most solid option.

To save a few bucks but still get a great unit there are options such as the TP-Link RE650 AC2600 WiFi Range Extender, which is super easy to plug in and setup, or Linksys RE7000 Max-Stream AC1900+ WiFi Range Extender for really great performance over longer range. 

Or, do you want to really go for it and get a mesh network to keep you future-proofed and fully connected? Simple but effective options include Nest WiFi with Google Assistant built-in, Netgear Orbi for strong performance, or for larger homes there's the Linksys Velop. 

No matter what you do, the video stream in your online lessons sputters, freezes up and loses its audio synch resulting in a classroom comedy of errors. Some of this is out of your hands with Zoom, Hangouts, and Teams networks overloaded to the breaking point. But there’s a major thing you can do to your Wi-Fi network to keep up with the demands of online video teaching.

A Wi-Fi extender can boost your bandwidth to where it needs to be. Basically, an extender is a combination receiver-transmitter that takes in a Wi-Fi signal, boosts its power, and retransmits. The result is the ability to push wireless data into new areas of the house.

Expect that a good extender will cost less than $100 and take about 15 minutes to set up. Dozens of models are available, but I used Netgear’s EX6200 Wi-Fi Range Extender ($75) to show how to boost the data flow in an area in my house that doesn’t have enough of a Wi-Fi signal to support good video.

Before you do anything else, take a bandwidth reading using Ookla’s Speedtest.net benchmark site to provide a baseline reading to compare the final results with. Tap Go and wait a minute for it to test the location’s data speed. For me, I got roughly 2.5 Mbps but the speedometer dial varied wildly and that’s likely why video conferencing isn’t working reliably.

Picking the right location

With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s figure out where to put the extender. It’s just as important as what you use, so pick a spot near an AC outlet that’s roughly halfway between the home’s Wi-Fi router and where you want the signal to end up. For me, the best place is in a corner near a heating vent, down the hall from my teaching room.

The EX6200’s details that we’ll need later are printed on a pull-out sheet in the back of the extender; some have it printed on the device’s bottom. Also have your Wi-Fi’s name and password handy. Let’s get started.

1. The actual set up instructions vary from extender to extender, but they are similar. For the EX6200, it starts with plugging the unit in and changing my iPad Pro’s Wi-Fi setting to “Netgear_EXT,” the extender’s network name.

2. After it connects, open the iPad’s Safari Web browser and type “mywifiext.com” into the address bar. Then, tap New Extender Setup.

3. Next, create a Netgear account with an email address and password. You’ll need to answer two verification questions.

4. Tap to set up a wireless extender and the app will scan for the extender and your Wi-Fi network.

5. Then, it asks which network to extend along with its password.  

6. You can pick a new name, but I use the host network’s name to ease roaming. Just type it in.

After a quick restart, the extender is working like a charm. I connected my iPad and based on speedtest.net’s benchmark test, it now gets over 70Mbps. 

That’s plenty for video teaching and the video signal now comes through more dependably.

K-12 schools are moving away from the traditional desks-in-rows classroom model to a learning environment better suited to collaboration. At the same time, a digital transformation is taking hold, increasing the amount of time that students engage in digital learning activities both at school and home.

In addition to the changing physical environment, the roles of teachers and students are changing as teachers becoming facilitators and students take ownership of their own learning as digital tools connect the curriculum to real life applications. Learning is expanding beyond the classroom to an open 24/7 model of access that supports student learning on multiple devices from multiple locations.

Increasing network capacity is just one of many challenges that IT teams now face in schools and districts to support anywhere/anytime learning. Some of the other challenges include:

• Supporting all user devices and often multiple devices per user.
• Delivering robust, data-intensive applications, and collaborative activities.
• Enhancing security of the network particularly student information.
• Simplifying network design, provisioning, deployment, and scalability.

To meet these challenges, IT teams in schools and districts should look for the following features and capabilities from their network solutions provider:

• An end-to-end model that features a robust wired network as the backbone. This is critical to delivering coverage and capacity.
• A robust wireless network that can support users in any location while giving IT the flexibility to prioritize certain types of traffic to support the most bandwidth-intensive learning tools.
• A simplified architecture that lets you grow and adapt the network without having to rip and replace infrastructure or add a new access point each time your needs change.
• The highest level of network access security, enabling IT to easily onboard devices, authenticate users, extend visibility, and manage security policies for both BYOD and school-issued devices.

This digital transformation is evolving as schools learn how to best support the acquisition of 21st century skills—preparing students for college and career. Embracing mobile, cloud, and related technologies are the most cost-effective ways for districts to provide both network coverage and a comprehensive digital learning environment that effectively and efficiently supports learning outcomes.

Focusing on the Mobile Network

Aruba, a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) company, delivers an integrated wired and wireless portfolio in network management and security designed for digital transformation. Here is their recommendation for building a robust mobile network to meet present and future needs:

1. Increase wireless to optimize for mobile: Gigabit Wi-Fi is the foundation of digital transformation for delivering enterprise-grade wireless so mobile users can roam and collaborate while accessing applications and data.
2. Future-proof your wired infrastructure: The surge of wired devices and the increasing use of bandwidth mean that the wired infrastructure is as important as ever in delivering data up to 10 gigabits per second (GBps).
3. Predict network issues before they happen: IT needs granular visibility into the access layer of the user, device, and application level to insure protection and availability.
4. Secure the network with smart policy management: The Aruba ClearPass Policy Management Platforms leverage real-time, trusted, contextual data to allow IT to enforce trust on every user and device on the wireless, wired, and VPN networks.

Choose from the resources highlighted below to help your district scale their network coverage and security to support new digital learning demands for students and teachers.