CoSN supports edtech leaders who are dedicated to continued growth in their capacity to improve students’ learning with innovative, digital environments. We work to improve the human capacity of school systems by providing robust, thoughtful, and relevant professional advancement opportunities. This range from face-to-face events such as the Annual Conference to online courses to CoSN’s Certified Education Technology Leader (CETL®) program.

Last year the FCC finished its rules for opening up previously restricted spectrum at 3.5GHz to experimental public use. In particular, this now permits commercial operations in 150MHz of new spectrum in the 3550-3700MHz band which was previously reserved for the Defense Department for coastal navigation use, and fixed satellite services. What does this mean for public school districts? A potential new path and service set for mobile data communications. This is another step in the Obama administration’s effort to expand broadband access.

With the exponential increase of access needed to cloud-based applications for instructional and operational use, Internet reliability is becoming paramount in school systems. So how can school systems provide the necessary access by having multiple Internet connections, or a fiber ring for their Wide Area Network (WAN)? The short answer we found in my school district is to provide additional Internet connections where the school system divides Internet traffic between schools. Let’s take a hypothetical example of a school district with 20 schools.

Last week, CoSN (in partnership with AASA and MDR) unveiled the results of our annual survey that laid out the state of connectivity in schools across the U.S. There is lots of data for both pessimists and optimists among us.

Without question, there are some major challenges that are holding many school systems back from having robust education networks with broadband and WiFi capacity. Score one point for the pessimists.