Acuity and Laptops

4/5/07 I have had the similiar experience with even less wireless laptops being utilized at the same time in various buildings. At times, you actually are at a standstill and then may be totally dropped. Once dropped either from the website or wireless network, there are times you are not able to relogin. It does get very frustrating during professional development with adults and even more so when working with students. I think as Joy suggested a trial run would be a necessary step and providing for all variables that may be evident on testing days would help to ensure success. Again we all know with technology nothing is a given. Marie Pampinella 4/4/07 My experience has been that once you get more than 20 computers logged on to the wireless, the network is very slow. A trial run would tell you more about your building capacity. Try having a class of 25 or so students log on to the internet and see what happens. That may give you a fairly good idea of what you can expect. Of course, there will be many more people on the network during Acuity testing and that may slow down the system as well. Maybe this is a question we can address to the technicians. Joy Carlson Title IID IST Mathematics and Technology 4/4/07 Lois brought up a point that many of us are facing - using our laptops to allow us to get all students tested within three weeks. I had planned to use the laptops with our 6-8 students at Huntington and the labs for 3-5. I was recently told if all of our laptops (30) are in use at the same time (accessing the internet) it might cause the wireless network to become too slow to process through the test. Since our MS classrooms have 28-32 in class sections, this will be the most efficient way for us to test our students at this level. Does anyone have any immediate experience, comments or suggestions to the capacity of the wireless connection(s) within buildings? Perhaps this is not something I should worry about, but I want to be proactive now in finalizing our schedule rather than reactive during the three weeks of testing. Also, is there any room for allowing students to complete make-ups during the week of May 7-11? We have worked on our schedule for several weeks - to make it an optimal as possible while working around other commitments such as: NYS 4th & 8th grade Science, Scott Foresman Staff Development, Elementary Annual Reviews, and MS classes that are assigned to the computer lab as a special on a daily basis. While scheduling around these constraints, we still have a few groups testing right up until May 3rd & 4th. If students are absent in any of the classes that are testing during those last few days, will they be able to access their tests after 5/4? Francine Grannell, Reading Specialist Huntington K-8