The purpose of this piece is to give you some background not only to my own personal experience, but to inform and instruct on the installation process behind Wi-Fi deployment in schools. I have attempted to keep the technical terminology to a minimum. Partly for the benefit of the reader, but mainly for my own benefit!

WLAN: a Wireless Local Area Network that uses high frequency radio signals to transmit and receive data over distances of a few hundred feet; commonly known as, or called Wi-Fi.
802.11N: the unnecessarily complicated way of explaining the type of connection speed. (The important bit being the ‘N’).

Due to my exceptional mathematical prowess during the very early years at school, I was occasionally given the exalted and coveted pleasure of being allowed to play a maths game on the schools one and only computer! It was a brown BBC, more affectionately known as the “BEEB”. It sat in the library, and received longing looks by every pupil that happened to walk past. Anyone who remembers these BEEBS will now be thinking about the advancements in ICT, and how far we have come technologically in the last 20 years.

Unless future proofing is considered when purchasing ICT, a school may as well cash out the annual ICT budget, and throw it into the boys’ urinal on the first corridor. The constantly changing nature of ICT is very nearly its downfall. This simple fact must be embraced before any purchase order is signed relating to ICT.