CACHEBOX gets PIE cooking [on gas]
ApplianSys is pleased to announce that non-profit corporation ‘People Involved in Education’ (PIE) in rural Oregon USA, has chosen CACHEBOX to stop network congestion from disrupting testing and learning at its two public charter schools.
Sand Ridge and Sweet Home Charter Schools follow similar PIE curricula and best practice, with a focus on delivering personalised learning programmes that meet the individual needs of 500+ students. However, both schools have struggled with reliable connectivity in the classroom, especially during state testing periods.
Despite internet links of 100Mbps and 50Mbps, chosen to meet respective school need, both were finding that traffic peaks would often overwhelm connectivity, causing congestion. When students accessed lesson content from Core Knowledge, McGraw-Hill, Saxon Math and others, they would often do so at the same time. This caused traffic to spike far higher than capacity, resulting in longer page-load times and buffering.
With student access slowing dramatically, lesson plans and Smarter Balanced online testing were disrupted, putting learning outcomes at risk. Gigabytes of software updates for the 200 and growing student devices were only adding to the problem, often hogging precious capacity during school hours.
PIE’s tech supervisor Bill Chandler turned to a federal school programme that provides funding for caching in schools to help solve the problem.
On discovering that CACHEBOX not only caches State Testing content but also content from its various online curricula, Bill was excited to learn more. CACHEBOX’s ability to also cache all manner of software updates sealed the deal, and he quickly ordered an appliance for Sand Ridge.
By storing and serving content locally, CACHEBOX takes the strain off bandwidth, alleviating congestion. With far less content needing to be downloaded from the internet, capacity was quickly reclaimed, enabling the school to do more. Delighted at the results, Bill went ahead with a second CACHEBOX for Sweet Home.
With a CACHEBOX at each campus, both schools have secured the fast, responsive user experience they need for e-learning to flourish.
“By caching popular content locally, schools avoid having to rely on internet access – easily safeguarding access to online tests and bandwidth-heavy content,” says CACHEBOX Consultant Ilaria Mancinelli. “And because cached content is served at much faster LAN speeds, PIE’s students are enjoying a much more enjoyable user experience. No queues, no delays – and no more concerns for classroom disruption.”
About
People Involved in Education, Inc. (PIE) is a non-profit corporation that operates both the Sand Ridge Charter School (a public school contracted with the Lebanon School District in Lebanon, Oregon) and the Sweet Home Charter School (a public school contracted with the Sweet Home School District in Sweet Home, Oregon). The schools follow a ‘Back to Basics Through Personalized Education and Parental Involvement’ goal, which sets out to develop and implement programs that meet the needs of each child. Access to web-based learning content is a key element of its blended learning goals.