CASE STUDY TECHNOLOGY FOR EVERYONE - CDW · 2014. 3. 20. · 2 — Cisco UCS C240 M3 rack-mount servers 1 — Cisco UCS C220 M3 rack-mount server Phones 3,191 — Cisco Unified IP

ORGANIZATION: Shawnee Mission School District

HEADQUARTERS: Shawnee Mission, Kan.

STUDENTS: 27,450

I.T. STAFF: 5

DESCRIPTION: Incorporated in 1969, when 13 school districts unified, the Shawnee Mission School District is the third largest district in Kansas. Today, it encompasses 33 elementary schools, five middle schools and five high schools, serving 14 communities in metropolitan Kansas City.

At a Glance

A Kansas school district modernizes teaching and learning and paves the way to a one-to-one program with a comprehensive upgrade of its wireless and telephony systems.

Shawnee Mission School District’s Bill Sandburg and Leigh Anne Neal credit the district’s wireless and phone upgrades with enhancing classroom learning and collaboration opportunities.

CASE STUDY

TECHNOLOGY FOR EVERYONE

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Parents, board members and administrators have a clear

vision of how they want to see the Shawnee Mission School

District evolve. Their goal: to put computers and tablets into

the hands of every teacher and student.

Before the Johnson County, Kan., district could move

forward with a one-to-one program and energize

classrooms with modern teaching and learning, it needed

to upgrade its aging technology infrastructure.

Beginning in early 2012 and continuing over several

months, a committee of key decision-makers met to

offer and evaluate suggestions for a range of capital

improvements, says Associate Superintendent for

Communications Leigh Anne Neal. Better support for

classroom technology, a more robust network and a new

telephone system (to replace the nearly 20-year-old system

in place at the time) were near the top of the committee’s list

of recommendations.

“The committee believed strongly that curricular needs

should inform classroom technology planning,” Neal explains.

“A survey of the community and staff identified technology

as an essential need.”

Not long after the recommendations were made, the local

school board approved capital outlay funding for a wireless

network upgrade (from 802.11g to 802.11n) and a new Voice

over IP phone system with unified communications features.

Making ChoicesAccording to Neal, a district selection committee spent the

better part of summer and fall 2012 reviewing offerings from

several wireless and telephony equipment manufacturers.

Multiple meetings were held to understand the advantages

and disadvantages of each system and how it would best

serve the district.

By late winter, the committee had narrowed its list to Aruba

Networks for wireless and Cisco Systems for telephony and

unified communications. After identifying which specific

solutions to deploy in early 2013, district leaders selected

CDW to implement them. CDW’s strong partner relationships

with Aruba and Cisco, as well as its engineering and

deployment experience with both sets of technologies, were

important factors in that decision.

“By selecting a single vendor to install the phone and

wireless systems at the same time, we were able to complete

the work in a much shorter time frame using the same field

personnel, resulting in both efficiencies and cost savings,”

Neal says, adding that having CDW conduct one network

infrastructure assessment for both projects during its initial

phase also saved time and money.

According to Kourtney Dierking, CDW’s K–12 field account

executive on the project, district officials chose Aruba

because its wireless equipment supported video traffic and

multimedia more effectively. They selected Cisco for UC

and telephony because they wanted updated systems with

unified communications features, she adds.

“They wanted modern telephony, the ability to collaborate

by running video conferences and WebEx sessions, and

instant messaging and presence via Jabber,” Dierking says.

Even fairly simple features, such as “Find Me, Follow Me”

within Cisco’s UC solution, make a big difference to the staff,

Neal says. “Now, I can have my desk phone number follow

me wherever I go and pick up in the field on my cellphone,”

she explains. “It’s just a much better way for us to work

and remain connected when we are out at various schools

during the day.”

Cisco Unified Communications technology also integrates

well with the district’s Microsoft Exchange email software

and back-end Cisco switches, adds Bill Sandburg, the

district’s supervisor of telecommunications. Another

important UC feature is the Cisco Emergency Responder

application, which lets the district receive notification of any

911 calls — including the district location from which a call

originates — in real time.

On the Wi-Fi front, Sandburg says the IT department

appreciates the more granular diagnostics available through

Aruba’s AirWave Network Management tool. “While most

management tools will let you look at the present activity

of a client, AirWave lets us look at the past activity of all

CASE STUDY

72 The total landmass, in square miles, of the Shawnee Mission School District — a distance that encompasses

53 buildings

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Technology Makes It HappenA massive undertaking, the technology

overhaul at the Shawnee Mission School

District was conceived and deployed in a

matter of months. The following pieces

brought the new system to life:

Wireless

ClearPass Access Management System

AirWave Network Management

2,323 — Aruba AP-134 and AP-135 wireless

access points

7 — Aruba 7210 mobility controllers

UC Servers

2 — Cisco UCS C240 M3 rack-mount servers

1 — Cisco UCS C220 M3 rack-mount server

Phones

3,191 — Cisco Unified IP Phone 6945

171 — Cisco Unified IP Phone 8945

8 — Cisco Unified IP Phone 9951

Back-End Network Switches

187 — Cisco Catalyst 2960-S

Data Center Networking

1 — Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL core router

1 — Cisco Nexus 7009 data center switch

1 — Cisco ASR 1002-X Internet router

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the clients so we can get a better sense of what’s been

happening on the network,” he explains.

The management system also offers Sandburg’s team the

ability to centrally manage and schedule firmware update

deployments to the wireless network’s access points and

controllers. “This saves my staff time and provides for

greater system uptime for our students, staff and guest

users,” he says.

Its extensive reporting capabilities, meanwhile, “allow

my staff to monitor the health of the network by reviewing

scheduled daily reports on the network’s status,” he adds.

“This allows them to spot issues and correct them.”

Aruba’s ClearPass Access Management System enabled

IT to easily set up a guest network for personal devices. “The

ClearPass Access Management System provides extensive

monitoring capabilities on the client authentication process,”

Sandburg says. “It’s an invaluable tool in resolving client

authentication issues.”

Laying the GroundworkOnce the contract was signed in February 2013, district

officials worked closely with CDW’s project management team

to plan the full scope of the project. As planning progressed,

CDW performed a network readiness assessment in each of

the district’s 53 buildings to determine any additional network

switching needs and other network requirements to ensure

optimal telephony and wireless performance.

The new 802.11n wireless network operates in both the

2.4- and 5-gigahertz bands, but it’s “configured to coax the

clients to prefer using the 5GHz band,” Sandburg explains.

“Throughput also has been improved.”

“By putting an access point in every classroom, the district

went above and beyond the norm. But they wanted to have

that density of coverage to give teachers and students a

richer experience,” says Dan Morris, a senior project manager

for CDW. “Another one of our big challenges was simply the

time frame, because we had to have the network up and

running by the time the new school year started in August.”

By March, the Shawnee Mission IT team and CDW installers

were conducting walk-throughs in all district buildings to

determine phone and access point placement. Final design

work on the wireless network and phone system began later

that month, and final review of all site surveys was completed

in April. Phone system programming began shortly after

that, and the first installation and cutovers began in May

and continued through the summer. New phones with the

UC features, along with an AP, were placed in each classroom,

Neal says.

Moving ForwardAlready, teachers and staff are quite taken with the new phone

system — particularly the unified communications features.

“We’re finding that people are using the presence and

chat features in Jabber more often now,” Neal says. The

“Find Me, Follow Me” feature also proved its value during

a February snowstorm that crippled the area. “It was very

helpful to me in continuing my work,” she adds. “I could take

business calls from my home that I normally wouldn’t have

been able to receive.”

The improved wireless capacity and unified communications

have already had a dramatic impact in the classroom as well.

“The ability to have more concurrent wireless connections

within our classrooms offers teachers and students a faster

option for accessing digital media and for collaborating on

projects in the future,” she says.

That future is coming fast. Thanks to a $20 million capital

outlay approved by the school board, the district is beginning

the first phase of its one-to-one program. Over the next two

years, Neal says, close to 20,000 new devices will be rolled out.

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A Clear AssessmentCollaborating with CDW on a comprehensive network

overhaul offers distinct advantages, says Leigh Anne

Neal, associate superintendent for communications for

the Shawnee Mission School District. The company’s

telephony and wireless networking expertise came

in especially handy during its initial assessment of the

district’s infrastructure, she adds.

Because the district’s ultimate goal is one-to-one

computing — it plans to add 20,000 devices over the next

two years — the CDW team had to confirm that Shawnee

Mission could handle the anticipated increase in network

traffic, explains Kourtney Dierking, a K–12 field account

executive at CDW.

To that end, Technical Lead Jason Netherland “visited

every site and network closet, looked at the switches

and routers, and reported back to us on what needed

to be done,” says Senior Project Manager Dan Morris.

Adds Dierking: “The assessment showed that the

district needed to improve its capacity, which is why we

recommended they deploy additional network switches

and wireless access points.”

CDW also recommended that the district add Cisco

UC servers and new IP phones. “We knew we were

taking an old analog phone system and putting it on

the district’s network, so it was clear that Shawnee

Mission needed some updated telephony equipment

to make that happen,” Dierking explains.

Indeed, Netherland’s initial infrastructure assessment

has served as a useful blueprint throughout the

multipronged project. “The whole idea was to roll out the

technology in phases,” Dierking says. The first phase

encompassed the wireless and telephony improvements,

which were completed in fall 2013. Phase two, which

began in March, involves deploying two Cisco Nexus core

routers to solidify the backbone network in the district’s

data center.

Work on the third phase — installing IP video security

cameras — will take place throughout the spring. That,

she adds, “will give the district the added security

capabilities it’s been looking for.”

In March, every teacher was issued a notebook and tablet.

The program will expand further in the fall, when all high

school students will receive a notebook and all middle school

students will get tablets. Middle and high school students

will be able to take the devices home with them to support

their learning both in and out of the classroom.

The implementation of fully integrated technology will

be phased in at the elementary schools. Ten have been

preselected to participate in the first phase of the rollout

during the 2014–2015 school year. Third- through sixth-

grade students at these schools will receive tablets that

they will be able to take home; K–2 students, meanwhile, will

have access to tablets in the classroom only.

Students at the remaining 23 elementary schools will

have access to tablet carts for the 2014–2015 school year. A

full implementation will commence in those locations during

the 2015–2016 school year.

Neal says district leaders are sensitive to the equity

issue when deciding between a one-to-one and bring-

your-own-device program. “Districts are wrestling with

this now, and many are choosing one-to-one,” she says.

“By leveling the playing field and providing access to all

students, we think our program will be successful. We also

plan to supplement the device rollout with significant and

meaningful training for staff, especially on how technology

can improve teaching and learning in the classroom.”Phot

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CASE STUDY

“The ability to have more concurrent wireless connections within our classrooms offers teachers and students a faster option for accessing digital media and for collaborating on projects.” — Leigh Anne Neal, Associate Superintendent for Communications

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