The Piedmont Unified School District invested in technology upgrades over the summer to help create a faster wifi service and increase data transfer speed.

“Over the past years, we have been driving high end machines on a dirt road that has now just been paved and widened,” computer coordinator Jana Branisa said.

According to district technology coordinator Stephanie Griffin, existing cables and wiring inside and between buildings at the schools have been replaced by 1600 Cat 6 network cables to increase capacity for faster data flow. Old cables could only transfer data at a small rate.

“This allows for more devices to be on the network and data transfer rate is faster,” Branisa said.

Along with the upgrade in wiring and cables, additional wifi access points, the little white boxes on ceilings, in rooms throughout the school have made it possible for more devices to connect with the school network. “PHS has more than double the number of wifi access points as last year,” Griffin said.

New switches were installed in wiring the school’s wiring closets. These switches are capable of gigabit speeds, 10 times faster than the old switches, according to Griffin.

In achieving the installment of the new technology upgrades, Branisa said the costs have ranged from $200,000 to $250,000.

“After the Seismic Bond upgrading our schools for earthquakes was closed out last year, the district had some money left over due to some application for state modernization funds,” Griffin said.

With 300 devices already on the network, Griffin and assistant superintendent Randy Booker have paved the way for another 100 devices to be connected to the network. The parents club has already committed to buying two class sets of chrome books that are scheduled to arrive in a month, Branisa said.

“All in all, these upgrades permit us to support more use, and specifically more mobile wireless use, on our network,” Griffin said.

The hope is to eventually have effective device usage by students in classes, which has been recommended by the Smarter Balanced Assessment, Branisa said.

“The new network will definitely change and create a new learning and teaching environment,” Branisa said.