Leadership Matters - April 2013

Preparing for PARCC ——————————————————

(Continued from page 7)

students and staff by 2017. These are based upon the recommendations of the State Educational Technology Directors’ Association. Remember, these bandwidth requirements appear to be for the PARCC assessment, so districts will have to determine what additional bandwidth requirements each will have simultaneous to the exams being given. For instance, the e-mail system needs X bandwidth, the student information system needs Y and file services require Z. Each district’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) should be able to provide an analysis of current bandwidth uses. Also, as a district migrates to more cloud-based resources, bandwidth requirements will increase. One of the best bandwidth calculators available is School 2.0’s Bandwidth Calculator available at: www.etoolkit.org/edtoolkit/bandwidth_calculator/ PARCC just released a good capacity planning tool in March 2013, which is listed at the end of article as well. Another piece that hasn’t been widely discussed is that the original version of PARCC will be replaced by a more multimedia-rich version about 2017. So the initial version is only planned to be used for a couple of years. The more multimedia resources (videos, interactive pages, sound files, etc.), the more bandwidth required for each student. As many web filter and firewall devices are scaled based upon potential bandwidth, districts should review those devices and ensure that they will still function properly at the new increased bandwidths.

Where to go to find additional information:

SETDA’s The Broadband Imperative http://www.setda.org/web/guest/bbbriefing

PARCC Technology Readiness Tool http://www.techreadiness.net

FAQs about the same http://www.techreadiness.org/f/ Frequently_Asked_Questions_04302012.pdf

PARCC Capacity Planning Tool http://www.parcconline.org/assessment- administration-guidance

The ISBE PARCC Readiness page http://www.isbe.state.il.us/spec-ed/elearning/ html/parcc-tech-tool.htm

Appneta’s How Much Bandwidth do you need? http://www.appneta.com/2013/01/25/how- much-bandwidth-do-i-really-need/ Bandwidth Pool’s Bandwidth Calculator (a really general calculator – but a place to start) https://www.bandwidthpool.com/#/bandwidth -calculator/

8