The Jamestown Public School District has made great strides in the amount and the quality of technology available to our students, teachers, and staff due to the foresight and commitment of current Superintendent, Mr. Raymond Fashano, our Board of Education, former Technology Coordinator, Mr. Fred Callender, members of our education community, and our community at large.
We are coming into “year six” of our continuing “technology upgrade process”. Working in conjunction with 
Erie 1 BOCES WNYRIC (Western New York Regional Information Center), and the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities (BPU) we have installed a state-of the-art, 100 percent switched, fiber optic, 10/1000MBs Ethernet network. This network includes a fiber optic cable run to each classroom and office space in our eleven school buildings. With a Category 6 copper cable run to each office workspace and training area in our Administration Building and Warehouse/Bus Garage, we have connected each of these LANs' to our “dual redundant” (24 strand) 2GB fiber optic wide area network (WLAN), and our Gigibit external high speed Internet connections, all of which terminate at our district data room, “WAN Central”, in the High School.
To make use of this network, the High School’s "district data room", is also home to numerous high-powered network servers running most of today’s popular network operating systems (NOS) including OS400 (on the IBM AS/400), Novell Netware, Windows 2000 & 2003 Server, and OS X Server, on Apple, HP, Dell and IBM platforms. These servers deliver many shared educational software applications and databases that drive learning, attendance, record keeping, scheduling, and other applications to students and staff in all of our buildings, as well as services such as World Wide Web (WWW), e-Mail (electronic mail), DNS (domain name services) and others.
In addition to our data network we have installed a modern "Voice, Video & Security" system in each school. Our new digital Voice (telephone) system allows for communication between and beyond all spaces in every building. Each classroom, office or other workspace has internal and external dial in and out capability, voicemail, all-call, and system wide battery back up that is rated at full usage for up to four (4) hours in the event of a power failure. Everyone in the district is excited about our new Video and Security system! This system gives every classroom and most common areas the ability to view "on demand" VHS video, CD, DVD, Laser Disk media and educational Cable TV stations. All delivered from the “Head End” electronics room located next to each building’s Library Media Center to an eight by six foot (8x6) screen via a ceiling mounted LCD video projector. The “Security” system is an integral part of the video scheme that permits teachers, administrators or other staff to view the output of at least 13 strategically placed (inside and outside) cameras from the relative security of their room or office. The system also records all activity to tape for future review should it be necessary. We top all of this off with an unbelievably crisp and clear rear projection video projection system that delivers all of the aforementioned capabilities to each buildings' auditorium or cafetorium.
Of course all of these wonderful capabilities would be virtually useless without up-to-date computing equipment in our classrooms, labs, Media Centers, meeting spaces and offices. To fulfill that need we have installed new, wired computer labs, 20 (or more)-station wireless mobile labs, and at least two (and in most cases four) wired workstations per classroom in each school. In all, students, teachers, and staff utilize over 3,200 computers and over 600 networked printers throughout the district for learning, teaching, and organizational needs. The two most common hardware platforms running, Macintosh OS (operating system) and Windows OS, are offered at the higher grade levels, with primarily Macintosh OS offered at lower levels. Plus, all teachers have been issued a wireless capable laptop, and wireless access points have been installed at strategic locations throughout each building to allow for their unfettered use.
Even the most skeptical must admit that we’ve installed a state-of-the-art infrastructure. However, the best news is that the dedicated educators in our district are already hard at work building and delivering technology rich curricula to utilize it. We are very proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, and are confident about where we can go in the future with these tools. Take some time to visit your school, the enthusiasm is contagious….
Click here to send me an e-mail
