Meru Networks Case Study: New Line Learning Federation
Chris Gerry: New Line Learning Federation is two academies, both of which are being rebuilt, and what we're trying to do is fundamentally change education. So how are we doing that? Well, we're using world technology. The second thing we're doing is building large spaces that are full of technology in order to connect with children. The reason we're trying to connect with children is because there's a fundamental problem, which is that children grow up in a highly technological world. When they come to school, very often it's not replicated. So the question is how do we devise dynamic, immersive environments which children actually want to be part of? To do that, we're using a great deal of technology in different ways. So, I was struck by the nature of these very immersive sites which you're going to see today, like Harry Potter's site for example, which are connected together, which brings ordinary people together to blog about this, write about it. If you look at these sites, you'll see how engaging they are. The question is, why can't schools be like that? How would you build a school that was like that? So in our environment, what we want to do is have large numbers of children with mobile devices connecting to these interesting learning environments rapidly and simultaneously. To do that we need a wireless network that enables us to do that, which is why we chose Meru. So the idea for plazas, essentially we started with one and we began to have an idea. How can we manipulate space and technology, the processes which are the undertaking of those spaces. So we had a more interesting environment where children and adults wanted to be.
Claire Thompson: This is one of our plazas. Obviously, we have a range of technologies as you can see here around us. One of the massive benefits for us has been having our wireless technology put in by Meru. Now if you think about the fact that with a massive space, you have 120 students in here as a top maximum, now they can come in and use their tablets and their laptops. They can logon to a range of things. It also means that we can have far more dynamic teaching going on in here, which means we can have lots of people researching things in one area of the room, we can have people doing PowerPoint displays in other areas of the room. We've got so many different screens that we can show peoples' work, they can interact with one another, they can actually put their work onto SchoolBook which is one of our Internet pages where we can share idea. It's really, really jazzed up the whole education environment for our students here, so we're really, really impressed with what we have.
Charles Ealham: The plaza install was done in the beginning of April 2009. It was done by one of Meru's partners, Building Zones. The install happened over one day, install and configuring of the wireless, and from that point it's just worked. Trust me, if it didn't then we would certainly know about it.
Jason Green: Meru, it's just like installing a wired switch. You put it in, you setup your VLANs, you setup your channels, you turn it on and you pretty much walk away and you never have to go back. It really is a technology that takes the headache away from wireless networks. Meru Wireless has given us the ability to provide a completely wireless environment, allowing people to collaborate and have more activity-based working.
Claire Thompson: The sort of feedback that we get from teachers is it's really changed and transformed the way that they look at learning and the way they look at their teaching, so they're not teachers anymore. They're facilitating all of this. So students have real grasp of, they have to take responsibility for their learning, what can they do to make it more exciting? It's not just the sitting in rows, the chalk and talk. It's not the old 20th century style of learning, it's what is out there in the future? How do we engage these students? How do we make them want to come to school? How do you make staff want to come to school and work really hard for our students? This way, we have more collaborative approach which really gets them to think about this is really fun, this is really exciting, I'm going to get to work with lots of different people today and I'm going to get to do new things.
Jason Green: You've got plazas with 120 different children trying to get online all at the same time, and requiring a wired-like experience in a wireless environment. Meru is the only vendor solution in the wireless space that can deliver the density of clients and the reliability of a wireless solution.
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