The River City Project - Part II

As with any learning experience involving technology there were a lot of questions, concerns, and hurdles around the immersion of a whole class of students in a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE).  Facing this implementation was a hurdle of having enough computers to provide each student with a laptop.  The challenge?  Mrs. Rauh's classes varied in size with two (2) classes with approximately 12 students and  two (2) classes of 29 students each.  Not only did we need at least 29 laptops we needed them to be reliable and have good connectivity.

Our solutions were to piece-meal together two sets of laptops.  One set of 17 used laptops from the district and 12 laptops on loan from BOCES for the duration of the project.  Each set of laptops would be "tied" to one of two wireless access points for connectivity back to Harvard's servers hosting the River City Project.  This was a great idea put together by Eric Jordan, Brighton's senior network technician.  Work with Eric and a crew of others (thanks Mary!) and you'll know why this project went off without a hiccup.  Sure there were small issues, but not once was a student left without access to the River City world. 

I appreciated the questions from all those trying to make this work for the students.  More projects in schools and life should reflect this type of collaboration.