What's New in Technology 2009-2010

*13 of our 19 schools and administration building have now been converted to SES Fiber network solution by Verizon. This moves network traffic off the outdated I-Loop that was the backbone of our network for the past decade. Remaining buildings will be converted to fiber or will be consolidated into other buildings. This project is made possible due to E-Rate funding the FRPS secured.

*Increased use of our X2 Aspen School Information System. In the past 2 years we have consolidated our systems and moved all special needs, health and staff licensure data to X2. This reduced costs but increased efficiency. The staff also completes all secondary level grading in X2. 

*Benefited from the E-Rate program by upgrades to wiring, switches, servers, VOIP phones and enhanced fiber network. 

*Using Moodle as a means of e-learning and professional development. 

*State of the art equipment in our 3 new elementary schools and new Kuss Middle School. Each classroom is outfitted with a minimum of 3 classroom computers, an in-focus projector and related equipment. Each school also has interactive white boards for sharing by staff.

*Introducing innovative teaching and communication tools to our schools such as V-Brick video distribution, Tanberg video conferencing and voice over internet phone systems. 

*Increased use of N-Computing that allows us to plan more computer labs at a fraction of the cost. Traditional labs cost roughly $30,000 per location, but an N-Computing lab cost around $12,000. 

*Formation of Tech Support Center to handle all IT needs. This creates a central location to efficiently handle all requests by staff. Networked copier planning will allow us to reduce our printing costs by removing many costly printers and moving the copies to efficient networked high speed copiers located throughout our buildings. 

*The FRPS technology staff has begun working with the city technology staff to share ideas and become more efficient in our efforts to bring state of the art technology to our students and staff.