Georgia will chip away at the internet learning gap by sending 448 mobile Wi-Fi devices to three dozen school districts that will mount them on roving buses.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced teachers and students from their schools and into their homes to finish the semester online, but little teaching and learning can occur when many, particularly in rural areas, lack reliable internet service.
Some school districts, including Marietta in metro Atlanta, have already hit on the idea as a way to temporarily provide service to those who lack it. The state has already assembled a website that indicates where free service —typically in library parking lots — is available. These new hotspots, which Gov. Brian Kemp's office is calling a "Wi-Fi Ranger," will expand on that. They can each connect up to 45 laptops, tablets, phones and other devices at a range of a hundred feet.
The 36 school systems — a fifth of the 180 in the state — were chosen based on student poverty and the number of students they can supply with computers or other devices. Rural districts with the worst academic performance were the priority. Kemp’s office said Tuesday that studies indicate rural students are nearly 15 times more likely to lack internet access outside of school. The service will supply internet to thousands of Georgia’s 1.8 million students, his office said.
The devices are being deployed with the help of AT&T, which is providing two months of free service. Grants will extend that to five months.
School officials will choose where to send their buses. Due to the range of the signals — imagine a dish the diameter of two football fields lined up end-to-end, with the bus at the center — students and teachers will be able sit nearby while accessing the internet at a safe distance from one another.
These 36 school districts will get Wi-Fi Rangers:
Baldwin County
Barrow County
Bleckley County
Brooks County
Bryan County
Butts County
Calhoun City Schools
Calhoun County
Camden County
Dooly County
Emanuel County
Floyd County
Franklin County
Glynn County
Greene County
Jackson County
Jasper County
Laurens County
Liberty County
Madison County
McIntosh County
Miller County
Mitchell County
Morgan County
Murray County
Paulding County
Pike County
Putnam County
Rockdale County
Schley County
Screven County
Turner County
Walker County
Washington County
Wilcox County
Wilkes County
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