Hybrid Learning Goes to Space — and Beyond

Bringing Colorado Springs into the Future with Meraki

In 2018, Colorado Springs School District 11 had a mixture of Cisco and HPE switches across 50 district sites, and each used a command-line interface. There was no centralized management system, making it difficult to inventory and configure separate devices. The district began exploring its options to bring its network into the twenty-first century.

"When we saw Cisco Meraki wireless and switching all in one interface, we were floored," said Jason Bullock, WAN network administrator for District 11. "There is no command line. Everything is managed from a central location. After we saw that, there was no question as to which way we wanted to go. Through a competitive bidding process using E-Rate additional dollars, we were able to procure a complete replacement of our switches and access points. This was the first time in D11's history that we were standardized on a single switch and access point vendor."

Prior to the move to Meraki, the district had maintained huge binders of configurations and documentation. With Meraki, everything was in one location—the cloud—and accessible from a single website. "Everything is documented, everything is automated, and I can do it from my phone, anywhere," Bullock said.

This wasn't the district's first project with Cisco. The relationship between Colorado Springs School District and Cisco goes back to the late 1990s, when they secured Cisco routers and upgraded their phone system.

"We've stayed with Cisco because of how robust it is. They continue to improve, and the equipment doesn't fail," Bullock said.

Meraki opened a lot of possibilities for the school district. The warranty ensured a replacement for any failures during the term, which saved the district from having to stockpile replacements. And because administrators no longer need advanced certifications to manage the system, the district can hire more junior admins—a more affordable option than hiring engineers with more certifications who can command higher salaries.

Keeping the System Secure for Every Device

In addition to Meraki, the district began an overhaul of their communication infrastructure, moving over to Cisco collaboration solutions, including Jabber, and later moving to Webex Messaging and video conferencing. The pandemic put everything into high gear.

"We had a really good solution to be able to hit the ground running to make sure our students and staff never had to struggle to keep up with their jobs of teaching and learning, regardless of what happens in the world," said District 11's network communications administrator, Kathy New. "We're able to survive and move on."

During that time especially, Cisco proved to be agile, constantly updating and changing things to meet the district's needs. "They continue to do that. I'm very impressed with them," New said.

Virtual education became a necessity during the pandemic; within a month, the district went from having 15,000 devices to 50,000 devices. Today, District 11 continues to support a bring your own device (BYOD) policy. This policy benefits students and staff, but presents a challenge for IT to secure and keep track of all devices that require protection outside the usual boundaries of school buildings. Cisco provided a Security Enterprise Agreement (EA) that included Cisco Umbrella, which allows the school district to filter content on student devices off-premise and keeps them compliant with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA).

As a public entity, the district has to safeguard their data while simultaneously ensuring that certain data is available to the public. "Cisco provides that additional level of security and makes sure our data isn't being mixed," New said. "We have a partitioned off management system that gives us the additional level of security we need."

Protecting Against Outside and Inside Threats

In 2022, the district's cyber insurance company required the implementation of multi-factor authentication (MFA). This policy is required by several district partners, including their student management system, which tracks critical details like grades and attendance, and allows the district to communicate with parents. They had a hard deadline of two months, and thanks to swift work by the district’s Cisco account rep, they rolled out MFA through Duo Security in less than six weeks.

With 30,000 mailboxes in the system, the district was also at constant risk for hacking. Employees were falling for phishing scams and clicking on nefarious links, which led to anywhere from five to a dozen email accounts hacked weekly. Duo Security also protects the district's email system, and hacked emails are now a thing of the past. And as they finish deploying Cisco Secure Endpoint, they're taking a more proactive security stance. "The endpoint protection is finding a lot more malware on our file shares than Windows Defender ever found and putting an end to it," Bullock said.

The district strengthened their firewalls, as well. The district had been using Cisco firewalls for 20 years, so it was, as Bullock puts it, "a no-brainer" to go to the next iteration. "We compared many other solutions, but the price and overall competitive value led us back to Cisco," he said.

Exciting Opportunities for Students and the School District

Students have largely returned to in-person learning, apart from the district's two online-only schools, which rely on Webex infrastructure. But the overall infrastructure has opened the door to other opportunities, including an initiative for schools to share instruction and offer students classes at schools where they aren't registered. For example, the district has only one Chinese language instructor, but students across the district can now take Chinese as a language, regardless of what school they attend. The district has a goal of creating a couple of mobile Cisco Room Kits in every high school, so that any teacher who wants to teach a hybrid class can do so.

A major challenge for the district has been a lack of growth because there’s limited space for new homes or developments in the area. "The surrounding districts are growing, but we're not. We want to attract people from outlying districts into our district," Bullock said.

With Cisco collaboration infrastructure, the district's boundary is now the state. Students living anywhere in Colorado can take virtual classes from Colorado Springs School District 11, which will help with growth and funding. "The more students we have, the more money we have to educate these students," Bullock said.

They can also offer unique learning experiences, such as one program that came out of the Artemis Project, an unmanned capsule that circled the moon. NASA had a virtual command center in Houston with Webex communication services in the capsule. One of the district's schools, Swigert Aerospace Academy, set up an event for all the students at the school: a Webex meeting with the astronauts in the Houston Space Center and the Artemis capsule. During the meeting, students could see the moon through the window as the capsule passed, and astronauts engaged in a Q&A session and demonstrated communication with the capsule in real time. Cisco technology made it possible for the students to participate in a live moon mission—for most, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"We're trying to give our students the understanding that you're not limited by what's in your school. You can communicate with people everywhere, and at this point, it's not even limited to the Earth. It helps us give the students the inspiration to want to get better," New said.