FIELD REPORT
DR. KEVIN KEELEN CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, GREEN DOT
Fast Times and Young Minds
Green Dot Public Schools needed speed and reliability to best serve students. THE CHALLENGE: Green Dot Public Schools set out on a mission to rejuvenate schools in the highest-need areas of Los Angeles, California, with a focus on web-based learning tools and preparing students for college. To do so, Green Dot needed a robust IT and communications network for its 22 schools to accommodate new Common Core standards and to expand access to online learning resources. However, its T-1 circuits were slow and the network was unreliable. In addition, the cost was burdensome. It was time for a change.
THE SOLUTION: The Green Dot school system turned to Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) for an Ethernet Wide Area Network (EWAN) solution on the company’s wholly owned, fiber-rich network. The EWAN has up to 1 Gbps of broadband connectivity to each of the system’s schools and the centralized data center, and is providing significantly more speed and reliability than Green Dot had been receiving from its previous T-1 service. Teachers, students, and staff immediately noticed a vast
quality improvement. “When it comes to learning tools, we’re a bandwidth-hungry organization and dependent on the Internet like never before,” says Dr. Kevin Keelen, chief information officer for Green Dot. “[TWCBC’s EWAN] is just really super-reliable.”
When it comes to learning tools, we’re dependent on the Internet like never before. THE RESULT: A win for twenty-first-century education! Green Dot was able to hit the ground running with the bandwidth-intensive learning tools it needs—not only for implementing the Common Core standards, but for online benchmark testing, YouTube for classroom research, email accounts for all students, cloud-based applications such as Apex Learning, Carnegie Mathia, Read 180, and many more. Other benefits include:
• Cost savings. Because EWAN offers scalable bandwidth options, it enables users to increase their bandwidth capacity without investing in new hardware. For additional cost savings, TWCBC was able to help the school system apply for E-rate funding, a federal program that provides discounts to US schools and libraries for telecommunications and Internet access. • Enhanced administrative functions. The security and reliability of EWAN also enables efficient administrative functions such as the use of the BloomBoard application, a cloudbased teacher evaluation and observation system. • Support for IT planning and more. The Ethernet network monitoring portal that provides trend reporting and system alerts helps Keelen and his team anticipate demand for bandwidth growth. Keelen also appreciates the level of attention provided by TWCBC’s local sales and support teams in providing network solutions that adhere to E-rate and California Teleconnect Fund (CTF) standards. He notes a recent situation in which he received advice from a billing coordinator about how to get CTF savings for his phone lines. “He didn’t have to tell me that, but it shows that Time Warner Cable Business Class understands what it is like to operate in a public environment.” Keelen knows that as Green Dot grows and evolves, its network will need to expand, too. He is confident that the scalable EWAN solution from TWCBC will easily adapt: “As the need grows, we don’t have to look for another provider.”
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How did you partner with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology issues? Share your company’s story for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of SOLVE. Visit business. twc.com/nomination to share your story. Summer 2014
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