Using Your Wireless

Using Your School’s Wireless Network Emerson Court and some PESD schools have a campus-wide wireless network. This means if you have a laptop computer with a wireless card, you can connect to the Internet or the PESD network wirelessly from most areas of your school. This is different from the wireless connection that some schools obtain through a portable wireless access point (WAP). WAP connectivity is usually limited to one or two classrooms, while the campus-wide network is just that: campus-wide (or nearly so). Here are the steps to connect to a campus-wide wireless network: 1. Make sure your laptop has a wireless card. Click on Start>Control Panel and look for an entry for a wireless card (if your laptop was purchased by the district within the last three years, it will have a wireless card). The entry will say something like “Dell WLAN Wireless Utility.” 2. Contact John Kain at 2899 or Linda Cooper at 2879 to come to your classroom and configure the wireless connection on your laptop 3. When you are ready to log in, you should see three lines on your login screen: Username, Password, and Log On To. If you don’t see Log On To, click the Options button to make the Log On To line visible. 4. You have two choice for Log On To (click on the down arrow to see the two choices): a. PESD. If you choose PESD, log on with your network username and password. Your network username is usually yourfirstname.yourlastname and your password is whatever password you use. When you log in, you will have access to your H drive and any shared network drives you have rights to. The first time you log in to PESD on the wireless network, it may take a few minutes to completely log in. Be patient. If your wireless connection isn’t working, you won’t be able to log in to PESD. b. XX-XXXX-XX (this computer). The X’s will be numbers and letters identifying your laptop in our inventory. This is the local login. You have two logins you can use: i. Teacher: Username and password is teacher ii. Student: Username and password is student These local logins will allow you access to the Internet, but not to any network drives. Any files you save must be saved to the C drive (the hard drive) of your laptop, or to portable media (CDs, flash drives, etc.) You can log in locally even if your wireless connection isn’t working, but you won’t have Internet access.

5. After you log in, you can check the status of your wireless connection by looking at the system tray (the row of icons in the lower right corner of your screen). The wireless network icon is a picture of one computer with waves coming out of it (see below). If there is a red X or a yellow exclamation point in front of this icon, the wireless connection isn’t working. The four-bar icon tells you the strength of your wireless connection. The more green bars you have, the stronger your connection.

6. If you look at your wireless network icon and see a red X or yellow exclamation point, you can try to repair the connection. Right click on the icon and left click on Repair. Windows XP will automatically take several steps to repair the connection. If the repair is successful, you will see a message saying that you are connected to the wireless network. If the repair fails, you will see a message saying that the wireless network is unavailable. Restart your computer and repeat the Repair process. If the repair still fails, submit a work order to MIS Support.