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We run most of our test wirelessly but I have noticed we have more trouble at schools that do not house their server on site. Do any of you have servers located in a central building instead of the school itself?

Is it possible to use an ipad to give the test?

The issues you are describing sound like connectivity issues that can occur when testing wirelessly, here are NWEA’s wireless recommendations when MAP testing: • The protocol running the wireless access point/airport should be 802.11 G (54 mb/s) at a minimum • No more than 20 users per access point/airport (15 is our recommendation) • Your wireless connection be a stable, persistent connection, free of interference. As Test Taker requires a constant connection to the NTE, tests will be locked out if the connection is lost mid test, requiring them to log back in and resume a paused test. • For wireless as well as wired testing, we recommend you stagger your test times by 30 seconds-minute/15 users. This prevents all the students selecting the Start Test button at once. As the start of the test is where the most data is passing through the network, staggering the start test reduces the throughput and prevents bottlenecking. Starting half a lab at one point and then the rest 30 seconds later has been known to help reduce slowness/blockages. • Try installing Test Taker locally on the wireless laptops. • Ensure the laptop is connected to a single access point, not jumping from one access point to another. Test Taker needs a constant connection to the NTE folder. If the above steps do not work please feel free to contact technical support at 1-877-469-3287 or by email at techsupport@nwea.org so we can further troubleshoot the issue with you.

ASFM (Monterrey, Mexico) is in its 4th year of MAP testing. In our experience, we have decided to stay away from using laptops in a wireless fashion. We have used the ethernet (hard wire) with the laptops and this has worked fine. I have found that a little more time is worthwhile in labs or setting up ethernet connections for testing windows. Hope this helps.

Thank you for sharing all of this information. We are new to make and have had the hardest time setting up our mobile MAC laptops for the test. I think the techs at NWEA know my voice by now because I have had to call so much;). Currently our students are on vacation and will be taking the test when they return. Hopefully all of the kinks are worked out we will be able to start the test. If any one has any advice about administering the MAP Primary test on wireless MAC to 25 students at a time. I would love to hear it.

We run an Aruba 3600 controller with Aruba AP65 Access Points. Currently we only have one AP for every 2 classrooms. Eventually we want to be at 2 APs for every classroom to give us a max of 15 clients per AP. Under our existing AP setup, we haven't had many problems with even up to 30 laptops in one room. Aruba does a pretty good job of load balancing, and sometimes I will add an extra AP in the classroom where testing is at just to be on the safe side. Every once in a while we have a laptop lock up on the MAP software, but it has not been unbearable. We only have mobile lab carts...no computer lab. So wireless is the only way to go for us.

We are in our 8th year of MAP testing and have 22 schools who test.   Our wireless network is very robust, and we still will not test whole classes wireless.  We have tested it, and and it seems that at around 10 wireless computers we start to see things stall and crash.  Even using multiple access points, unless the laptop is "tied" to a specific access point, it bounces between points and still loses its connection to the server.

We wire our laptops into the network for MAP testing.  It's a pain to set up, but saves us time and frustration in the long run.  We do have specialists testing 1 to 5 students wireless with no issues, and primary teachers do MAP Primary wirelessly in pods of 5 or 6 with no issues.

We've had similar problems. When I call into Support they say they don't recommend using wireless, but if you do limit it to 20 users per access point.

We are still trying to use wireless this year and are beefing up the access points in the testing rooms. Not sure if it's going to work though.