Why wireless

Rob, a Canadian teacher-librarian, recently e-mailed asking if and why our schools are putting in wireless access points. He is looking at the educational benefits, especially. Below is my reply. I'm hoping other readers can provide additional ideas..

We are providing managed wireless connectivity in all our schools K-12. There is both “open access” which is only port 80 traffic for any visitor or student, and “closed access” which requires log-in by staff or students to get to other resources on our networks. The wireless access is filtered, seems to be working reliably, and is used extensively.

We embarked on the wireless project about four years ago for a number of reasons:

• We wanted to provide more computer/Internet access to our students but did not have the physical space for additional labs or the funds for lots of classroom computers. Mobile carts of laptops made sense for us, and these really require wireless Internet/network storage access so they can be used throughout buildings.
• We wanted to provide a safe and convenient means for students, staff and visitors to use personal devices to access the Internet. Wireless connectivity does this for us. It decreases the incentive for people to bring Ethernet cables to school, getting unauthorized access to the networks.
• More teachers want the convenience of using portable devices (PDAs, laptops) to do assessments and grades in real time, near students, and be able to use their laptops in a variety of locations in their classrooms and in the school.
• All staff wanted wireless connectivity so that they could check their e-mail during really boring meetings ;-)

Blue Skunk readers, reasons you have or haven't put wireless in your schools?

Comments

[Rob Darrow]

I can't imagine working in an environment without wireless! Although it is slower than hard-wired, the access is soooo important! Our school district (Clovis Unified) started installing wireless 10 years ago and now our entire school district is wireless - 40 K-12 schools. I was working in an intermediate school library when we first started using wireless and I made sure there were two access points so I could access our network in my car from the parking lot nearest the library! It is all about access to information at anytime from anywhere in the school district.

[Librarian in a HUGE district]

Wireless Internet access is great. My library doesn't require the 25 foot cables that are required to reach the one switch that is located in the library. I am sorry to say that we have only one other access point and it provides "crappy" access in a third of our building. Once this problem is resolved, imagine what a librarian could do with 20 or more ipod "touches."

Question for Rob. How do you get two access points to cover a large school and get access out in the parking lot? Did you put your access point near an outside wall? Just curious!

[Becky205]

I am in a teacher ed course about education technology. We recently debated the idea of mobile laptop carts. Some of my questions about this is how big a difference is there in cost as far as what your school has done compared to setting up a bigger computer lab? Is it significant? And what about the laptops themselves, are they hard for the teachers to get their hands on? Or is it pretty easy for a classroom to request the use of them? We also talked about sending the computers home with students, is that an option in your school? Does having the laptops and wireless internet make it harder to keep the students on task when they have the computers in front of them?

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Becky,

The major cost saving for us is that we don't have to build, heat, and maintain 900 sq. ft of physical plant in order to give kids computer access. The laptops themselves, cart, wireless router etc. are somewhat more expensive than just throwing desktop computers in a lab.

Given the amount of time our labs are used for mandated testing, mobile carts are more readily available much of the time for teachers. Never enough, it seems, of any kind of access.

As far as I know, we do not check laptops out for home use. I expect that we may start to circulate older machines after they are replaced by newer ones.

Since the task at hand usually involves the computer itself, the time on task is not an issue.

Hope this helps answer your question and all the best,

Doug