From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,45809,00.html

Wireless PCs: Not Just for Cheats
By Mark Baard  

2:00 a.m. Aug. 30, 2001 PDT

Schools are beginning to scrap hard-wired computer labs in favor of
wireless laptops and handheld PCs.

Public school administrators are admitting the failure of schools'
ubiquitous computer labs, which some experts say have had a negligible
impact on education, despite two decades of being in schools.

Now schools are experimenting with wireless computing technology.
Instead of taking kids to the computers, the computers are coming to the
kids.  

In Maine, every seventh grader will receive a wireless laptop next
year, courtesy of the state.

The superintendent of public schools in Henrico County, Virginia,
wants to distribute Apple iBooks to 42,000 students and teachers over the
next couple of years.

In San Lorenzo, California, 8,000 students from grades four through 12
will get a laptop that they can keep until they graduate.

And kids will be able to access the Net anywhere near the district's
15 school buildings. (The IT staff spent the summer sticking infrared cells
in the school's ceilings.)

Researchers are already saying that wireless technology is having an
impact, by increasing student access to computers and giving kids more
autonomy in the classroom.

Government studies have conclusively linked computer technology to
increased business productivity. But at schools "the impact of computers has
been zero," said Elliot Soloway, a professor of education and computer
science at the University of Michigan.

At most schools, kids are marched to the computer lab once a week,
where they learn "how to use a computer" -- something many of them already
know.  

Instead, they should be given the chance to use their PCs to take
notes, organize projects and do research, Soloway said.

According to Soloway's research, the ratio of students to computers in
primary and secondary schools nationwide is 6-to-1. Plus, 45 percent of
teachers say their students use a computer for less than 15 minutes a week.

Kids aren't getting the opportunity to use computers, and when they
do, "they're using them as little more than glorified typewriters," Soloway
said.  

To increase their effect, PCs have to be brought into the classroom
and integrated into everyday learning.

But according to David Dwyer, director of educational technology at
Apple, networking every classroom with wires and cables is just too
expensive.  

Apple's solution is to bring the computer lab to the classroom: It is
selling an iBook Wireless Mobile Lab that includes 16 iBooks, a printer and
an AirPort Wi-Fi base station for classroom networking and Internet access.

That's enough machines for everyone in the average secondary school
classroom, according to the U.S. Department of Education, which estimates
the current pupil-to-teacher ratio in the United States at 14-to-1.

"Students can take their iBooks anywhere in the classroom," Dwyer
said. "They can sit on the floor, or a couch -- wherever they’re
comfortable."  

Apple offers workshops and seminars to introduce teachers to the
company's view of what a child-centered learning environment should be:
classrooms where students mill about, form their own workgroups and
alliances, and teachers act more like facilitators than disciplinarians.

"It's an intensive shift in roles," Dwyer said. "The students, who are
often more technologically savvy, become like teachers, and the teachers
become learners again. But once they overcome that sense of loss of control,
they come to understand that these (wireless laptops) are a tremendous
resource."  

Researchers, meanwhile, are publishing free software to weave wireless
devices into teachers' lesson plans.

"You have to give teachers technology that will fit right into their
current curriculum -- something they can use on Monday," said Soloway.

A program called Cooties, developed for the Palm OS by University of
Michigan engineers, demonstrates how viruses -- the biological kind -- can
be transmitted.  

Every kid in the classroom is given a Palm Pilot. On each of the
devices, the incubation time for the virus and the students' individual
immunity levels is set by the teacher.

Students then spread the virus by beaming their handheld PCs at each
another. They work collaboratively to discover the initial carrier of the
virus and trace its path of transmission.

"Once you put these tools into the hands of teachers and kids,"
Soloway said, "they don't want to let go of them."

But teachers fear wireless PCs will make cheating hard for kids to
resist.  

Armed with wireless PCs, students could surreptitiously beam notes
back-and-forth, plagiarize work from other students or meddle with classroom
equipment.  

And there's no easy way around it: "Wireless cheating can be very hard
to detect," Soloway said.

But for now, a lot of schools are willing to take a chance on wireless
PCs.  

"I think we can trust kids with (wireless handhelds)," said Lovie
Bradley, principal of the Ann Arbor Open School in Michigan. "But I think we
should prepare ourselves, too, because the kids will be testing us."

Related Wired Links:

E-Textbooks Offer Light Reading
Aug. 23, 2001 

Teen-age Teacher: 15 Going On 3D
Aug. 22, 2001 

Taxpayers Fight to Save Macs
Aug. 15, 2001 

Kids Computer Camp Crashes, Quits
Aug. 14, 2001 

Plagiarist Booted; Others Wait
Aug. 9, 2001 

Pluses and Minuses in Math Scores
Aug. 6, 2001 

Teachers Vie to Be Mr. Wizard
July 16, 2001 

New Tools for the Schools
June 28, 2001 

Copyright (C) 1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.