August 2005 — Features

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The Hidden Costs of Wireless Computer Labs

By Una Daly

Mobile labs may bring us a step closer to one-to-one computing, but with the proliferation of security problems and tech support issues, are they really ready to replace dedicated computer labs?

Four years ago, the Cupertino Union School District (CUSD), located in California’s Silicon Valley, introduced wireless mobile computer labs to enhance classroom computing and increase student access to computers. Although the wireless labs have provided more classroom computing, teachers and technology aides still have mixed views about their cost-benefit ratio. This is because the proliferation of viruses and spyware has dramatically increased number of computer maintenance hours, and laptops stored in carts can prove cumbersome to update and disinfect.

Half of the elementary schools and all of the middle schools in our K-8 school district have purchased one or more mobile labs. The labs feature a cart that securely stores, charges, and transports between 16 to 32 laptops simultaneously, while an on-cart wireless access point and laser printer provide network access and printing, respectively. On average, schools are paying more than $20,000 for the 16- laptop configuration, and that’s before buying curriculum software. In our district, most schools purchased Apple Computer’s wireless mobile lab (www.apple.com), which is loaded with iBook laptops, while a few schools purchased Hewlett-Packard’s mobile lab (www.hp.com).

The original goals for purchasing the labs varied among the schools, but the common theme was an improvement in the student-to-computer ratio and flexible computing resources. Most schools already had a dedicated computer lab that was fully utilized, but they wanted a better alternative to the few aging desktop computers that typically were in a classroom. Multi-day checkouts of mobile labs further enhanced their usefulness by eliminating daily setup and shutdown times.

The mobile lab also proved to be a valuable alternative for one school that lacked the room for a dedicated computer lab. Still, while space savings and an improved student-to-computer ratio was realized throughout our district, security and maintenance issues surfaced that were not always factored into the purchase decision.

Scheduling and Security Concerns

Advanced reservations are the key to sharing mobile computer labs between multiple classrooms, but battery life and recharging time must be calculated into the schedule as well. Laptop batteries can last from two to four hours, depending on the type of activity, but pausing to recharge during the school day means two hours of downtime and unavailability. It is possible to buy extra batteries and swap them into laptops as the cart is moved between classrooms, but this process is not appealing to teachers and extra batteries are costly.