November 2005 — Features

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Warming Up To Wireless

As wireless technology takes hold in school districts, the biggest challenge is getting teachers to embrace it, to take student learning to a new level.

by Jacob Milner

Just south of the Canadian border, way up north on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the winters are windy and the ice is thick. Moose outnumber humans by a staggering ratio. Hunting is the regional pastime. So it’s no wonder that students at Brimley Area Public Schools often feel like they’re learning in the middle of nowhere.

The district is small—fewer than 3,000 students— yet it is spread across a geographic area that spans hundreds of miles. Buildings are tiny; budgets are too. Teachers in the district say students don’t expect their educational opportunities to include such extravagances as whiz-bang technology. Most years, the big attraction is the state basketball tournament in Lansing, hundreds of miles away.

But things are changing for the better in Brimley and, as a result, opportunities are broadening. In the spring of 2003, a statewide program called Learning Without Limits (now called Freedom to Learn) provided Brimley administrators with enough money to shed the constraints of Ethernet ports and expand the district’s network with wireless technology. That year, each ninth-grader received a laptop to use in class and at home until the end of the school year. Last fall, that same luxury was made available to every student in grades 6-12. During the same time, the district took the step of putting laptops on mobile carts so they could be transported between classrooms. Today, Barb Light, a science teacher who runs the project, reports that wireless is still going strong.

“I overheard one of the ninth-graders say to another, ‘The laptops are the best thing to ever happen to Brimley, even better than if we won basketball regionals,’” Light recounts with pride. “The students have responded so favorably, it’s just incredible.”

This kind of wireless epiphany is nothing new. In districts big and small across the country, students, teachers, and administrators alike have come to appreciate the benefits of wireless technology. Because the technology delivers Internet signals on airborne radio frequencies, wireless networking allows users of all portable devices to move freely on a school’s campus and stay connected to the Internet. For those districts that need to add portable classrooms, the technology makes the job easier because it requires no additional wires, and wireless networks are easy to scale. Finally, technologists who have made the switch to wireless say that eliminating the costs associated with wiring a traditional network can save a district thousands of dollars, freeing up that money for software or other technology purchases.

Empowering Teachers
Still, the wireless revolution arrives with a host of challenges for K-12 districts. District administrators and technology coordinators agree that the first obstacle to wireless implementations is persuading teachers to get on board with them. According to Alice Owen, executive director of Technology for the Irving Independent School District (TX), it’s critical for districts switching to wireless to support their educators in learning the technology, and to know that having well-trained teachers always translates into better-educated students down the road.