The Role of Wireless Computing Technology in the Design of Schools

Quinns Beach Primary School in Western Australia is a simple, unassuming campus. Room designs maximize opportunities for students to mix and collaborate. Spaces connect directly to outdoor learning and play areas that are usable throughout the year. Students of various ages work on projects in groups, creating a quiet buzz of activity. It is common to see older students mentoring younger ones. Teachers move around to the students and groups rather than being rooted to a lecturing spot.

Wireless laptops are a mainstay in this school, letting students compute from nearly anywhere inside or outside the building. To support their project work, students often access the Internet. They can print their work wirelessly on one of several high-speed printers located throughout the small campus. Electrical outlets are plentiful for times when laptop batteries grow weak. Students with a need to move large files or use applications that move large amounts of data across the network, such as video editing or CAD (computer-aided design), can access desktop computers hardwired to the school's local area network (LAN). These desktop computers constitute about thirty percent of the school's computers.

In this school, technology compliments the idea that learning is something personal that cannot be mass- produced, and that computers help students build the confidence, curiosity, autonomy, and skill to pave their own unique learning paths. Information technology—which reflects and supports an economy based on knowledge and requires workers skillful in using "knowledge tools"—is an integral part of this learning environment. Best of all for the school's administrators and the community, the Quinns Beach technology design was affordable enough to become reality.

Quinns Beach and schools in the United States, such as Rye Country Day School in Rye, New York, exemplify an approach being taken by many school districts to integrate computers logically and affordably into a school building's infrastructure. With laptops and other smaller devices quickly overtaking desktop computers in popularity, wireless networking's promise to provide ubiquitous computing anywhere, anytime for these portable devices is hard to ignore.

Why Wireless Computing?

The local area networks that bring computers alive in school buildings by providing connectivity between users and the Internet are sprouting wireless segments at an increasing rate, and for good reasons. Foremost among these are the freedom and simplicity of working without wires. In older school facilities or portable classrooms, wireless offers a quick way—sometimes the only practical way—to get students computing.

Author and educator Jamie McKenzie summarizes in the journal From Now On why wireless networks utilizing mobile computers are preferable to the still-prevalent practice of putting desktop machines in each classroom (McKenzie 2001):

Ease of movement. Untethered laptops can be moved anywhere in the building and require no special furniture.

Relaxed fit. Laptops are easier to accommodate within existing classrooms because of their small size.

Strategic deployment. Laptop computers can be deployed on rolling carts where they are needed most, creating one-to-one learning opportunities that traditional methods of placing hardwired computers throughout a school do not provide.

Flexibility. Laptops can be used within existing rooms and can be configured to fit the teacher's preference and the nature of the learning experience, whether it is team, group, or individual. Wireless laptops place no additional demands on furniture or space.

Cleanliness. Elimination of cables and wires means that twenty-five or even thirty laptops can be accommodated in a room without creating clutter. Low profile. Unlike desktops, behind whose large monitors students may be hidden, laptops have low profiles and allow teachers and students to make important eye contact.

Convenience. Wireless laptops' ability to be readily available when needed and easily stowed when not makes them more likely to be used. There is almost no setup time for wireless laptops. They can be up and running without students needing to find and connect or disconnect a wire (as would be required for hardwired network access) and without students needing to move to a fixed computer workstation. This is a huge advantage and another way in which the technology itself becomes subordinate to the task of learning.

Simplicity. The simplicity, comfort, and reliability of wireless laptops means that teachers and students can focus on learning, not on hardware. This helps technology attain the use that has been hoped for but not often realized because of technical difficulties or inconvenience.

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Source: Educational Facilities - www.edfacilities.org