Word: wirelessed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...experienced. Packer is at the cutting edge of an educational movement in the U.S. that is integrating laptop computers into middle schools and high schools--they're known as "laptop schools." But Packer has taken the idea a step farther. Its entire campus has been turned into a wireless Internet-access zone. Wherever they go, whatever they're doing--whatever they're supposed to be doing--Packer students are in constant high-bandwidth contact with the school, with one another and with the Internet at large. In essence, Packer has added an invisible fourth dimension to its campus. But life...
...wireless Packer would be very different from the old Packer. All assignments, handouts, work sheets, what-have-you would be distributed electronically. (Thus rendering the copy machine, possibly the only device on earth less reliable than the computer, obsolete.) Students would take notes on their laptops in class, then take their laptops home and do their homework on them. To turn in an assignment, they would simply drag and drop it into the appropriate folder, where the teacher could wirelessly retrieve it. Voila: the paperless classroom...
...fall of 2001, the system was ready to go live. Christina Devitt, Packer's cheerful, indefatigable director of technology, and her team placed 50 wireless transceivers around the school--unassuming, almost unnoticeable little boxes that flooded the campus with wireless signals. Two grades, sixth and ninth, were selected to be the school's inaugural cybernauts. Their parents were required to buy laptops for them on their own dime: Apple iBooks for the sixth-graders, Dell Windows machines for the older kids--the idea was to give students a look at both sides of the personal computing world. To kick things...
...Wireless has done more than give Packer students a new set of rules to break. The school's entire culture has changed. The place feels different, and not everybody is comfortable with that. Everybody you meet at Packer is carrying a laptop. Kids in the hall wave wireless cards and argue about where to download drivers. When teachers talk, there's a low, collective clicking sound in the background--the sound of hundreds of fingers taking notes via keyboard. "It was painful for me," admits Elissa Krebs, who heads the English Department at Packer. "Inevitably you would just have lines...
Classes at Packer are undeniably different, but if you can see past the strangeness, you will see some remarkable things. Drop by Mr. Rush's senior art-history class some morning. Rush--a dapper, manic teacher who claims he understands absolutely nothing about wireless technology--leads his students through a brisk review before an exam, pulling images of Greek urns off the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website. He makes extensive use of what's called a Smart Board, a high-tech blackboard that throws a giant version of Rush's laptop screen on the wall. It's touch-sensitive...