Reading, Writing, Wireless

When the 1,000 freshmen at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion arrived on campus late last month, each received a Palm Inc. handheld computer along with orientation information. The state school is the first higher education institution in the United States to require freshmen to use the Palm device, also called a personal digital assistant, according to Mark Pike, director of two university computing centers.All 1,600 students at the private Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City received IBM ThinkPad laptops when they arrived on campus last month. Some were so excited, they waited in line for hours to get their wireless computers, even though distribution lasted a week, said Robin Beam, budget and program manager for the university's information technology services.Also last month, seventh- and eighth-grade students and teachers at eight Georgia public schools received wireless laptop computers at the start of a three-year, $10 million pilot program designed to boost student achievement and parental involvement. The Georgia schools will be using computers produced by Gateway Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. Maine is considering a similar initiative."We do think we are on the cutting edge of something here," said Michael Clark, spokesman for the Georgia Technology Authority. "We are among a small number of states that are looking at how we can use technology to change the way students learn."The movement toward wireless computing in education is just beginning, according to both educators and officials at high-tech companies. Wireless computing allows students to collaborate in real time and provides teachers with immediate assessments of student learning: important benefits in an era of high-stakes achievement testing, proponents said. The technology also makes it possible to distribute material to an entire class with a single tap on the screen or to print information wirelessly."We're at the beginning of a trend," said Sean Rush, manager of the global education practice of Armonk, N.Y., computer maker IBM Corp. A wireless computer "enables students and teachers to begin to bring the machine to the work as opposed to go to the machine to do the work. The machines don't become a 45-minute-a-day exercise, where you go to the lab and then back to the normal classroom," he said.That's particularly important in higher education, where large investments have been made in network storage, online collaborative work groups and Internet access, said Gregg Peters, national education business manager for computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif. "If students have to go to a lab or the library to access computers, then the value of the infrastructure is diminished. If they all have laptops and wireless, they can connect anywhere. It's a big deal," Peters said. It's hard to know how much is being spent on wireless computing at this embryonic stage, technology executives said, because wireless solutions have only been offered to schools for a year or two. The trend is so new that several analysts who study either wireless technology or technology in schools said they haven't begun following it in earnest yet. However, anecdotal evidence indicates a growing market. In the first six months of this year, IBM saw its mobile computing sales, including wireless laptops and mobile computer labs, to education clients increase about 35 percent over last year, Rush said. The company's wireless infrastructure sales to education clients increased by at least 75 percent in the same period, he said.Palm has seen its sales to higher education clients nearly double since it entered the education market about a year ago, said Mike Lorion, vice president of education markets for the Santa Clara, Calif., company. Interest among K-12 schools is so new, "we're just trying to establish a baseline," he said.The trend is driven by several factors, educators and technology executives say:? Availability of and demand for anytime, anyplace Internet access;? Desire to graduate tech-savvy students who can perform multiple tasks and collaborate online; and ? Need to bridge the digital divide between students who have access to technology and those who do not. "The political and governmental mandate to deliver a fair education across a spectrum or region is going to force thinking about nontraditional ways of delivering applications to kids who aren't sitting in a metropolitan area with mom's or dad's PC," said Rob Bowell, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers' management consulting practice in McLean, Va. He runs the company's national education practice. While wireless networks are generally more expensive than wired networks, wireless may be less expensive and more feasible when educators are faced with wiring old school buildings or bringing Internet access to rural areas, where high-speed connections are not yet available."A great majority of the kids are in areas that can't rely on the traditional DSL [digital subscriber line] high bandwidth, so [educators have] to think out of the box, and wireless is one way to do that. That's where I think the opportunities are," Bowell said.Oklahoma Christian saved nearly $100,000 by installing a wireless network, Beam said. Not only does the wireless network provide access anywhere on campus, including the outdoors, but university officials are also confident that this anytime, anywhere connectivity to educational resources will help provide students with the skills they need to succeed in the workplace. "These students will be more employable than students that have no technical background. This is just a necessity," Beam said.The path toward wireless computing in education was paved by the federal E-rate program, which, since 1998, has provided up to $2.25 billion in funding annually to help wire K-12 schools and public libraries nationwide, thereby enabling teachers to use the Internet's vast information resources. E-learning, or delivering education electronically, followed, making major in-roads in corporate America, the military and more recently in higher education. At the same time, state policy-makers have given increased resources and attention to education. "Investing in K-12 education overall, including technology investment specifically, is probably the No. 1 priority for the majority of the governors," said Tom Davies, senior vice president of Current Analysis Inc., a market research firm in Sterling, Va. The next step for technology in education, educators and technology executives said, is making the most of schools' technology investments by putting a wireless computer on every desk and allowing students to take the computers to the chemistry lab, the lunchroom, outside and anywhere else their educational journeys take them."The E-rate program helped schools get connected to (the) Internet, and this is the next step. The core focus is to get to one-to-one computing," said Dean Kephart, director of marketing for Mindsurf Networks Inc. of McLean, Va., which provides online education software to K-12 schools. Rush doesn't see one-to-one computing becoming commonplace for another 10 years, however. By then, he said, robust Internet access will be everywhere, network access devices will be more affordable, online educational content will be even better, and most teachers will have embraced the use of technology in their classrooms. "You're going to need multiple things to converge," Rush said. "It probably will take the better part of a decade to get [wireless computing] to 50 million public school students and 14 million college students."XXXSPLITXXX-Wireless computing already is proving to be a popular ? and highly effective ? education tool at schools experimenting with the new technology.At River Hill High School in Clarksville, Md., for example, grade point averages have risen along with students' attention to their work, said Lin Storey, an American literature teacher and Maryland's teacher of the year for 2000-01. The 1,800-student school is a test site for an online education solution provided by Mindsurf Networks Inc. of McLean, Va., and delivered on iPAQ handheld computers produced by Compaq Computer Corp. of Houston. The pilot program began last year with ninth-grade students. Using the handheld computers, River Hill students can read online and respond to questions within their texts. Any text or paper can be digitized and distributed electronically, Storey said, allowing students to edit one another, and saving the school thousands of dollars in book and paper costs. Teachers can push a Web site to the handheld computers during class and lock students in, so they can't wander on the Web. They can deliver quizzes and discussion questions online, and watch on their laptops as students enter their keystrokes in response. "This alone is going to change how we teach in America," Storey said. "Nobody can hide. I'll know if Johnny can't write a thing, or if Mary is off track. Then we have a discussion, and I can instantly disseminate model student thinking or writing."The instant feedback from students makes Storey a better teacher. "I know right away if 30 percent of class doesn't understand the concept. Why go on if they don't understand? You can stop and work with the class," she said.Villanova University's business school in Villanova, Pa., also is experimenting with wireless computing, after instituting a laptop program in 1997. The Hewlett-Packard Co. machines are used throughout the curriculum, and so much so that the 2,000 students aren't allowed in class without them."We believe that the future of our learning environment is wireless," said Mohammad Najdawi, senior associate dean. "The drawback for wireless is the [lack of available] bandwidth, but it is expanding." Even without the wireless solution, Najdawi said, Villanova is graduating students who are better prepared for today's job market, and in the process the business school has increased the caliber of its applicants.The laptop program also has been a great recruiting tool for the business school, helping it to attract high-quality students. Since the program began, the average SAT score of incoming students has risen exponentially, Najdawi said, to 1250 out of 1600, and the number of transfer applications has increased significantly. "It really helped us to be very selective in choosing our students," he said.Ed Mansouri, chief executive officer of Ucompass.com, a Tallahassee, Fla., company that provides the infrastructure for online education systems, uses his company's course management system for wireless computers to improve his productivity on the road. He uses the software to teach astronomy for American Military University of Manassas Park, Va., a distance-learning institution."If I'm at an airport, and the flight is delayed, I can open up my Palm, moderate the discussion board, e-mail students and grade essays. That puts me that much further ahead of my work when I go back to the computer," Mansouri said.Students and parents at many schools expect that classes will be taught using new technologies, said Eric Peterson, a teacher and assistant headmaster at Forsyth Country Day School in Lewisville, N.C. This year, Forsyth became the first K-12 school in the country to require the use of Palm handheld computers, according to the company."Students and parents live in and work in and are aware of a world in which technology has become omnipresent," Peterson said. "I think they would find it anomalous if we weren't using technology throughout the school and in innovative ways as well. I think it's a fair expectation."