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May 15, 2003
Is Wireless Worth It? (cont'd)
The Research Strategy
The study would involve a cohort of sixth and seventh grade math and science teachers at John Jay Middle School. The group developed several technology-infused curriculum units (see "The Teacher Projects") in the early fall, with the plan for half of them to teach these units using the school's wireless laptop lab and the other half using the existing wired computer lab. Each teacher would be observed by Sun Associates' researchers during mid-to-late fall, and their classes' work would be analyzed and compared.
The Technology
Within the context of this study, "wireless technology" means rolling carts of 16 wirelessly networked laptop computers. Katonah-Lewisboro used Wintel machines communicating via the 802.11b wireless Ethernet standard. Wireless base stations were distributed throughout the school's main classroom wing and tied into its existing 100-Mbps Ethernet. In this network, applications are served off the school's main server, and student and teacher data is also stored there in private and class folders.
Katonah-Lewisboro teachers have a variety of other mobile devices available (e.g., PDAs and AlphaSmarts), but none are currently integrated into the school or district network.
The Environment
John Jay is a traditionally structured grade 6-8 middle school of approximately 1,000 students. It has three conventionally wired computer labs (of about 25 machines each) as well as a computer "presentation station" in each academic classroom. This presentation station is a single networked workstation connected via scan converter to a television and VCR. Teachers are encouraged to use their presentation stations for teacher productivity (e.g., grade books) as well as the presentation of information to students.
Teacher Technology Use
The district-wide evaluation included collecting data on how both teachers and students use technology. John Jay teachers are active users of technology for traditional teaching tasks such as preparing materials, creating presentations, researching curriculum materials, and a variety of student record-keeping tasks (see Table 1 for current-year data).
Table 1
Technology Used by John May Middle School Teachers (2002-2003 School Year)
The teachers are strong users of technology for their own professional tasks. Likewise, John Jay students are active users of technology tools for basic productivity. We found students frequently and competently using word processors, spreadsheets, and the World Wide Web for information retrieval. As shown in Table 2, virtually all students are frequent and proficient users of technology as a productivity tool, but relatively fewer (approximately half) students use technology as a tool for critical thinking, self-directed learning, or discovering concepts and relationships.
Table 2
Percentages of John Jay Students Reported to Use Popular Technologies
All in all, John Jay teachers and students are somewhat ahead of the national curve in terms of their basic use of technology, but are hardly atypical. In other words, John Jay is an excellent subject for testing the impact of wireless computing in a traditional middle school environment.
Installation Challenges
While the teachers in our study experienced some relatively minor technical and configuration issues associated with the recent installation of the wireless network, these issues appeared easy to resolve. They were related to coverage by the network's base stations and communications conflicts among multiple base stations.
Once aware of these problems, the district hired a wireless network consul-ting engineer who was able to configure the network properly. This does point to one basic finding about wireless: don't underestimate the technical complexity of the network. At initial inspection, wireless networking seems easy. But while installing a single wireless network base station may be as simple as plug-and-play, this is definitely not the case when installing a building-wide wireless network. Such a network is as complex as any traditionally wired network, and subsequently needs the same level of technical expertise involved in its design and implementation.
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