How "Win a Wireless Lab" Is Changing Schools

Persistence does pay off. Just ask Diana McGhee, director of technology for the Fort Thomas Independent Schools in Fort Thomas, Ky. For about six months, she registered one of the district’s five schools each day for the 2005 CDW•G/ Discovery Education “Win a Wireless Lab” sweepstakes, a partnership to help K-12 schools across the country integrate technology resources into their curriculum. CDW•G has offered the sweepstakes since 2003 and brought the latest technology to six schools in six states.

“I put a task in my Outlook that reminded me every weekday to register a different school,” McGhee says. One of the schools, Ruth Moyer Elementary, was chosen as one of three grand prize winners from more than 78,000 entries. Ruth Moyer, a K-5 school with 372 students, received a Sony wireless lab including 20 notebooks, three Proxim ORiNOCO access points and a Bretford mobile notebook cart.

The two other grand prizes included 20 IBM notebooks with three Cisco access points, which went to Ellsworth High School in Ellsworth, Kan., and 20 Toshiba Tablet PCs with three Netgear access points, which went to Sheyenne Valley Career and Technology Center in Valley City, N.D. The packages also included a Hewlett-Packard laser printer, an InFocus projector, an APC backup unit and assorted Discovery Education software. Each package has a total value exceeding $40,000.

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Although Ruth Moyer has two hard-wired labs with roughly 50 desktops, the wireless lab is alleviating some of the requests for technology time. Chris Capal, fourth-grade science and language arts teacher, says, “My science classes have used the [wireless] lab to do research on animal adaptations for a feature article they are writing. I have three classes a day, and it would be impossible for me to be in the regular computer lab for that much of the day.”

Kevin Hedenberg, Ruth Moyer’s physical education teacher, also likes the lab’s portability, which makes it easy for him to bring the Internet to his fourth- and fifth-grade health classes. He recently used the lab for a research project about the immunizations his students need to receive before entering middle school.

Since the upper elementary students are on the top floor of the building, but the computer labs are on the main and bottom floors, Hedenberg saves valuable time by “wheeling the notebooks right there to them instead of taking the students downstairs.”

JUST IN TIME

For rural Ellsworth High School, the prize couldn’t have come at a better time. As Tina Bruning, district technology coordinator for the 650-student school system, describes it: “We had desktops in the high school library and had been in the process of replacing [them with] notebook PCs. But we weren’t sure we could do it, because money was tight.”

Through special state funding for vocational classes, the school was able to purchase a wireless lab in 2003 for a technical writing course. The notebooks get used for that class and by the other teachers in their own classrooms. Since the teachers were familiar with the wireless lab and liked its flexibility, it was Bruning’s hope to install the same setup in the library.

“This was exactly what we wanted to do, and we won it without having to dig into the budget and possibly cut into other programs,” Bruning says.

Bernie Schulte, a math/technology teacher at Ellsworth, now has three of the 20 notebooks in his classroom for use in his geometry, computer literature and A+ computer repair classes.

With regular access, Schulte can now assign research problems that involve going online in his computer repair class, and his geometry students use a computer-based tutorial program to help bolster their math skills. His Computer Literature III class also uses the new notebook PCs to update and maintain the school’s Web site.

TALKING ABOUT TABLETS

Like McGhee at Fort Thomas schools, Frank Egan, tech coordinator and instructor at Sheyenne Valley Career and Technology Center, was extremely diligent in his entries. He not only entered the school in the sweepstakes every day himself, but he also enlisted the help of the 10 SVCATC instructors and administrators.

SVCATC — a secondary school specializing in elective career and vocational fields such as health care, automotive and computers — serves about 150 students in grades 11 and 12 from three area high schools. Egan is excited at the teaching possibilities for automotive technology instructor Jim McFadgen, who can now have his students complete an online automotive safety course or research parts on the Internet in their new building, which was recently added to the main school.

Egan hopes to have more training time to help his co-workers fully use the Tablet PCs’ capabilities. McFadgen, for example, might take a diagram of a wiring harness for a specific car, copy it, put it into a digital ink document, and then have his students identify and mark critical parts on the Tablet PCs with the electronic stylus.

Though Egan’s school was the only one to receive Tablet PCs, he says everyone at SVCATC is thrilled with the new abundance of technology. “Toshiba Tablets are very powerful machines,” he says. “They are capable of doing a lot of what [notebook PCs] can do, and they are very light.”

OFFERING OPPORTUNITIES

Chris Rother, CDW•G vice president for education, is elated by this year’s response to the sweepstakes. She says, “As a result of growing partner participation, the three 2005 winners can offer enhanced classroom activities and collaborative learning, as well as improved vocational and career courses. We are proud to take part in a program that enriches the way teachers teach and students learn through technology.”