THE BLE GROUP AND CIO TIME-SHARE SERVICE
WHO IS THE BLE GROUP? We're a group of 25 educational technology directors and school administrators who use technology to improve instruction and management. Over the last three years, we've developed technology plans and provided management services in over 40 school systems. Eliot Levinson is the CEO of the BLE GROUP. Levinson founded the BLE GROUP (www.blegroup.com) in 1998 and has worked in over 40 school districts. Levinson is known nationally for his work in technology planning and management for school districts. He co-authors "Tech from the Top," a monthly column in Converge Magazine. He has experience in education and technology as a teacher in California and Pennsylvania, a middle school principal in Massachusetts and an Assistant to the chancellor of schools in New York City. He has held research positions in educational change at the Rand corporation and MIT's Sloan School of Management. Levinson holds masters degrees in Education and Anthropology and a PhD in Organizational Studies from Stanford University. THE BLE Group's principals, our leadership team, consists of:
WHY WE DEVELOPED THE CIO TIME SHARE SERVICE? If you can't afford $105,000 and benefits for a CIO who will likely leave your organization after 13 months, can you afford $1,500 or $2,000 a month for someone who is knowledgeable about your district and available on a just-in-time, just-enough basis, and will save you enough money to pay for the service. That's what a CIO timeshare is. Technology is now central to everything that happens in a school system, from instruction and buses to parent communication and financial management. We're concerned that the 86 percent of American school systems with less than 5,000 students will become second class instructionally and administratively, because they won't be able to effectively manage technology. Good technology staff is hard to find and expensive. Most vendors pay attention to the top 1 percent of school systems that have 20 percent of the students, because it isn't worth their while to work with small school systems. Intermediate units have the same knowledge and staffing problems as the school systems. We developed the CIO-Time Share Service to provide a cost-effective way for intermediate units and small school systems to get the strategic technology support they need. WHAT IS THE CIO-TIME SHARE SERVICE? The service supplements the technology capability of smaller school systems so that they can remain high-quality instructional institutions. The CIO-Time Share Service is to technology what your outside lawyer and accountant are to contracts and finances: it supplements your internal capability with external expertise. Main service components include:
If there is anything more you wish to know about the CIO-Time Share Service or the BLE GROUP, please e-mail or call: Eliot
Levinson <eliot@blegroup.com>,
CEO,
PURCHASING HARDWARE 2002
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) emphasizes the full integration of technology into teaching and learning in order to boost student achievement. Furthermore, the Act's demands for accountability, annual testing, and documentation of progress will mean much more in the way of computerized assessment tools and real-time data collection since schools that wait for test results do so at their peril. The establishment of block grants under the law means broad latitude in the funding of technology. Yet despite all of the talk of technology's importance, guess what? If you are like many districts, you may have less money to devote to hardware. So, in this environment, how can you ensure that your district is making the best decisions about hardware and getting the right mix of devices, whether they are desktops, laptops, handheld devices, or mobile computer labs? What does each do best, and where do they come up short? How do you compare costs in order to maximize your budget dollars for hardware?
Here the rules of thumb, common pitfalls, and the trends that will help you achieve results: 1. As simple as it may sound, consider what the computer will be used for before deciding on what type of hardware, be it desktop, laptop, handheld computer, or thin-client device. "It always comes back to the same thing. You need to figure out what your problem is before you buy a solution, says Brenda Barker, chief technology office of Wake County Public Schools in North Carolina. "You need to figure out what it is you want to accomplish." Be sure that curriculum needs and objectives drive the use of technology, not that technology drives the curriculum. 2. Be sure that computer hardware is an integral part of your long-range technology plan to ensure that the hardware your district purchases or leases will be maximized. 3. Never be fooled by the initial price tag of hardware. Consider the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). TCO involves all of the costs related to getting computers and networks up and keeping them running. Such costs include professional development, support, connectivity, replacement costs, and retrofitting. "When we buy hardware, we ask ourselves what can we do in the purchase upfront so that we minimize the cost of owning it," says Bob Moore, co-executive director of Information Technology Services of Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, Kansas, and a national educational technology expert. 4. Be sure that your measurement of the total cost of computer hardware considers not only the lifespan of a machine but also how much it is used on a daily basis. Steve Finch, chief technology officer of Oklahoma City Public School District, says that far too few school districts assess how "productive" a computer really is in their determination of its total cost. They do not look at the Total Cost of Operation. "My way of looking at it is not the norm. It's the kind of analysis that a business would use in terms of benefits and cost of production," Finch says. "It's a change in the thought paradigm." Looking at the computer's "productivity" means considering exactly how much the computer is in use during each day and factoring this in. Six periods? Three periods? This makes a huge different in analyzing cost versus benefit. The total cost of operation figures in everything that makes the computer work in the classroom, including not just the machine but special furniture, any fixed wiring, etc. 5. Standardize your choice of brands and models. Pick standards and devise benchmark specs about components, processing speed, memory, etc., and stay with them, within the various types of hardware (meaning within lines of desktops or laptops). Jumping from model to model and changing specifications haphazardly can inflate the Total Cost of Ownership in categories such as support and training. If you choose a particular line of devices, are the components going to remain pretty much the same for a period of at least 18 months or so? 6. Put as much into the computer upfront as you can, money permitting. Moore calls it putting enough "horsepower" upfront, meaning processing speed and memory. If you are planning for the desktop to have a life cycle of five years, for instance, you do not want to have to perform upgrades in that time. Every time a district upgrades, it costs money. 7. Make your hardware cost as predictable as possible at the time when you buy or lease the machine. With the right contract and plan, you should be able to know exactly how much that computer will cost you for its planned lifespan. An important part of this approach is to have strong warranties. Moore says that his district gets five-year, on-site warranties on computer equipment such as desktops; this allows the district to predict its service costs at the time of purchase. In Plano, Texas, a district that is a national technology leader, schools get a five-year, 24-hour service turnaround warranty on computer equipment. 8. Take a look at the use of handheld devices, which are showing a lot of promise, both for instruction and assessment in schools. They will be the hot devices over the next year or two, and leading-edge districts are looking very closely at their potential. Keep in mind that such research is in the early stages. Expect much more experimentation and in-depth studies, including those that measure results when compared with control groups that do not use handheld devices, to assess the potential long-term uses and impact of handheld devices. 9. Decide if you want to be an "R&D" (research and development) school, meaning one of the schools that are assuming the risks of pilot projects involving computer hardware and applications. If you do take part in a pilot project, know that while it can pay off in positive results, be prepared, both in time and money. "You should consider having more money available that they tell you it's going to cost," says Alan McCloud, assistant superintendent for technology and information services in Batavia, Illinois, Schools, about participation in a company's pilot programs. "I would also suggest that you have a backup plan. Can you afford to ride the pilot (program) out for a full year if it doesn't work? Can you work it out if you have to abandon it at the end of the year for some reason?"
Desktops, Laptops, Handheld devices, Mobile Computer Systems? When it comes to hardware, how do you get the best bang for the buck? It's not so much having the computer as what you will do with that computer and how you will provide dependable access to every child that is dictating wiser choices. School budgets are tighter. Accountability is more stringent. This makes the decisions even more challenging about exactly what hardware school districts should acquire - desktops, laptops, handheld devices, mobile carts with laptops, etc.; how much to spend; how to provide access; and how to deploy them best. Let's focus on these various devices, provide a snapshot of what they do well, evaluate pros and cons, and tell you what you can expect to pay. As we do, we'll pick the brains of some of the best district people in educational technology across the country on what they are doing and what rules of thumb they employ to decide on hardware and providing their students efficient, cost-effective access to computers. Then we'll look at three district cases to show innovative approaches that schools are using to maximize access, lower costs, and boost the ratios of computers to students.
Desktops
Laptops
Handheld
Devices Those interviewed cited the Compaq iPaqs and Palms as two primary examples of the handheld devices their schools are using.
Mobile
Computer Systems/Carts Mobile wireless computer carts can contain complete integrated systems with a number of laptop computers that have a range of hundreds of feet; a display monitor; and even a printer. Such systems can bring the Internet and total computer access into the classroom and because they are wireless, there is no need to have additional wiring. The mobile lab of EarthWalk Communications, one of the key companies producing wireless mobile cart systems, requires only one Ethernet connection and one standard wall unit. Some of the other players involved in selling mobile computer cart systems to schools include Dell, Compaq, IBM, Gateway, Apple, and Mobile Universe. Wake County Public School System in North Carolina has turned to wireless mobile carts as an outgrowth of its building of mobile classrooms to keep up with rapidly growing enrollment. The laptop-outfitted carts were first designed for use primarily in high school science labs. They each contain a wireless access point, permitting the carts to be moved anywhere around the school campus. Wake County Schools' CTO Barker says that the results have been very positive thus far, and the district expects to expand the mobile cart project. The case study of EarthWalk's wireless mobile computer system in Appomattox County High School, examined below, provides an excellent example of one system and shows the costs and benefits in more detail. There is a wide range in cost for wireless mobile computer labs. Gateway, for example, markets a mobile wireless lab with entry-level Solo 1450 notebooks, a 16-bay mobile cart, and an AP-500 wireless access point (WAP) for $21,025. Its wireless lab complete with higher-level Gateway 450 notebooks, a 16-bay cart, and AP-500 wireless access point starts at $29,025. A Gateway mobile computer lab with 30-bay cart filled with the same Gateway 450s, a more powerful AP-1000 wireless access point - a hub WAP to connect wireless users with a wired network—and two wireless cards, starts at $53,481.
Thin-Client
Computing
Those who tout the thin-client computing solution say the advantages are many. Among them: The machines do not have the usual moving parts that can break down, such as hard drives and CD-ROM trays. A range of applications can be offered to multiple users without relying on support for individual software upgrades and as much maintenance on machines. Desktops can be locked down so that students cannot install software or change configurations without permission. Students gain access to approved information, no matter which machine they log in on. Others,
such as several school technology officers interviewed for this
article, advise caution and express some skepticism about turning
to thin-client computing. Thin-client computing definitely offers
potential savings to districts for hardware replacement, they say,
but the total cost of ownership must be analyzed carefully to determine
whether a thin-client solution will save money over the long run.
When analyzing the possibility of using thin clients, some technology
officers have not been able to identify such savings in their own
districts. Possible savings would be eaten up by the need to create
a mirror site, purchase additional software, and have technical
staff to support thin-client systems. Still, none discounted thin-client
solutions completely, noting that they may especially be good for
districts that do not have the funds to regularly purchase or lease
new hardware. Also, if schools ultimately move toward application
service provider—ASP—models in which applications and
content are subscribed to and out of the mindset of owning everything
as many do now, innovations such as thin-client computing could
become even more compelling. Three
Cases of Innovative Approaches
PLANO
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, PLANO, TEXAS
Hirsch, who has authored more than 90 articles on technology-related issues and is a national leader in educational technology, cites this story as an example of the power of computer technology and the latest in hardware in advancing curricular goals. Plano, Texas Independent School District (Plano ISD), which has approximately 51,000 students and operates 64 school sites, has become one of the leading-edge school districts nationwide in the use of computer technology. The district has distinguished itself by paying scrupulous attention to technology integration in the curriculum since the early 1990s, meaning that the district first identifies all areas where technology will advance instructional goals and then seeks to identify the exact hardware and applications that will do the job. The schools do not purchase hardware and then figure out how it will be used in the instruction, an opposite approach that is all too prevalent in some school districts. As Hirsch explains, Plano ISD "has been designing the curriculum with technology imbedded since 1993." The Plano district has established strong, demanding standards with vendors for all purchases of computer hardware and built a system to track the use of each machine, both of which Hirsch cites as key steps in maximizing the use and cost-effectiveness of the equipment. There are a number of bedrock principles and practices for how Hirsch and the Plano district approach the acquisition and maintenance of hardware. The first is to purchase the hardware at good basic value plus buy extended warranties. This means that "there is no guesswork" during the lifetime of the machine about whether it will be dependable and available to students, teachers, and administrators. Nor is there about cost because there aren't expensive servicing fees on top of the purchase if a computer breaks down. Three years ago, the district instituted a policy with vendors of requiring five-year warranties on all desktop computers that provides for 24-hour turnaround on any repairs. "We've kept metrics on our repairs since 1996," says Hirsch, explaining that the district uses tracking software to track the history of each machine. The warranties put the repair burden on the vendor. Basically, the district has improved its hardware situation from one before in which machines used to be down as much as two weeks to one in which 90 percent of the machines are up and functioning each day. Hirsch says that he prefers the desktop computer for school use because it is most cost-efficient and has the lowest cost per unit over the lifetime of the machine, in his view. The biggest differential is due to the lifespan of the laptop versus the desktop, typically three years for the laptop and five years for the desktop. In choosing which hardware, the district uses an intricate formula to figure out the relative total costs that also involves classroom square footage and what would be most cost-effective hardware in that space. If desktops will not be cost-efficient for a certain space, the district turns to using shared spaces of computers or to laptops. The cost of a desktop in the Plano district is about $1,075, while the cost of a laptop is about $1,650. The cost of infrastructure makes the costs of each jump about another $400. The Plano district seeks to keep all desktop computers in the district's inventory in use five years, but sometimes has to stretch it to six years. "As much as possible, what I have been able to do with the board and community is to give them the total cost of ownership (TCO) for five years at a time, so that they know the actual cost and the total investment," says Hirsch. Because of financing regulations in Texas that, in effect, make it much less cost-effective for the Plano district to use current tax operating funds, the district funds its computer technology purchases primarily through bond issues. The district passed a bond issue in September 2000 that included a $39 million technology portion. "This is not something I'd never recommend to a district, because every three years I have to go back to the district taxpayers to raise the funds," Hirsch explains. Its yearly hardware budget on top of that is relatively small for the size of the district: $500,000. The district has a $450,000 annual budget. The most recent bond monies will allow Plano ISD to replace all laptops that are more than three years old; to replace all computers in grades K-8 that have processing speeds of 166 Mhz or below; and replace all computers in grades 9-12 that have processing speeds of 150 Mhz or below, plus selected machines at 166 Mhz and below. Hirsch obviously considers community buy-in to support Plan's major investments in computer technology as critically important. For example, the district maintains a very ambitious technology site to keep the community as well as school staff and students well informed. The Plano ISD technology Web site provides many support publications and very abundant details on the district's technology plans and activities. Plano schools are also undertaking a number of classroom projects using handheld devices to identify where applications using those devices will have an impact on instruction in the classroom, says Hirsch. "We are investigating what the long-term uses will be," says Hirsch, who is a member of an educational advisory panel for Palm, Inc. He is also the 2001-2002 chairman of the Consortium for School Networking, a D.C.-based advocacy group, and is on the editorial advisory boards for the Scholastic Administrator and eSchool News. In the past school year, Plano ISD initiated four classroom projects to investigate whether handheld devices can help deliver on the promise of one-to-one student-to-computer ratio: at two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. In eighth grade, for instance, students used handheld technology in algebra, English, history, and science, under a Palm Pioneer in Education grant. Software such as Palm Reader, ImagiMath, ImagiProbe, Docs to Go, AvantGo and others made the use of the Palms "an immersive experience" for students, who used them both in school and at home, according to a presentation by Hirsch on the project. Students used the Palms with Palm portable keyboards that fold up to be just slightly bigger than the Palm device itself. One of the biggest impacts using the handheld devices, says Hirsch, is that teacher-student interaction "expanded in ways that it never has with the desktop." Other positive results thus far: Students have taken a liking to organizing themselves electronically and they have become more responsible for taking care of their own agendas and for taking and sharing notes, according to Hirsch. During the coming year, Plano ISD will continue the investigations using handheld computers and will double the number of classroom projects trying them out. The district will put in place control-group activities (without handheld devices) so that Plano ISD can compare and contrast results and assess the impact of handheld computer technology on classroom instruction. The district plans to set up a personal area network (PAN) in a classroom of students using Palms and consider what impact it has on learning. Plano ISD is also focusing on a number of classrooms to examine teachers' use of handheld devices for management functions such as grading and taking attendance. The district upgraded its acceptable-use policies for handheld computers, for example, mandating that only certain pre-approved applications would be supported. Hirsch believes that schools are at a much different point in terms of acquiring computer hardware than several years ago. In his view, "quality is beginning to win out over quantity" in school districts' considerations of how much hardware to purchase or lease and how to use it. In Plano ISD, "We have about 2.5 computers for every student. We are not going to get to a one-to-one ratio other than if handheld computers show the promise to do that," says Hirsch. "Never are we going to have that with a laptop, and never with a desktop. I don't see how public education is ever going to support that kind of investment." Given that, it means that creative and smart decision making about computer hardware in schools is all the more critical. E-mail:
jhirsch@pisd.edu
THE $200,000 QUESTION: IF YOU HAD $200,000 TO BUY HARDWARE FOR AN 800-STUDENT K-8 SCHOOL, HOW WOULD YOU SPEND IT AND WHY? If you have $200,000 for computer hardware, what exactly would you purchase and what is the best access you can buy for this amount of money? That is the question we put to two expert CIOs by asking how they would spend $200,000 to buy computer technology for a K-8, 800-student school. Do you focus on desktops or laptops? What about handheld computers? Many schools face this decision at a time when budgets are tighter, yet accountability is greater. The types of hardware configurations you purchase will determine how much access your students have each day to computer technology, as well as how efficiently and creatively your teachers can deliver instruction. We asked Chip Kimball, the CIO of the Lake Washington School District in Washington State, and Steve Finch, the CIO of the Oklahoma City Public School System in Oklahoma, to say how they would outfit a K-8, 800-student school with a $200,000 hardware budget. The two expert CIOs both chose mobile computer carts with laptop computers as their prime purchase, but differed on the number of systems and exactly what they would do with the entire $200,000 amount. Check out what they would choose to purchase and why:
CHIP
KIMBALL STN:
What is your overall objective in choosing hardware devices for
a school? There are two legs to this piece….We think that the most effective approach is choosing the hardware with which you will have full integration into the curriculum. The focus is on the curriculum, not on the technology. STN:
You have a fantasy $200,000 to start from scratch and spend on hardware
devices for a K-8, 800-student school. What would you purchase specifically? Secondly, and actually I would do this first, is make sure that every teacher has a laptop. So if you have an 800-student elementary school, which is pretty big for an elementary school, you are probably going to have, say, about 30 classrooms. To just get 30 teacher computers, you are going to spend about $40,000. So it's the teachers' computers, number one. The portable lab is number two. Number three would be placing computers in clusters or core areas so that teachers could send students to these cluster areas. The ideal would be to have them in every room, but if you have spent about $110,000 or $115,000 on the other two (priorities), you are not going to have the resources to do this in every classroom. I would do clusters of computers at possibly grade levels, or in instructional technology areas, and I would make sure that you have the appropriate peripherals to go with that, meaning printers, projectors, and everything you need to complete it. STN:
What would be the ideal access for students
in a K-8, 800-student school? In the lower grades, you are not going to need one-to-one computer-to-student ratio because in those grades, the emphasis is on skills development. So you are looking at a four-to-one or three-to-one ratio where you have a portable lab for every three or four classrooms. In this case, it is less important for students to be able to use it on a daily basis as much as for skills development. The dilemma you have when you are looking at the goal of a one-to-one computer ratio, and there have been studies of this: It changes the way a teacher has to teach…In those cases when a teacher really changes the way he or she teaches, the impact has been powerful. But when the teacher has just adapted his or her traditional way of teaching to using the computers, it turns out to be little more than a note-taking exercise. The ideal can't be talked about without looking at pedagogy and the way that people teach. Just putting a machine in a classroom isn't going to change and have an impact on teaching and learning. E-mail:
CKimball@lkwash.wednet.edu STEVE
FINCH STN:
What is your overall objective in choosing hardware devices for
a school? My recommended platform is the purchase of laptops—small, portable processing computers—and you aim for the flexibility that allows you to move the computers anywhere and at any time, based on the school's curriculum requirements. If we can keep the computers being used seven bells (periods) a day, we can keep the total cost of operation down. Therefore, it makes it less costly compared with a computer that only gets used two periods a day—and it's the portable computer environment that delivers it. Right now, you achieve this with a system that is mounted on a wheeled cart, with wireless computers that can be used in any classroom. STN:
You have a fantasy $200,000 to start from scratch and spend on hardware
devices for a K-8, 800-student school. What would you purchase specifically? If you put four of these systems, you can service four classrooms simultaneously. Take an 800-student building—say if it was a middle-school environment in which you are looking at five rounds of 8 classes, with a total of 40 classrooms to be served. That means you can serve 10 to 20 percent of the students at any time with that configuration of (mobile) systems. If you do that for eight hours a day, you can easily serve all of your students. There are all kinds of configurations that could be obtained. You get one computer to every four students, and it's very usable. It's curriculum-driven. It lets the curriculum drive the use of technology, as opposed to having the technology drive the curriculum delivery. And the latter is incorrect and not the way it should go.
In a K-8 environment, we also should be providing some type of business education courses for the older students, and for those you would need a computer for every student. But in this latter instance, for which you have business education or testing needs, you can have a fixed lab with computers, where every student is at a computer. My feeling is if you start by considering one computer for every four students, you take into account the numbers of computers and examine your curriculum. You don't want the technology to restrict the curriculum, but what you do is look creatively at the curriculum and at how technology will support it. You look at scheduling the school's computers in a classroom like you do every other activity. I don't know where there is a mature model yet of the curriculum driving technology….I believe there is some observation and learning of the portable computer environment that we must do in order to determine if this model works, and whether it is less costly and more productive than the model of having three to four computers in a classroom. E-mail:
sdfinch@okcps.k12.ok.us
Following is a list of educational technology conferences, complete with links, that you may want to attend in the next 90 days. 19th
World Congress on Reading
Association
of School Business Officials International Annual Meeting NSBA'S
Technology + Learning Conference
* *
* Let us know if the |
This
is the fourth SuperTECH NEWS
newsletter and our focus is on Web-based applications for early
reading. In keeping with our aim of giving you interesting information
that is useful on Monday morning, I will try to heed my own advice
and provide a concise introduction: 
The
prevalent motto for the computer age in schools has been a computer
for every child. But how have the "machines" served the
purpose of classroom instruction and educational achievement in
your school district? Schools, more than ever, are being asked to
go well beyond thinking about number of computers and a "laptop
for every child" to ensuring that computer technology is embedded
in school instruction and absolutely linked to student learning
and achievement. It will mean less bragging about computer-to-student
ratios and more scrutiny on exactly what your computers are doing
for your students and staff. The role for computers in school management,
curriculum planning, instructional delivery, assessment, and school
communication is becoming more critical than ever.
There
are reasons why PCs remain the workhorses in schools, both
for instructional and administrative use. The number one
factor cited by school CIOs we interviewed is cost. PCs currently
range from about $800 to $1,000 per unit, while laptops generally
range from $1,500 to $1,700 per unit. The savings per
actual hardware unit can amount to $500 or more, just based
strictly on the hardware cost. Bob Moore, co-executive director
of Information Technology Services of Blue Valley School District
in Overland Park, Kansas, says that he figures a laptop costs
2.5 to 3 times the amount of the desktop, when considering
total cost over the lifetime of each machine. His district
plans for a five-year lifetime for a desktop, compared with
three years for a portable computer. Those who favor desktops
in terms of primary use in schools cite three other qualities:
security, durability, and reliability. Regarding security,
it is much more difficult for someone to walk out of a school
with a desktop. 
Laptops
offer many advantages to both teachers and administrators,
CIOs say. Laptops now offer the speed, processing power, and
memory that compare favorably with desktops, especially when
considering their portability. "We think the laptop
in the hands of the teacher is the right way to go,"
says Brenda Barker, who is chief technology officer of the
Wake County Public School System in North Carolina, where
the district has set a goal of having a laptop for every teacher
in its 130 schools. They perform well for both teachers'
classroom instructional use as well as their home use, for
matters like grading, updating paperwork, creating presentations,
Internet research, and similar tasks. Barker's district has
primarily purchased IBM ThinkPads, which have an excellent
keyboard and have proven very reliable, she says. Other prevalent
brands of laptops that schools use are Dell, Compaq, and Gateway.
Apple's notebooks include the iBook and PowerBook G4.
What
will handheld computers do well? Teachers and administrators
are finding positive results so far in doing assessments on
these devices, such as specialized reading assessments that
provide real-time data. Moore says he is excited about the
possibilities of such "data mining" using handheld
computers as tools that allow districts and individual schools
to get at student performance data, even at the classroom
level, instantaneously. These devices can also be powerful
in the hands of students, for fieldwork, home-to-school connections,
and classroom interaction.
Mobile
computer labs are becoming one of the fastest-growing, important
alternatives to the centralized desktop computer lab or the scheme
of a small number of desktops in a general classroom. Mobile
labs allow schools literally to bring computer and Internet access
to all students without having to purchase a computer per child.
Through
a Citrix Megaframe solution, for example, users can connect to their
network via any connected device, over any connection, from anywhere.
Software applications reside on a central server. It is possible
to link through a secure Internet connection and run any application
through a Web browser. This eliminates the need to upgrade software
at individual machines since software applications are installed
and managed on a central server.
When
Jim Hirsch discusses computer hardware these days, he likes to talk
about The Scarlet Pimpernel as much as any piece of machinery.
Students were assigned to read the classic work in an English class
in the Plano, Texas, Schools in which the use of handheld computers
is being tested by providing one to each student. At home, an enterprising
student proactively found a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel
on a public-domain site and loaded a version, complete with annotation,
onto a handheld computer. The student then shared it with classmates
and the teacher using their Palm devices, and the class was able
to exchange notes and annotations while they studied The Scarlet
Pimpernel. "It was a very powerful tool in the discussion of
the story," says Hirsch. It also showed how a student can become
super-motivated by the right use of technology. The class was one
of four high school English classes testing the use of handheld
computers by students.
