Comments on: Wireless in classrooms

By: akon

akon — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:37:33 +0000

i think having wifi spots in our classrooms have been a real help for me personally. when our professor is really really boring connecting to the server keeps me awake. lol

By: WISP Tower Geek

WISP Tower Geek — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:26:01 +0000

In addition to the social & scholarly impacts are the aesthtics of implementing these kinds of systems across campus. There are a couple different ways to get the signal out. WISP Towers or Wireless routers in each classroom.

The towers route would only need a few scattered around campus. The towers could look ugly but could be disguised as something else. The routers in each classroom wouldn’t be seen but due to the large number used might get cumbersome and complicated.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:00:44 +0000

@Martin – seems that the program was kind of bias in its view. To quote your own comment:

not tested enough to say [that wireless is not safe]

So while it wouldn’t hurt to flip the switch, right now I would have to agree with Jarek and say that worrying about the negligible impact of the WiFi router is comical. They simply don’t output nearly as much power as cellphone antennas do. Besides, there are much bigger concerns in our environment.

By: Jarek Piórkowski

Jarek Piórkowski — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:03:58 +0000

Really, between cell phones, radio and TV air transmissions, microwaves, and holes in ozone layer, worrying about WiFi is a bit comical…

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:30:05 +0000

here in the UK the government wants to make wireless standard in all classrooms at school, it certaintly will have it advantages and i have wireless at home, it does make things a lot more convenient. However a few months ago there was a program on TV about the dangers of wireless technology, and how some people believe it is harmful like mobile phones. They showed how the government scientists were saying it was unsafe or not tested enough to say whether its safe or not, but the government didnt listen to them and instead listened to someone who worked for the phone companies and had a vested interest in the technology. The program worried me enough to switch of my router at night, and disable my laptop wi-fi when not using it.

By: live outside the box

live outside the box — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:11:58 +0000

im from the philippines and i really like this kind of idea… i hope that someday this will be implemented in our place. so it will more improve are quality in education…

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:29:48 +0000

All I have to add is this:

By: Valik Rudd

Valik Rudd — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:30:42 +0000

I bet that no student will say NO if wireless connections will be setting up in a classroom. Actually students can be very lazy too although without wireless connection. So why not set up the wireless connection in classroom? Instead I think this may gain students’ knowledge towards many sectors though world wide web.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:51:03 +0000

The N800 supports Flash 9 and Skype internet calls as of July 6, 2007

Jarek – you know your mobile devices! I’ll be considering this.

By: Jarek Piórkowski

Jarek Piórkowski — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:47:44 +0000

Hmm, my thoughts in order:

save yourself a couple of dollars and buy a Nokia internet tablet. It doesn’t have an Apple logo or a pinch-to-zoom function, but does just fine for email checking or whatever. (It runs Linux as a bonus.)

Regarding notes in class, etc: typing them on a laptop worked well enough for certain types of classes for me – the programming classes with little or no graphs involved. For everything else, I personally fail to see the usefulness of computer notes even if you are a LaTeX pro and can whip up complex calculus formulas in no time. However, that depends on your study habits. If instant text search would be extremely useful to you, it may be something worth investigating. When I study, I go through my notes in order, so search is not very useful to me.

Another thing that may be worth considering is a tablet. Especially coupled with OneNote, these are pretty nifty machines. I was given use of one for this term, and I’ve shelved it after two days. Why? Personal reasons (heavier than my Thinkpad X31, worse keyboard, the issue of maintaining two systems) aside, I found that the notetaking just isn’t that much better than the good old pen and paper. Handwriting is significantly slower than typing for text-heavy classes, and the pen lacks the fine resolution for graphs. As noted above, the search doesn’t help my study habits. Writing on a surface elevated some 4 cm off the surface of the table is not very inspiring, and neither is reading off a 2kg, lap-heating notebook replacement. The last nail in the coffin was hearing one of our profs saying that handwritten notes would be allowed in the exam. I didn’t think OneNote notes would fly, and I wasn’t interested in finding out.

Finally, I would like to support the motion that wireless helps students stay awake. Once you’ve fallen asleep, you cannot magically re-awake once something interesting/note-worthy happens; this is at least *theoretically* possible with MSNing/IRCing/facebooking. As for “maybe one is better off staying home and catching up on the much needed sleep” – if you have just one boring lecture in between two OK-ish ones, that’s not really an option, and sleep deprivation is not the problem with many (probably not most) class naps anyway.

PS. In high school, I had a 75 minute lunch, and if I were to do it again this year, I would definitely want some kind of wireless access at least in the library, preferably in other parts of the school as well. Though knowing school boards, it may be worth it investing in a WWAN-capable laptop.