Especially for Teachers

Good News About Good Schools

October 30, 2005

Wireless wave connecting teachers, students

By MICHAEL REED | News-Journal Correspondent

PALM COAST — An overhead projector? So 1970s.

Blackboard? Whiteboard? Obsolete.

When Matanzas High School science teacher Francis Lipscomb gives a lesson, she whips open her wireless laptop computer and clicks on a Power Point presentation that gets projected onto a large pull-down screen at the front of her classroom.

She can illustrate points by inserting photos, art or even a video clip from the Internet that describes the Periodic Table of the Elements.

Computers have been in classrooms for years, but now a brave new world of wireless education has arrived in Volusia and Flagler counties, especially in newly built schools such as Matanzas High in Palm Coast. And while administrators tout the tools´ ability to link classrooms to the vast array of knowledge available via the Internet, they acknowledge that the tools can add layers of complexity to a process formerly limited to books, chalk or markers.

Some teachers find the learning curves steep and ask students to show them how to work the stuff. Sometimes gear breaks down and gets shoved to the side while teachers wait for repairs by vendors or technical staff.

And in some schools, computer-based applied technology courses have replaced "low-tech" electives like wood shop, metal shop and home economics. Critics may lament the irreversible embrace of data packets and microchips, but teachers such as Lipscomb say they´re excited by the possibilities.

"This has changed the way I teach," Lipscomb says of her classroom´s new integrated presentation equipment, available in every classroom in Matanzas High, which opened this year.

The high school is Flagler County´s model for implementing wireless technology in the curriculum. In addition to manipulating presentations from shiny new laptops, teachers can write on portable "smart pads" that project their notes across the room.

Volusia County schools have two or three computers per classroom, plus a teacher workstation with Internet access, said Bill Tindall, Volusia´s executive director of Management Information Services. New schools come with the wireless projector equipment, and the district plans to retrofit all of its schools over the next three years with the technology, he said.

Lesson plans are becoming more interactive, and the equipment allows each student in a class to see their teachers´ computer screen, Tindall said.

For Matanzas High School, the Flagler school district spent $332,000 to outfit classrooms with laptops, projectors, screens, VCRs, DVDs, smart pads and sound systems. Belle Terre Elementary School also opened this year with its own set of new computers with wireless capabilities.

Officials say the equipment enhances the learning experience, making teaching easier and learning more exciting for students.

"It´s awesome having all this new technology," said Matanzas student Vincent Sullivan, 15.

The local school districts´ increasing use of technology reflects a national trend.

In 1994, only 3 percent of U.S. classrooms had Internet access. In 2002, that percentage had jumped to 92 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

While students throughout the Flagler district have access to computers, Matanzas High School is truly wireless. The school has four "rolling computer labs" with 30 laptops each that can be wheeled into any classroom and connected to the Internet via a wireless router. That enables teachers to integrate the technology into their lesson plans without moving their students to a lab.

Principal Chris Pryor said today´s children communicate through text messages and e-mails, which helps them relate to the new technology the school is trying to implement. It´s not a replacement for books, pencils and paper, just a tool to help them learn, Pryor said.

Teachers learning to use the new gear generally find out the students are more advanced than they are and often press students into service as instant tech support.

"They are so much more savvy with this stuff than we are," Pryor said.

And sometimes that creates its own set of challenges.

Matanzas High officials suspect a student -- they never found out who -- changed the password to a laptop´s core software, as well as its hard drive. The entire computer, unusable without the password, had to be replaced, Senior Network Administrator Stanley Wright said.

But such pranks are an exception, Wright said, adding the school has since restricted students´ abilities to access hard drives or install software, and installed network filters that restrict Internet access.

Sometimes teachers must wait for weeks for a broken computer to be fixed.

Gary Blair, a technology education teacher at Heritage Middle School in Deltona, has two computers that have been malfunctioning for two months. He´s waiting for his district´s tech support to meet with the computers´ vendor to get them repaired.

His computers are work stations that teach advanced subjects such as robotics and physics, and he has to change the lesson plan for a couple of students in his class who can´t use the broken computers. But the problems, he said, haven´t been overly disruptive for his class.

"It´s a bump in the road," Blair said.

Technology officials in Volusia and Flagler counties insist they have tech wizards on staff at most schools that can fix the problems that arise, and secondary tech support on standby at the district offices.

The new technology has been a learning experience for students as well as teachers.

Most teachers were familiar with office-type computer applications, but Pryor has noticed that some are only using new classroom programs with which they are comfortable -- and some don´t use them much at all.

Pat Fattizzi, who has been teaching for 33 years, said she doesn´t even know how to turn on some of the gadgets that teachers are using. But that´s fine, she says, because she believes some new programs shouldn´t be used at all.

She wants her students to have at least one teacher who makes them learn the old-fashioned way.

"I see technology as a tool," Fattizzi said. "I don´t want it to be a crutch for my kids."

District officials agree. Flagler Superintendent Bill Delbrugge said he never wants to delve so far into the wireless world that computer screens replace books.

But he said Matanzas High School, and the programs teachers are using, will be the future of education.

Did You Know?

Perhaps not considered high-tech by today´s standards, the abacus has been used for mathematical calculations for centuries.

The word abacus has its origins in the Greek word abax, meaning a tablet used for writing or ciphering. Variations of the abacus have been used for centuries in China, Japan and India. It is still used in countries where modern calculators are not available or to teach children the basics of mathematics.

Expert abacus users are often able to complete calculations -- such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square roots -- faster than someone using a calculator.

Compiled by News Researcher Megan Gallup. SOURCES: World Book Encyclopedia, Morris Dictionary of Word & Phrase Origins, The Handy Science Answer Book

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