March 2005 — Editorial
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The Future of Wireless and Title II D
My local school district in Vashon Island, Wash., is looking in detail at all of its facilities to try and determine how much money it needs to raise for a bond issue. It is my good fortune to serve on a Campus Master Planning Committee along with other citizens and educators. Our task is to take all the information garnered from various community forums, meetings with teachers and students, site visits, as well as from our own knowledge about education and the community. Then, create a few scenarios with different combinations of new and/or remodeled buildings for the district and submit those options to the school board and the community. At the end of this process, we will then make a final recommendation to the school board.
At one of the community forums, a citizen noted that he recently had gone back to his law school for the first time in a number of years. In taking a tour of the building, he was pleased to see all of the outlets and jacks for connecting laptops to both the law school’s local area network and the Internet. In watching a class in action, however, he was dismayed to see that none of the outlets or jacks were being used. This was because with sufficient battery life and wireless connections, the students did not need the outlets or jacks. Our lawyer/citizen asked how the district was going to ensure it would not waste money the same way the law school had in spending on capabilities that were not used. As a member of the technology subcommittee, I busied myself taking notes, hoping that the question would be viewed as rhetorical.
It is a great question: When will certain technologies make a significant leap and not only leave others behind, but significantly change computing or the educational experience? I don’t mean just a faster, lighter or slightly smaller computer. Nor, at the other end of the change spectrum, do I think we will have the equivalent of a spreadsheet, Internet or similar revolutionary change. Somewhere in between these extremes of minor change and revolution I think we will see breakthroughs, with wireless computing being a large part of that technological evolution. That is why “wireless” is this month’s theme, and why it will be a part of future themes as well. The growing ubiquity and increasing applications of wireless are why we also have a special section on VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol) this month. Colleges, universities, school districts - and even T.H.E. Journal’s office - are looking at whether or not VoIP is a feasible option at this time.
I realize that I violated the tenet that futurists are not supposed to predict the future; instead, they are supposed to describe possible, probable and preferable futures. Saying that wireless will be a part of the evolution of technologies in schools is so probable that it sounds like a prediction. When looking at federal funding for technology, however, it is hard to come up with anything past possible futures.
Time Is of the Essence
My last two editorials, “Fighting the War on Ed Tech Funding” and “No More Excuses - Children’s Lives Are At Stake,” were concerned in some ways with federal funding for technology.
