Wireless Education Technology: Role of Mobile Broadband in K-12 Education

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OPEN TO ALL REGISTERED ATTENDEES!

The panel will explore how simple, readily available wireless technologies can help address some of the most fundamental challenges in education today.

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Wireless communication has changed the way we live, work, play, and learn, yet our nation’s schools that are preparing this country’s future citizens, leaders, and innovators for the 21st century have been left behind. Over the past decades, American students have increasingly fallen behind their international counterparts in international tests such as the PISA and TIMSS bringing the focus squarely on how to ensure that future Americans will be competitive in global markets and successful as global citizens. The call to action to reverse this trend is trumpeted both by our educational system and our administration. As part of the Obama administration's agenda and through ARRA, $1.3 billion have been earmarked to fund innovative approaches to education and education technology in recognition of the role technology can and must play in real, sustainable education reform.

The role of wireless in the emerging vision of a competitive US educational system is crucial. Just as business professionals have migrated over the past two decades from sharing usage of a corporate mainframe to 24/7 access to their business systems and colleagues via mobile broadband, students in the 21st century will require 24/7 access to their digital content, the Internet, and their learning communities. Based on research and the increasing expectations of parents and students, more and more school districts are striving towards providing personal, mobile devices to their students. Aside from improvements in students achievement, schools who provide Internet access report that after school hours, students and families spend time in school parking lots and open areas in order to take advantage of that access, highlighting the need to move all students from the current model of wired Internet access available on a shared basis at schools and libraries, or even as-needed in more affluent homes, to the ubiquitous mobile broadband access model that is indispensible to 21st century professionals.

While states and school districts are trying to find the resources to provide a computer for each child along with the associated wireless infrastructure, children of all ages (teens, tweens and even children as young as 6 years old) are already carrying palm-sized computers or netbooks with WWAN capability everywhere they go. According to the national Speak Up survey from 2008, 20% of children in first and second grades (ages 6-8) report having a smart phone with wireless capability. At the same time new always on, always-connected devices are also entering the market. Despite the initial public reaction that mobile devices in the hands of students may be a disruption, schools are finding that when the technology is implemented properly, programs utilizing handheld computers and netbooks for learning can have a tremendous positive impact on student performance. In addition, students are more engaged in learning and teachers are finding that their teaching is permanently transformed for the better.

One example of the impact of such access on students is Project K-Nect in North Carolina. Students who received specially equipped smartphones increased their class proficiency rates on the State End of Course Exam as much as 30% over students taking the same Algebra course from the same teacher.

An educational system that prepares students for 21st century work and citizenship will be one where students have the technology to learn and collaborate anywhere, anytime – not just within the four walls of the classroom and the hours of the traditional school day. Modern wireless broadband technologies are foundational to new models of learning and teaching – the engagement of the wireless ecosystem has the potential to transform an outdated factory model of learning and teaching to a true 21st century enterprise.

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