You’re driving down the highway and remember you’ve forgotten to pack a clean shirt for an important meeting.
The one you’re wearing has an ugly splash of Starbucks right across the chest. Uh oh. No time to go back home.
“Computer. Alert me when I’m within five kilometres of a store that sells white dress shirts.”
“Certainly, there’s a Bay three kilometers ahead at Exit 55. I’m now downloading the selection of shirts that meet your preferences and size requirements. You can make your selection now and it will be ready for pickup at customer service just inside the west entrance. Usual credit card?”
That dialogue is not futuristic. It’s based on real products from ATX Technologies Inc. that were shown at a Partners in Technology workshop in Calgary last week. Voice response and satellite navigation systems are already available on Mercedes, Fords and other cars.
But will wireless technologies address our biggest navigation problem, which is to help our students, from birth to lifelong learners, find their way through a sea of knowledge?
The answer is a resounding “maybe.”
I have no doubt that some terrific, innovative and affordable new technologies will soon be out there. However, I’m not so sure that we’ll actually get them into the hands of our students.
I’m even more skeptical that educators will have the courage to use them appropriately, without always looking over their shoulders worrying that they may get done out of a job.
One of the most famous quotes in education, from a book by Gilbert and Green, is that “the pace of academe is perhaps best measured by the 25 years it took to get the overhead projectors out of the bowling alley and into the classroom.”
Here’s what we could do to help our students and educators with wireless technology. A year ago I spoke at a teacher’s conference at the Delta Hotel in the Kananaskis. For the occasion, they set up a wireless local area network throughout the hotel.
Happy teachers were sitting at the cappuccino bar, showing each other Web pages.
Big deal, I thought, we’ve had the Internet for years.
But then I saw the excited looks on their faces and I realized that there is something qualitatively different about being wireless. It’s kind of like the feeling people get when you say “look at this great shot of me feeding the sharks that I have right here on my PalmPilot,” versus “would you like to come over Friday night to see our vacation slides?”
For teachers, the prime advantage of wireless would be an empowering “anywhere, anytime” attitude towards technology.
Students can benefit even more if we let them. There’s a legendary dialogue between Brant Parker, the principal designate of Banded Peak School in Bragg Creek, and the designers of his new school.
He pointed to the plans and asked, “what’s that room.”
“Oh, that’s going to be your computer lab.”
“Forget it,” he said, “we want them out where the kids are all the time.”
So he placed workstations in the halls, and I’ve seen seven-year-olds crossing their legs on the way to the bathroom because they just had to check something on the Internet while they had the hall pass. Convenient, ubiquitous access to knowledge makes all the difference.
Calgary has its own wireless experiment at Tom Baines, a junior high in the Edgemont community. Educational pioneers Richard Tapp and Jim Baldwin say one mission of their school is to have technology be “taken for granted” as part of the learning experience. To implement this, they have 175 laptop computers all over the place. Some are loaned out to kids who don’t have home computers.
Now they’re testing wireless technology to free up learning even more. Their work earned Tom Baines School membership in the prestigious Network of Innovative Schools organized by Industry Canada.
We often think of wireless solutions as costing more, but as Calgary-based Wi-Lan has demonstrated, they can actually save money. Wi-Lan created a network to serve 6,700 students in a wide geographical area in central Alberta, at half the cost of what was proposed using 56Kbps wired technology.
The implications of fast transmission speeds are not lost on educators. Now students and teachers can zap multimedia files to each other, sharing and creating educational experiences together.
I have a dream. I would like to see every Alberta teacher using this technology effectively. And soon.
I would like every student to think of high-quality, high-speed computer and Internet access as a basic right, like air and food. Great projects like the Network of Innovative Schools and Alberta’s Supernet are a good start. Let’s do more.
Dreams are only dreams unless we take action, so let me make a modest proposal. Let’s have a universal provincewide course using the best technology we can afford to celebrate Alberta’s 100th birthday in 2005.
We might call it Alberta 101 because, in my vision, it would focus on where our province has been in the first century, but even more on what we want it to be like in the next one. We would involve teachers, students, businesspeople and others in a process of co-creation.
Then, in our birthday year, 2005, every single Alberta student, from K-12 and maybe beyond, would take part in a meaningful way.
I can’t do this alone; in fact, I can’t even lead it without deserting my “day job.” But if you share this vision, and want to help make it real, here’s a challenge.
Send me an e-mail at keenan@ucalgary.ca with the subject line “Alberta101.” keenan@ucalgary.ca I’ll get you all together in a room, buy the coffee, and we can see what happens. If you believe as much I do in the future of our kids, you’ll head over to your Internet connection and do this right now. Thanks.
Web Watch:
www.schoolnet.ca/nis-rei/e/ www.schoolnet.ca/nis-rei/e/schools2000/tom_baines.html www.wi-lan.com/solutions/index.html
www.wavelan.com
