Now, girls start their technology education in the sixth grade, when they take a year-long introductory personal computing class. In seventh grade, they learn Microsoft applications and spend time in the computer lab. In the eighth grade, students receive a Toshiba 3110 notebook loaded with Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and Spectrum24 wireless LAN connectivity. The girls now use their laptops for homework in science, English, history, and math. They take tests via the campus intranet, create Power Point presentations, and do website development.
Students also work in electronic study groups and have controlled Internet and email access.
Some schools look at this kind of solution as an impossible next move, but we took a stair-step approach. The Girls Preparatory School solution is based on the Spectrum24 wireless LAN infrastructure, covering five buildings and related public areas. More than 30 of Spectrum24's access points are installed in the School's ceilings and walls and wired to the campus web-serving backbone. Enabling instantaneous wireless networking in indoor and outdoor environments, Spectrum24 access points include an embedded HTTP server which allows administrators to use a Web browser to monitor performance, change configurations, and run diagnostics from anywhere on the network. Based on this powerful technology, students can use their laptops with PC Cards from almost any campus location to wirelessly get on the intranet, their own websites, internal testing sites, or the Internet.