Wifi goes to school
Xavier College IT director Robert Meiselbach and year 11 student Lawrence Gigliotti get to grips with notebook computers. Photo: Shannon Morris
The flexibility of wireless notebook networking is starting to change classroom practice in Australia's elite schools. But with a 20-kilometre range open to interception, schools are learning the price of wireless freedom is eternal vigilance.
Leading the charge since 2001 is Robert Meiselbach, director of IT at Melbourne's Xavier College. Xavier has invested in 50 network transmitters across the school.
"Some of the students still plug into each other's computers with cables and do peer-to-peer, but the wireless network is centrally managed. If you want to use the school's network you must do it by the rules and install certain software," says Meiselbach.
This is because anyone can tune in, although only machines belonging to "the Xavier community" can log on with their user name and password, already having their physical network (MAC) address registered with the system. The data transmitted between teachers, students and parents is also encrypted.
"We made sure we did a whole-site survey of the school and implemented three levels of security to make it effective from the very beginning," Meiselbach says. "But there are always situations where you are only as good as a user name and password."
Damian Keeghan, a former Xavier student now doing his bachelor of business systems at Monash University, remembers making the non-wireless-to-wireless notebook transition in year 10. He says radio networking saves teachers 15 minutes of class time per lesson if they want notebook-equipped students to access the internet or the school's intranet in lessons.
"A lot more things come online because, with non-wireless, the teacher had to come in with a hub and connect everyone up."
Meiselbach says with constant internet access, students have learnt to better scrutinise information.
"In terms of the classroom, students can do presentations and record information," he says. "Students then email information to their teachers and teachers are marking it up with a tablet, rather than normal word processing, before sending the draft back."
And it seems different subjects exploit the wireless network in different ways. Meiselbach says language and PE teachers tend to use it more aggressively, to make up for fewer contact hours with their students.
Lawrence Gigliotti, a year 11 student, says before graduating to a wireless notebook he relied on school desktop PCs when they were available. At first, slower network performance was the price of his newfound "freedom to move around".
"In the earlier days it used to be pretty bad but in the last couple of years it's got better," Gigliotti says. "It's more like broadband. You only have it for research anyway."
Xavier's policy is to big-brother students into using their constant internet access wisely. "They know there's a governing body," Meiselbach says. "With every email they send using the school's system they are identifiable and accountable for."
Yet the biggest adjustment to wireless life is being made by teachers, not students. Many have found the technicalities of HTML publishing challenging.
"They have had to increase their skills to accommodate the expectation of the students," he says. "They've had to make their content more flexible."
Meiselbach believes the next wave of IT innovation for students will be in using non-keyboard input devices.