Putting the Cart Before the Class

Over the last 12 months, an increasing number of schools have decided not to spend their money on desktop computers, and instead have opted to purchase a moveable cart filled with laptops. The advantage of these computers on wheels is that they provide an efficient way to allocate workstations where they're needed, when they're needed. Each laptop computer includes a card that offers a student or teacher wireless access to both the school's network and the Internet.

"We have three of the carts in our school, and they're extremely well used," says Eileen Culkin, a librarian at Inter-Lakes Junior-Senior High School in Meredith, NH. "Teachers sign up in the library to use them for 90-minute blocks, and they're almost never just sitting."

Lynda Homet, a library media specialist at Towanda Area (PA) Middle School, would like to get her hands on a portable computer lab because her school's stationary computer lab is always booked for instructional purposes and, consequently, many students have no place to do research online. "I talked to my principal," Homet says, "and I got her to admit that we need another place [where] kids can use the Internet."

The basic layout is ingenious: the carts, each about three feet high, three feet long, and 18 inches wide, keep a various number of laptops with wireless cards—Dell Computer markets versions with 16, 24, or 32 laptops—behind secure, lockable doors. When the doors are opened and each student removes a laptop and turns it on, the cards connect to the network through a wireless hub in the cart. That hub is plugged into the school's network through a standard network cable, thus creating a portable wireless network connected to the school's system.

Dell and Apple Computer are two of the biggest competitors in promoting and selling laptop carts to schools, although other companies, such as Gateway, also sell them. Some manufacturers, competing for contracts with school districts, will custom design the carts and laptops. Some of the models that Dell is creating for school districts include read/write CD drives or DVD drives and modems for students or teachers to use when they're away from the wireless hub. Some carts also include dedicated servers to set up independent networks, and many include a printer.

How far away can the students take a laptop from the cart without losing the connection? "It depends on what's in the way," says Dick Dumais, Inter-Lakes's district technology coordinator, of his district's carts of iBooks using Apple's Airport system. "I've seen them carried two or three classrooms from the hub, or up to the second floor, and they stay connected." Because each classroom in Inter-Lakes Junior-Senior High has approximately 26 students, Dumais and the faculty opted for carts with 13 laptops each. "We didn't want to use them for plain word-processing tasks; we wanted collaborative learning going on." Pairs of students share the laptops in the classroom, and assignments are designed to encourage students to cooperate.

Are these carts, as they grow more popular, likely to erode the role of the school librarian? "I've convinced several teachers to have their students use the laptops in the library, along with print materials," Culkin says, determined to maintain a strong connection to the classroom. She has another ace up her sleeve: the home page on all of Inter-Lakes's computers is the library's Web site, which Culkin created.