HILLSBOROUGH: Schools to get more wifi service

Here’s more evidence of increasing technology as a teaching tool in Hillsborough.

   Here’s more evidence of increasing technology as a teaching tool in Hillsborough.
   The school board will spend $230,000 over the next three years to bring more high-speed wireless Internet access to classrooms in all of the township’s nine school buildings.
   As more and more teachers began using access to the Web in the classroom, said Mr. Handler, the district found its capabilities just could handle it.
   Projecting a video off a website onto the classroom screen wasn’t much of a problem, he said, but when teachers began breaking down the class and having one group streaming Web videos while others were doing something else, for instance.
   Bringing up Google Earth, or anything that required an intensive demand on band width, was a problem, he said.
   Elementary schools saw the problem in the spring after Nexus tablets were distributed to youngsters for classroom use. When teachers assigned one group of pupils to write on the computer, another reading a story and another playing an educational game. The teachers were told they couldn’t do what they were trying to do right now, he said.
   Mr. Handler said the district found that Internet access points installed four years ago in every other classroom — just to establish coverage — in all buildings was falling short. That was enough to accommodate the demands of the times, which was on the line of bringing computers into classrooms on rolling carts, he said.
   Access points were now being replaced with newer equipment, he said. Four years is about the life span of modern technology, he said.
   ”Any time you use technology, you need connectivity,” said Mr. Handler last week.
   The district will pay for it over three years, said Technology Director Joel Handler, with about 20 percent this year and next and a balloon payment in the third year. By then, the district will have completed lease-purchase for classroom overhead projectors; that will free up $400,000 when finished.
   At the June 24 meeting, board member Greg Gillette cautioned that while technology has benefits, “Great teachers trump technology.” No one remembers e-books or interactive science exhibit, but they do hold dear the teacher who made an impression on them.
   Fellow board member Christopher Pulsifer said teachers have to have the tools to do their job effectively.
   The board briefly discussed when they might abandon paper books and go to electronic versions. Mr. Pulsifer said ebooks would need to guarantee bandwidth at home “or we’re cheating some kids, too.”