A pair of Greene County school buses will soon bequipped with wireless Internet capability with assistance from a pair of Jefferson businesses – Ben Franklin/Radio Shack and Jefferson Telecom. The Greene County school board approved the purchase of ruggedized routers, antennas, and a data plan through U.S. Cellular for two buses at its Feb. 18 meeting.
Several discussions on the topic led to the idea of putting Wi-Fi on buses after visiting with several other districts including Pocahontas, Carroll, and Cardinal of Eldon who have already blazed the path. The technology provides students with Internet access to complete homework, research, online classes, video tutorials, etc. while traveling to and from field trips, competitions, and performances. Tim Buenz (pictured, left) director of technology at Greene County Community School, approached Bob Smith of Ben Franklin/Radio Shack (center) and Janelle Wright of Jefferson Telecom (right), both U.S. Cellular agents, about the possibility. With input from Smith and Wright, Buenz wrote a proposal for the school board. Pictured in the bus is Greene County transportation director Robert Stofer.
Today more classrooms are trading physical textbooks for digital sites, and every high school student in the district is issued a Samsung 303c Chromebook with an Infocase and a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) account. Students use these devices throughout the day during their classes and they are allowed to take them home to complete homework on the Google Apps system in the cloud/online. The Chromebooks are content filtered for security purposes no matter where the student accesses the Internet and the buses have video surveillance. All measures are taken to ensure that students do not access anything that they shouldn’t while online.
The primary motivation for equipping the buses with Wi-Fi was to allow students to keep up with their work, by using the time spent traveling more wisely. School superintendent Tim Christensen said, “We have started MegaNights in basketball which includes 9th grade, JV, and varsity basketball games. They are great because it limits the number of nights that students and parents are on the road to games. However, it does require students at times to leave before school is out and students might not get back until late in the evening on some of the longer trips. With Chromebooks, and now Wi-Fi on the activity buses, our students can take the opportunity to complete homework while on the road instead of having to wait until they get home at 11 pm.”
Iowa schools appear to be ahead of the Wi-Fi grading curve throughout the country. According to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, nearly 60 percent of American schools lack sufficient Wi-Fi capability to provide students with 21st Century educational tools.
Wright and Smith agree, “This opportunity to provide Wi-Fi on the school buses is an innovative way to reach students and improve education. Our goal as agents for U.S. Cellular is to enhance the lives of our customers by providing flexibility and access to stay connected.”
Buenz continued, “The process of acquiring the needed equipment and services has been pretty straight-forward. We visited the Carroll Community School District in February to see their implementation and installation process and then decided how we wanted to proceed at Greene County. Working with Bob Smith at Ben Franklin/RadioShack and Janelle Wright of Jefferson Telecom we got the data plan setup with U.S. Cellular and the equipment ordered. Bob helped me with the wiring design and installation of the equipment to provide some additional features that would improve functionality. The first bus installation went well and we are going to try a different method for mounting the roof antenna on the second bus. The whole process has been a team effort between the school district staff and our business partners, and we appreciate everyone working to make this a positive learning opportunity for our students.” ~by Jody Schulte, Jefferson Telecom
