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Mobile Computing >> Imagination on the Move
6/24/2005
| GREAT IDEA |
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| To keep students focused during class, technologists installed low-power access points in classrooms at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and gave them the same name as the outside network. They fired up the access points, but left them unconnected to the network at large, creating a “dead zone” of connectivity inside each classroom. A key part of the school’s mobile computing plan is about limiting mobility in certain spots. |
Perhaps the biggest challenge in enabling mobile computing at Anderson has been keeping it under control. Once the access points went live, faculty members requested that ACIS disable wireless in their classrooms to ensure that students pay attention during lectures. Crane and his staff spent weeks figuring out how to do this; finally, a team of technologists from 5G suggested a brilliant idea to keep students focused. First, the technologists installed low-power access points in each of the school’s 14 classrooms. Next, they gave these access points the same name as the outside network. Finally, with the help of ACIS, the technologists fired up the access points, but left them unconnected to the network at large, essentially creating a “dead zone” of connectivity inside each classroom.
Today, the system works by befuddling student operating systems. When students bring their laptops to class, their computers automatically attempt to connect to the strongest wireless signal. This signal, however, is not actually connected to the Internet at all—in the immediate vicinity of the classroom, it g'es nowhere. And unless students have sophisticated hacker-type tools, there’s virtually no way for them to reconfigure their wireless cards to pick up other, weaker signals from this classroom environment. As soon as they leave the classroom, however, the dead zone signal disappears, and students can connect to the regular wireless network without a problem. “It’s ironic, but a key part of our mobile computing plan is this technology to limit mobility in certain spots,” says Crane. “Lucky for us, the whole thing works great.”
Mobility of Content
Officials at Georgetown University have taken a different approach to mobile computing; at Georgetown, efforts focus on the mobility of information and incorporating technology such as podcasting and text messaging. Through a new, homegrown content management system named Explore, technologists have put content “in motion” by liberating it from static repositories such as Web pages, and allowing it to flourish in a more fluid and flexible database. According to Robert Michael Murray,director of Technology Strategy and Development, the approach has worked wonders, and the university is getting more life out of content than ever before. What’s more, students and other constituents have become truly mobile, wirelessly accessing and exchanging information with the network, both on campus and off.
The Explore endeavor began in 2001, when Murray and other Georgetown officials grew weary of seeing useful content waste away on Web pages that nobody visited.
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