High school launches wireless education

By PETER GRIFFIN

The country's first wireless college campus has gone live in Auckland, allowing students to browse intranet-based school resources and surf the internet from a laptop anywhere on the school grounds.

Students at Pakuranga-based boys college St Kentigern are already used to a high-tech environment - nearly all of the school's 1150 students have their own laptops.

This level of computer usage came from supportive parents and the school's close relationship with laptop market leader Toshiba.

Now a partnership with networking giant Cisco and wireless broadband operator Walker Wireless is giving St Kentigern staff and form 1 to 7 students the ability to use their laptops to access a wireless local area network (WLAN).

Each laptop is being fitted with a Cisco Aironet wireless card, which connects to the college network through 31 Aironet access points placed around the school and installed by Walker Wireless.

The use of wireless devices avoids the need for the school to install cables and allows students to have computer access in every classroom.

Walter Chieng, the school's director of information technology, said students using the wireless network would enjoy data rates of up to 11 megabits a second, and be able to connect their laptops from within 100m of any access point.

"They are able to download their schoolwork for the day in seconds. As well as giving access to Microsoft applications like Word, Excel and Publisher, the school has invested in subject-specific software."

He added that students would have access to Britannica Online, a "Britannica Encyclopedia plus CNN-type resource," as well as software used by thousands of open university students in the US.

But the introduction of the technology has come with some ground rules.

WebSense content-filtering software and the school's firewall will be used to ensure students do not deviate to non-educational websites, and for security reasons use of the laptops will be limited to designated areas around the school.

And Mr Chieng said any fears from parents that their children would be at risk from wireless radiation were unfounded.

"The output of the entire network is less than one-tenth the power from a standard GSM (global system for mobile communications) cellphone."