The high-tech sector has been an integral part of life in San Diego for many years now, but local schools haven't always shared in the industry's advances. The San Diego County Office of Education is working to change that with a countywide initiative to dramatically increase the use of technology in schools, putting wireless tablet PCs in every classroom by the 2003-2004 school year.

Their efforts, however, are finding some resistance. Bill McGrath, a San Diego teacher, recalls that a colleague didn't take too kindly to the work McGrath was doing recently to advance the use of computers in the classroom. The colleague demonstrated his frustration in a pretty direct manner - to say the least. "Every time he knew I was coming, he unplugged the computer, wrapped the cord around the monitor, and faced the monitor against the wall," McGrath says.

Acknowledging such concerns among San Diego County's 25,000 teachers, the Office of Education is actively seeking teachers' input at every level. It's a unique way of developing a technology plan, giving teachers an unusual degree of influence on the way that technology will be entering their classrooms.

A Systems Approach
Key to the county initiative is the Classroom of the Future Foundation, an organization that works to facilitate partnerships between local high-tech businesses and county schools, supporting technology use countywide. One of the foundation's key partners is Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the systems integrator best known for last year's sale of Network Solutions to VeriSign.

Brian Dealy, VP and group chief technologist at SAIC, has helped to bring a systems integration approach to the county's process. "We're doing a teacher-centric requirements analysis," he says. "We're meeting with groups of teachers, trying to build an understanding of how technology can be applied to let them concentrate on the effort of teaching, as opposed to the efforts of classroom management and record keeping."

Dealy explains that the idea is to develop a county-wide standard, offering the same advantages as those that have come with standardization in industry. "Going from an Oracle to a Microsoft SQL is relatively easy now in the context of standard APIs for relational databases," Dealy says. "Developing systems based on standards allows you to swap out one product for another with a minimum of reengineering of the system."

Similarly, Dealy says, countywide standards will make it easier to share records between schools, or to handle a student's move from one school to another. And with technology use standardized throughout the county, there's a great bonus: any threat of a digital divide between richer and poorer school districts should be eliminated.

Better, Faster, Cheaper
Another goal of the initiative, Dealy explains, is a reduction in the total cost of ownership of technology in schools. "Currently, for a high school, I've heard estimates of more than a million dollars to renovate the electrical system in order to give computers to every kid in every classroom," Dealy says. "The electrical power that most high schools are built with just won't support 30 computers in the classroom."

It's not only electricity: the cost of maintenance is another key concern. "Computers get placed in the classroom, and they become more and more underutilized because they can't be kept running at their best efficiency," Dealy says. "They need someone to come into the classroom and maintain them, but the education community has a hard time attracting quality IT staff."

Recognizing all of these objectives, a key element of the initiative is the deployment of tablet PCs in wireless networks in every school across the county: Dealy explains that wireless technology solves the concerns about both maintenance and electricity. Tablet PCs can be "trickle-charged" overnight, giving them enough power to be used the next day without overloading the school's power supply. And thin-client computing resolves the maintenance issue by focusing IT demands at one central point.

"We want the devices to be essentially stateless, with applications being delivered over the network," Dealy says. "If a kid were to drop a device, or a battery were to go bad, they should be able to just pick up another one and start exactly where they left off, because it's all out on the network. And that also gives you the opportunity to centralize management and maintenance of the system."

Teachers First
Bruce Braciszewski, executive director of the Classroom of the Future Foundation, explains that for both economic and logistical reasons, the plan is to give wireless tablets to teachers first and students second. For the teachers, Braciszewski says, the focus will be on a few key areas, including records management, professional development, and the connection between school and home.

The most obvious advantage of wireless technology is mobility. In terms of records management, giving teachers wireless tablet PCs lets them reference and update each student's record while in class - or even as they move from classroom to classroom. Everything from test scores to final grades can be sent directly back to the school's central database, no matter where the teacher happens to be working.

Dealy notes that for their own professional development, teachers can make direct use of the same student data. "Teachers say they would like to be able to map their professional development to areas of weakness shown by student performance," Dealy says. "If they could see where their students were doing poorly, they could plan areas of professional development to teach them to present those materials more effectively." And a quick check of a tablet linked to the school's database could let them do just that.

Todd Gutschow, cofounder and director of technology strategy for HNC Software, a key foundation partner, notes that wireless technology can also support another aspect of a teacher's professional development. "When teachers close the doors on their classrooms, they don't see another adult for hours: it's a very isolating experience," he says. "They have very little time to interact with other teachers in their own school, let alone across the county. This technology can allow teachers to interact."

Finally, the connection between school and home promises to be a student's worst nightmare. When a teacher enters that night's homework into the tablet PC, it could be posted directly online for parents to check - much to the student's chagrin. "Teachers can communicate to parents what the students are working on that day," Braciszewski says. "A parent can log on and know exactly what that student's supposed to be doing that night."

A Fundamental Shift
Once the San Diego initiative moves on to the final step of giving each student a tablet PC, Gutschow says, things will really get interesting. "Today, teachers give one lesson plan designed for one mode of learning," he says. "But as teachers can develop multiple lesson plans, delivered through wireless devices, the teacher becomes more of a mentor, and you have a fundamental shift in the way learning takes place."

That, of course, is the kind of vision that led McGrath's colleague to unplug his computer and turn it toward the wall. But McGrath, in particular, is determined to dispel that fear. "It's just another tool," he says. "We need to get people to understand that technology is not going to usurp a teacher's position. It's not going to put you out of a job. If anything, the reverse is true."

Far from replacing teachers, McGrath says, wireless tablets can bring them closer to students. "Instead of a pedagogical situation where you're standing up in front of the class and nobody wants to listen to you anyway, you become a guide," he says. "You get to sit down with the kids and say, 'Try it this way.' It closes the gap: teachers are seen by kids in a totally different light."