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High School Students Don't Have to Hide Their Wireless Devices Anymore

Lindbergh now encourages wireless networking with devices brought from home, for efficiency and cost savings.

Technology upgrades at now allow students to use the Internet from personal laptops, netbooks, tablets, iPhones and other devices brought from home.

Lindbergh became a Laptop Friendly School in January, in an effort to increase students' access to information and research materials, officials said. Before this semester, students were able to use the wireless connection with school-issued computers checked out by their teachers for only a single class period.

High School Principal Dr. Ron Helms said technological advancements such as these are simply helpful in today's classrooms.

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Rather than leave students to hit-and-miss with mastering online research at home, Lindbergh teachers are showing students how to determine whether online sources are accurate and trustworthy, Helms said. 

Also useful is communication with students through email, an online grade posting system for both parents and students, and Moodle, a web application for managing content, such as taking quizzes and tests via the Internet.

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Although there may be the occasional downside to allowing students to use their own electronic devices during school, Helms said the benefit of allowing access to electronic media outweighs any risks.

"We try to ignore the negatives," Helms said.

Lindbergh's Director of Technology Mariano Marin-Gomez said each student can access the school's private cloud of Moodle and other online services, as well as their stored documents, by entering his or her personal user name and password.

Marin-Gomez described a very practical, matter-of-fact approach that likely improves efficiency.

"We’re not telling students 'Here's your device, and you have to use it,' " he said. "If you already have something or you want to get something different, we don’t care as long as you’re able to get to web services."

There are two distinct wireless networks for district-owned computers and students' personal devices.

Now, at a couple months after launch, the students' network appears to have 150 to 200 users at any given time, Marin-Gomez said.

Encouraging students to bring their own devices to school should save the district money in the long run. The district supplying each student a computer for the school year is the other option. 

"The problem is they're expensive, for a district to buy that many," Marin-Gomez said. After a "three-to-four-year rotation, you have to buy again."

AP Psychology teacher Eric Means held a study session and quiz in the high school library for his class. While the majority of students used school-owned laptops, a handful brought their own. Means said there were enough computers for everyone.

Conducting paperless quizzes allows students to see their scores immediately and review missed questions as soon as they finish the test.

"I think they appreciate the immediate feedback they get," Means said.

Moodle also automatically compiles data from students' multiple choice tests so teachers can analyze what questions were missed most often.

"I think it allows you as a teacher to be a little more reflective," Means added.

The testing software prevents cheating by jumbling the order of questions from student to student, and students are not able to open browser windows while completing a quiz, Means said.

High school seniors Kelly Clark and Brian Czaicki both used their own laptops for the AP Psych quiz.

Clark said she only uses her laptop about twice a week, but brings it to school every day.

"It makes things a lot easier," Clark said. However, she still prefers to take notes in class with paper and pen.

Students are allowed to use Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites as long as their assignments are completed on time, Clark said.

In addition to filtering out pornographic or inappropriate websites, Internet bandwidth hogs--those that use a lot of "space" in transmission--are also banned from the system, Marin-Gomez said. Blocked sites include Netflix, which allows paying subscribers to play movies and TV shows, as well as Pandora, which streams music for free.

Senior Czaicki likes the convenience of keeping all of his documents on hand, rather than coping with flash drives (portable storage) or emailing files to himself before and after. Not being limited to the school's computer processing speeds is another plus.

"It saves a lot of time, and it's pretty efficient," Czaicki said, in using his own devices.

Improvements and upgrades to the network are frequently underway, according to Marin-Gomez.

District-wide, over the next three years classrooms K - 12 will be equipped with wall-mounted computer displays--known as interactive whiteboards. Whatever a teacher does on a computer will show up on the wall-mounted display. Teachers will also receive technology training.

This outfitting of classrooms is part of the Lindbergh Interactive Classroom program or LINC, funded by the Proposition R 2008 bond issue, according to Beth Cross, the district's director for community relations.

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