40
UPDATE
IN PRACTICE
FOCUS ON
HELP DESK
NEWS & ANALYSIS
WIFI ‘A MUST’ FOR SCHOOLS
Pupils in England could be missing out on a better education because schools do not have good enough wifi, research suggests. Valerie Thompson of the E-Learning Foundation told the BBC that schools
need fully accessible and reliable wifi if they are to benefit from digital learning. However only a quarter of schools actually achieve this, the British Educational Suppliers Association (Besa) suggests. The figures come from 600 state schools across the country which were
surveyed by Besa. Twenty-two per cent of 250 secondary schools said they had wifi in most
or all of their classrooms, 39% had it in some, and the remaining 39% had it in very few or no classrooms. Of 350 primary schools, approximately 28% had wifi in most or all
classrooms, 22% had it in some classrooms and 50% had it in few or none. Marcus Jewell, head of Western Europe at Brocade states that a 21st
century learning environment starts with wifi and that schools have to wise-up the importance of the network if they want to successfully embrace wireless technology: “The simple fact is, a 21st century learning environment needs a 21st century network and that starts with wifi. With increasing calls for more technical and IT skilled employees, and for students to leave education prepared for a world of work where wifi is part and parcel of day-to-day business, education needs to stay relevant in both what and how it teaches those students from an early age. “Advances in wifi networks and connectivity are hitting the heart of the
education system. From interactive whiteboards to access to online collaboration tools and virtual classrooms, a good education in schools will increasingly come down to the reliability of the network. But schools don’t just need to think about making wifi available, they need to ensure that network is bullet proof.”
HARVARD APOLOGISES FOR DEAN’S EMAIL SEARCH
Administrators at Harvard University in the US have confirmed they searched the emails of the institution’s deans as part of an investigation of a student cheating. Harvard said in a statement that it authorised “a very narrow, careful, and
precise subject-line search” to protect student data. Over 120 students were accused of cheating on an exam in an
introductory government class last spring, according to the Boston Globe. In a statement, Faculty of Arts and Sciences deans Michael Smith and
Evelyn Hammonds apologised “if any resident deans feel our communication at the conclusion of the investigation was insufficient”. “To be clear: No one’s emails were opened and the contents of no one’s
emails were searched by human or machine,’’ the statement read. Some faculty members were reported to have been unhappy with the search, which took place last autumn, according to the BBC.
april 2013 \
www.edexec.co.uk
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