Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

Somedays, most days, I love where I live. Searching for story ideas for my Inquirer column, I discovered that some of the most interesting happenings are happening very close to home.

After 18 months in the planning, yesterday, John Street, mayor of Philadelphia made the long-awaited announcement that the city will become the largest wireless hotspot around–one big, municipal, wireless festival! EarthLink, together with the nonprofit Wireless Philadelphia, will implement the 15-month / 15 square mile project to “put the old industrial city on the 21st-century map.” While regular users will pay a per-month fee, EarthLink will provide 1,250 free accounts for city use and promises free access from 22 parks and public spaces, including Penn’s Landing, Independence Mall, and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
For details: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/13994692.htm

On the state level, February 8, Governor Rendell announced:

“By 2009, every public high school classroom used to teach the four core subjects will have an Internet-equipped laptop computer on every student’s desk.”

The Governor is allotting $200 million for the project.

According to PDE’s Classrooms for the Future website http://www.pde.state.pa.us/ed_tech/cwp/view.asp?Q=118149&A=169, the plan calls for 100 high schools to be included in Year One of the roll-out, selected by “need, readiness, geographic distribution, and the strength of their strategic implementation plans.” The Governor sees the program as an effective means to address the need to prepare students for a “flat” world with increasingly competitive job opportunities in a dynamic 21^st century economic landscape.

By 2009 we will see laptops on every teacher and student desk in classrooms where English, math, science, and social studies are taught. Every teacher “will have the state-of-the-art technology that is needed to prepare students to compete on a global scale.” The program also allots a very needed $50 million for teacher professional development.

This is an exciting plan! While we wait for the details, I wonder if it might be a good idea to begin to ponder the questions in blogspace.

I started by brainstorming this remarkable gift with Kyle Peck, Associate Dean for Outreach, Technology, and International Programs at Penn State and we generated the following questions that will need to be addressed.

Having two and half years to consider the questions is a very good thing. We have time to consider the installation thoughtfully.

Laptops on every desk will change the classroom. Logistically: how will we charge them? How will we plan to secure them? Should high school begin right now to consider wireless and the type of receptacles needed to keep the laptops powered?

With all those computers in all those classrooms, how will we prepare teachers to use them thoughtfully and effectively? How do all those laptops change our pedagogy? What type of local plans should we create for professional development?

It is important that high school teachers and administrators begin to develop strategic plans for this program. keep a close eye open for guidelines soon to be posted on the PDE site! http://www.pde.state.pa.us/ed_tech/cwp/view.asp?A=169&Q=118149

I travel around and bit and meet with librarians from around the country. While other states are cutting funding for libraries, Pennsylvania continues to value and support them. Funding for public libraries will increase in the coming year and funding for the ACCESS PA database and our fabulous POWER Library remain intact.

2006-07 Proposed Library Appropriations