St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Wednesday, October 6, 1999
Posted: Wednesday, October 6, 1999 | 6:45 a.m.
Teachers, students will be
free to roam campus, stay connected to classes, web
by: Heather Ratcliffe of the Post-Dispatch
GREENVILLE, ILL. - Most colleges trumpet to prospective students
how well-wired their dormitories and classrooms are to the Internet.
Greenville College, 40 miles east of St. Louis, has skipped the
wiring, saved millions of dollars and nevertheless found a way to
hook its almost 900 students into the World Wide Web.
They've gone wireless.
When the system is completed next week, the college will have the
first campuswide wireless network in the nation, according to industry
and education leaders.
Students and teachers will be able to access the Internet from
any office, dorm room, classroom or park bench on campus.
"It's revolutionary," said Jim Mannoia, president of the liberal
arts college in Greenville. "It's a tool that will help us in our
mission as a liberal arts college to open up new horizons for our
students."
The system was financed through a $200,000 state grant. Wiring
a few buildings on campus could have cost the college millions,
Mannoia said. Instead, officials spent only $80,000 on equipment
for the system.
Mannoia said he expects the technology to advance education at
the school.
"Instruction in the classroom will change with this technology,
and not just in superficial ways," he said. "Students will be able
to learn new kinds of stuff that couldn't be taught in a classroom
before."
The backbone of the system is a fiber optic network, which delivers
data to 53 access stations located across the campus. From there,
antennas send the data as radio signals to PC cards in laptop and
notebook computers. Desktop computers also can access the wireless
network with a special PC card.
Technicians mapped the campus to avoid radio obstacles. Trees and
metal can absorb and interfere with the signal, so access points
and antennas were planned to avoid these obstacles, said Paul Younker,
a system administrator.
Other educators and industry leaders working with the technology
said they were impressed with Greenville's network.
"We are going to see wireless a lot in the future," Ann Miller,
computer engineering professor at the University of Missouri at
Rolla. "It's going to be easier to implement at smaller colleges
first."
Other universities working with the technology include Rutgers,
Columbia, Duke and Princeton.
The biggest problem with the wireless technology has been speed.
The bandwidth for transmitting information has been limited. But
breakthroughs in technology have advanced wireless to match wired
systems, Miller said.
The Greenville College system, which was installed by Aironet Wireless
Communications Inc. of Akron, Ohio, delivers information at 11 megabytes
per second, the same speed as a commercial T-1 line.
"It's amazing," said Carl Salz, a junior in a Webmasters class
at Greenville. "Now I wait for other people who are wired because
their computers are so slow."
The network's biggest advantage is mobility. It helps teachers
such as Deloy Cole, who instructs a class about Web pages. Forced
out of their classroom this week by paint fumes, Cole and his students
tucked their laptops under their arms and looked for another room.
"The network has a huge impact on teaching in my class," Cole said.
"When every student has a laptop, I will be able to give quizzes
and tests online."
Students at Greenville College can lease a laptop computer with
a PC card for the system for $900 a year. After four years, the
student can keep the equipment. More than 200 students have enrolled
in the program, said Rex Catron, a network administrator.
Students who want to access the system on their desktop computers
can pay a connectivity fee of about $200 a semester for a PC card.
Last updated: January
21, 2000
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