Wi-Fi on the School Bus – Where Does it End?
If you cringed when you read kids spend seven and a half hours on digital media per day, brace yourself. The Internet School Bus could be coming to a neighborhood near you.
A pilot project in an Arizona school district, the wi-fi zone on wheels got a write-up in the New York Times last week for its innovation.
In Vail, Ariz., they say “Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.”
Absent from this story were any of the naysayers, and I’ll admit my first reaction was to sit up straight in my chair and suck in my cheeks. We can’t give them a thirty-minute bus ride home without plugging them in?
I’ll admit some of the reasoning was compelling – among them that “rolling study hall” concept, a means for the kids who find they MUST be connected to the Internet to complete their homework to make good use of that drive home. By allowing them to complete more projects while they’re stuck on a bus, they actually open up more free time at home to exercise or help out around the house.
What’s more, I feel for bus drivers. Charged with keeping a giant vehicle full of screaming kids safe is not an easy task on a good day, and many districts cannot afford to add a monitor to the bus to help them with discipline. Pull over to manage behavior problems, and then you’re met with a host of parents complaining that the late bus made it hard to schedule someone to meet their kids at drop off. Keeping the kids occupied can significantly enhance safety.
But then there’s that plugged in concern. Many parents report their children piling off the school bus and rushing directly to their computers, where they remain for the night. Adding another thirty, forty minutes to that might allow them to get more work done, or it might just allow them more time to Facebook and IM.
What’s more, the bus ride has traditionally been one of the few times during a school day when kids can socialize with one another. Put a computer in front of them, and they’ll be more likely to resort to IM or Facebook – much like they do in the school library in the middle of the day. Although they’re sitting beside one another, they return to their comfort zone, and the art of conversation is being lost in the shuffle.
The Times’ story reports the company selling the routers that power the Internet School Bus has contracts with districts in Florida, Missouri and Washington, D.C. Will you welcome them to your school?
Image: Bill Ward Brickpile via flickr
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If your kid was on the bus for an hour and a half a day you might feel differently.
And yes busses are one of the few places where kids can interact freely and because of that and their frequent lack of real supervision they’re a major place where bullying and fights happen. I don’t know many parents whose kids haven’t had problems with bullying on the bus at one time or another if their kids are frequent riders.
I think it’s a good idea. I spend almost 2 hours on a bus for my commute to work, and I’m very very happy to have internet access while doing it; just like the kids in the article, I use it to do my work – and quietly entertain myself. What’s wrong with that? Especially when these kids are facing 3-5 hours on a bus on a regular basis. How much “socializing” can you do without getting into trouble in such a confined space for such a long period of time?
I like the idea…but I *hate* the idea of school buses in general. I think they’re a perfect environment for trouble. I mean, the only adult around is not a trained educator/mediator AND they’re focus needs to be DRIVING. I would hate to have to send my kid to school on a bus where they’re basically trapped in whatever kind of Lord of the Flies scenario might evolve…and thankfully, I don’t have to because we live walking distance to the schools. That said, the Internet access would probably help keep things to a low roar…
“THEIR” focus…sorry….
“The art of conversation” in my case consisted of me being sexually harassed by a mentally challenged kid who was mainstreamed, while other kids looked on. I was 11. I would have liked nothing better than to be able to bury myself in a computer. As it was, I tried to do that with books, but always got too motion sick. My bus ride was something in the neighborhood of 1.5 hours each way, since we lived in the sticks. That was a long time to listen to this kid tell me how he planned to rape me and how I would like it, while the other kids laughed. Tell the bus driver? I did, and nothing happened. Tell my parents? I did, and nothing happened. The kid was a neighbor and my folks trusted my brother to look out for me and didn’t want to rock the neighborhood boat. My brother knew which way the crowd went and didn’t laugh, but didn’t exactly stop it either. Wi-Fi would have been a godsend.
I also had to laugh at the “art of conversation” comment. I don’t know what kind of school bus environment you are thinking of. I think we often look at the past through rose-colored glasses.
Also, kids today have much more homework than we had. If they have a long bus ride, they will barely have enough time to do their homework before it is time for bed. I think the resistance to wi-fi in school buses has more to do with fear of technology than anything else.
Patricia, that is AWFUL…this is exactly the kind of stuff I mean. Sheesh. Horrible!
Patricia, that is awful, awful, awful. I too was bullied horribly on the bus, although never to that extent. But I also have one of my dearest friends to this day – a girl I reconnected with after we had kids – from my bus ride.
I will also say that I don’t see how Internet is the cure to bullying, considering the massive amount of cyberbullying that’s going on in this country. Likewise, I can see how a bunch of kids typing away on their laptops are only that much more likely to ignore someone being bullied than kids who are all engaged with one another.
That said, I do agree with folks who said it will reduce bad behavior overall – I really feel for bus drivers!
I guess I don’t see this as a cure to bullying. I just didn’t agree with your statement about a school bus being a place to learn the art of conversation, so if they can do something else, why not?
Perhaps “art of conversation” is being taken too literally. However kids need time to socialize one on one with one another in order to develop social skills. With that comes learning what is BAD social interaction, but it also offers the chance to learn things like not interrupting or sharing.
That doesn’t happen during the school day, but it does happen on the bus.
Y’all are sending your kids to school with computers? Well, that is a difference. I suppose a nice, portable book would be too low class to serve as a mental distraction on the bus? Far better to leave a bunch of kids relatively unsupervised with a load of expensive technology. Because we all know kids never break things, or take things that aren’t theirs.
My real discomfort with this stems from my sense that better accessibility for info-tech leads to higher expectations of efficiency and availability. Comments above already note that there is more homework now, and I know I’ve read studies about how the blackberry has increase the average employers expectation that their staff will be available on evenings and weekends. I’d worry that this will mean an increased expectation that children do their homework on the bus, or that they use the (variable) amount of commuting time specifically to educate themselves.
I think this is a fantastic idea. While I did not have trouble with bullying (haha, not after I gave the playground bully a black eye when he was picking on my baby sister), the bus ride was possibly the most boring part of my school day. None of my friends rode the same bus and I couldn’t read more than a page or two without getting carsick. On the other hand, I can be on my laptop without getting sick (go figure), and it would have been a blessing.