SMARTboards aren’t the only new pieces of technology to recently hit the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district. Students and teachers, primarily at High School South, are also able to utilize 16 new multimedia “carts” that rolled into classrooms this year.##M:[more]##
The new additions that some students have nicknamed “smart carts” are described as small, lockable cabinets on wheels, according to district technology director Rick Cave. “It almost looks like R2D2,” Cave joked.
Whether it looks like the well-known Star Wars character, or whether it’s more akin to “a media cart on steroids,” as district computer facilitator Russell Wray puts it, it certainly is loaded up with all the latest technology.
The mobile presentation system is made by Illinois-based Dukane Corporation. Inside the mobile carts are a computer, VCR, DVD player, speaker system, and an LCD projector. The cart also comes with a small digital camera —called a document camera — that projects what’s in front of it — whether a hand or paper — for everyone to see. Anything on the computer can be displayed. If something is scanned, it can be displayed using the camera, and the computer on each cart has a wireless Internet connection.
The cart is also equipped with an iPod dock, so students can create presentations on their iPods and plug them into the cart to play them for the class.
“You have all these different tools,” Cave said. “You can pick and chose which ones you need and roll them in on an as-needed basis.”
One cart comes with an AirLiner wireless “slate,” or tablet that uses SMARTboard technology, allowing for digital drawings or notes by students and teachers to be projected overhead. “You write on it, and it wirelessly communicates with the board. Instead of writing on the (actual) SMARTboard, you write on this tablet, and it writes on the screen in real time,” Wray said.
While only one of the district’s carts has these tablets, Wray says that once district officials see how well it goes during this year, they may opt to buy more.
So far, Wray says that teachers and students alike love the carts.
“The original design of it was to position them in four different parts of the school to allow instant access,” he said, adding teachers could just grab a cart and start making presentations on an as-needed basis. But “they’ve been so popular, we had to create a scheduling system,” where teachers can sign one out online from home or at school to rent one of the carts.
Said Wray: “Right now, they’re working at about a 95 percent utilization rate, so they’re rarely not used.”
The carts especially came in useful in the beginning of the school year, when some of the SMARTboards weren’t fully installed yet. “All media carts have smart board software, so you’re able to do all the presentations, except you don’t have interactivity with the board,” Wray said. The projector on the carts throws the images onto typical projection screens in the classrooms.
Every year the district rotates “refresh” money from school to school to be used for updating the technology. It was High School South’s turn this year, and a committee of faculty and staff there wanted to ensure students would get the best use out of classroom computers. That’s when Wray came across the product put out by Dukane, and the district purchased 16 of them.
Instead of pouring money into individual projectors that serve one function, 26-inch televisions, and $400 cases for individual classroom computers, faculty thought it wiser to purchase the carts that can combine all of these functions, Wray said.
The environment of the school itself also played a part in choosing the carts, as the approximately 30 to 35 classrooms that make up the original part of the building have no walls and no doors to lock, putting unattended technology in danger of being damaged or stolen.
The district is ordering one more cart to be used as a test drive in one of the middle schools. The carts cost approximately $3,”000 apiece. “It engages the students,” said Wray. “It’s technology that’s been around for a while, but it’s something that really does enhance the teaching environment.”
— Cara Latham
