When large, content-rich websites are "saved" for off-line browsing, they can function as a portable database of useful information. For instance, consider downloading the works of Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, and other literary heroes.

Using Netscape Composer, Microsoft Front Page, or Macromedia's Dreamweaver (my first choice), create web pages that link to the URLs of pages within sites that you had earlier saved.

Buy an extra laptop battery and retire to your favorite forest nook or deserted meadow to type inspired poems, poignant essays or ingenious fiction. If the sounds of nature don't inspire you, depend upon headphones and a load of legal MP3s.

To use a laptop at UC Davis, you should learn about Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, figure out where to connect it to the campus (Ethernet) network, how to configure it, and how a typical media cabinet works. 

Faculty and students have access to the resources of UC Davis libraries and the Internet from any connected computer. Researchers can consult traditional sources and web sources simultaneously from certain areas of Shields Library. This may lessen the computing strain on existing computers used to access Harvest, MELVYL and other library databases.

Connecting to MyUCDavis, a POP server (Post Office Protocol server that holds mail for you until you download it), or to off-campus web-based e-mail, faculty and students can better communicate with each other, hold virtual office hours via Web Chat (see Stenzel documentation), etc. Wireless e-mail also allows researchers to mail findings to themselves, thus transferring them from a laptop computer to a home or office computer.

Students often wait in long lines for computers at the computer classrooms and labs on campus, often merely to check e-mail or type up a paper. As students grow used to mobile computing, they may also find less of a need to print from lab printers. Many high schools across the US have created computer classrooms with a mobile rack of iBooks and a Wireless Access Point. See this helpful handout on this practice from the University of Arizona. On this same topic, see ASU, Apple's Airport in Education, and a recent article on academic thriftiness in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

All of us who have taught in computer classrooms know how students’ eyes will wander to their computer screens in class. Do they need additional distractions? Do we know which students are typing up class notes, and which are IM-ing wisecracks to their classmates on the other side of the room?

Networked laptops allow students to access outside resources or engage in unsanctioned collaboration during exams. When Harvard Business School recently disabled its wireless LAN during final exams, it was discovered that some students were accessing outside sources through the use of commercial wireless access providers. (See www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0102.pdf)

An increased number of laptops on campus will mean more concerns about theft, breakage, and back problems. Many students already carry several pounds of textbooks from class to class; should they take on this new load?

See http://wireless.ucdavis.edu/

 

 

U.C. Davis | English Department | University Writing Program | CAI Program