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Wi-Fi Buses Keep Kids Quiet on the Long Ride Home

by Caleb Johnson on February 14, 2010 at 02:57 PM

If your childhood was like ours, memories from afternoon rides on a big yellow bus will haunt you forever. Remember the spitwads, the uncomfortable vinyl seats, the screaming classmates, and the inevitable fights with the class bully?

We could go on and on, but we'll spare you (and our inner children). After all, times are changing. As a matter of fact, some students in Arizona will never experience the bus rides from hell that we did. Why? Well, according to The New York Times, officials from the Vail school district recently equipped some buses with Wi-Fi Internet access. The result has been more well behaved and well prepared students. It's a bus driver's dream. "It's made a big difference," said driver J. J. Johnson. "Boys aren't hitting each other, girls are busy, and there's not so much jumping around." The Times describes a scene on bus No. 92, where students edit historical essays on their MacBooks, submit biology homework via the Web, and even find time to swap e-mails with other students.

While this move makes sense for the Vail school district (whose 18 schools are spread across a 425-square-mile area, and require long bus rides), it's hard to imagine every school adopting this idea. But Autonet Mobile, the company marketing the router used on these buses, says schools in Florida, Missouri and Washington D.C. have signed on, too.

So, who knows? Maybe we're wrong. This could be the next hot trend in education -- or, at the least, a profitable publicity campaign for some company. [From: The New York Times]

Tags: bus, computer, education, school, students, top, web, wifi, wifi bus, WifiBus

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