The Wi-Fi On the Bus

theodp writes "For students who endure hundreds of hours on a school bus each year in a desert exurb of Tucson, the Wi-Fi on the bus improves the ride. Last fall, school officials mounted a $200 mobile Internet router from Autonet Mobile to bus No. 92's sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. What began as a hi-tech experiment has had an unexpected result — Wi-Fi has transformed the formerly boisterous bus rides into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared. 'Boys aren't hitting each other, girls are busy, and there's not so much jumping around,' said J. J. Johnson, the Internet Bus driver."

Comments

A rolling study hall?

[newcastlejon]

I doubt it.

1-to-10 says they're all on facebook.

Re:the wheels on the bus go

[Shikaku]

Up and down... up and down. the wifi on the bus goes down and then, all peace ends.

Re:behavioral problems have virtually disappeared

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer if bullies minded their own business and left the more intellectual of us alone.

The school playground is notorious for encouraging the torment of "nerds" and other social outcasts. If the bus can be turned into another safe zone, that is a good thing, in my e-book.

Meh

[ascari]

Over engineering if you ask me. The same result can be accomplished with a roll of duct tape. Silence is golden, duct tape is silver as the saying goes.

Re:And the zombification of our children continues

[miggyb]

Right, because before putting wifi on the bus, there were so many opportunities for learning and self-achievement

If anything, making people shut the fuck up in the bus will help the introspective types that just want to be left alone so they can get some reading done. From personal experience, the most distracting thing about reading in the bus was not trying to read through the bumpiness and the constant starting and stopping. No, the most distracting thing was the guy next to me trying to get into a fight with the dude directly in front of me, reducing my personal space to whatever my eye's shortest focal length could be.