The scheme will involve installing dozens of internet transmitters, or routers, in lamp posts surrounding Broad Oak Sports College in Bury.
Pupils will be able to surf the web at home when the service goes live in November. Initially, the network will cover just 200 homes, but will be extended across most of the school's catchment area, an area of several square miles, and accessible to about 1,000 households.
Many restaurants, shops and cafes already offer free internet access - and plans are under way to create a huge wi-fi `cloud' which would allow web users to enjoy roaming access through Manchester city centre.
But the 600-pupil secondary is the first school in the country to create a wide-scale free network for its local area.
Teachers say that the web is now so crucial to the curriculum that all its students should use it outside of school.
About 40 per cent of Broad Oak students do not have internet access at home.
The network will mean that the pupils and their families can get free, unlimited access, using special software and a password. It will also be available to children and families from six local primary schools and, if successful, opened up to local people at a discounted rate.
The £140,000 project is being co-funded by the local council. Last year, the school gave free laptops and cut price broadband to its youngest pupils, with other students offered subsidised laptops for as little as £190 as part of a pilot scheme.
Head teacher Neil O'Connor said: "We have worked hard to ensure our students have free and discounted laptops. But without access to a stable and reasonably fast internet connection, students are severely limited in what they can do.
"We found creating a dedicated wireless `cloud' over which we had control the most practical and efficient solution.
"It's a great investment for our students, as the emphasis in secondary education increasingly focuses on e-learning techniques."
Pupils will be able to download school work and conduct research on the internet, but a filter will prevent users from accessing unsuitable material.
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FyberOptyx, Tameside (03/10/2008 at 09:17)
Why is this ?
How on earth did we ever survive before computers ?
I get the impression schools are in favour of it because it saves time and money on text books.
My daughter came home from school last week with homework to find out about a past monarch from the internet. When I was at school that was what the teachers were paid for, to teach you.
I try to limit my kids' exposure to the TV and internet and now the teachers are giving them excuses to go online almost every day. No wonder kids these days are moody and easily irritated, they are getting withdrawal symptoms from all the electronic drugs.
They have forgotten how to play outside, to read a book, to hold a grammatical conversation, to use their imagination.
Clive Spurling (09/10/2008 at 09:37)
FyberOptyx, if that even is your real name, I suggest that you take a moment to realise how flimsy the points you're making are. I'd point your irrationalities out one-by-one but then you seem to be positing a theory that children get withdrawal from "electronic drugs" so I'm not sure that rationality is all that important to you.
Plus, who can compete with your nostalgia fuelled view that everything was better when you were young when you were enjoyed things like books, conversation and polio.
This scheme is fantastic, it levels the playing fields for internet access which is a vital step in making sure that a knowledge gap doesn't appear between children from richer areas (where access to the internet at home is almost ubiquitous) to poorer areas. Despite Fyber's reluctance I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the internet is probably going to be a pretty major thing when the current generation of school children reach employment. Heaven forbid we raise a cohort who are only capable of playing outside.
Believe it or not the web can be an incredibly fertile area for fuelling children's imaginations. I'd point fyberoptyx in the direction of things like www.sixtostart.com's Shadow War which has been using the web to engage children with literature. I would do that but he (and it's got to be a he) is probably too busy blowing a Scalextrix car around the track with a straw to take any notice.
Oh and Fyber, some light reading for you:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Black Flag (09/10/2008 at 11:02)
Surely the ability to research, assess the quality of information and draw conclusions is an important skill to learn, especially in a democracy where we have politicians giving us conflicting and incomplete information in order to win our votes and where any of us could be called to serve on a jury and have the responsibility of evaluating evidence.
I'd rather have a generation of children with those skills, rather than churning out unthinking sponges that have been spoon fed information.
I find it ironic that you are criticising the very thing that has given you the ability to share your views.