Wi-Fi Turns School Buses into Study Halls

In an effort to increase student learning time by roughly 26 days a year a school district in Huntsville, Ala. has voted to equip twenty buses with wireless internet routers. In the rural district students on these bus routes spend an average of two hours per day going to and from school.

Each system is equipped with filters that block students from inappropriate websites and parents can track the location of the bus through the router. The program follows a similar model that has been tried in approximately 25 other school districts in at least six other states.

WAFF-TVreports that the district is receving federal reimbursement for the pilot program, which will cost $300 per bus for the routers and eight dollars per month for service. If the program is successful through the fall semester it will likely be expanded to include all 100 buses the district uses to transport students.