You know, when I was a kid, we were lucky when we had a school bus that had the radio on board. If you wanted to listen to music or play games or keep yourself entertained, you had to provide all that stuff yourself. However, if an experiment in Vail, Arizona (a suburb of Tuscon) takes hold, all you’ll need to keep the kids entertained on the way to school is a netbook. Bus number 92, which serves Vail’s Empire High School, is a rolling Wifi hotspot that’s been dubbed the Internet Bus. This is merely the latest step in Vail’s attempts to expand the school day and integrate technology into the classroom, and it’s a huge hit.
With a good blocking software in place to curtail illegal downloading, I imagine this is the kind of thing that’ll be everywhere in a few years. We’ve already got Wifi in most public places, why not pump the wireless out everywhere? If it’ll keep kids calm and relaxed on bus rides, then it’s worth it. The Internet is crucial to everything we do nowadays, so it’s about time buses embraced the future.
Tags: Vail, Arizona, school bus with WiFi, rolling WiFi hotspot, technology, education, education trends, Wifi on public transportation, Internet Bus, Empire High School, Autonet Mobile
