It was about 24 years ago that we invested the equivalent of about ten boarding students' tuitions to buy a computer. It was very nice. Soon, it seemed, students were carrying hand-held calculators with more memory and speed than the Digital Equipment Corp PDP-11T34 that stood in an air conditioned room under Shirley Hall. Years later we became very excited by the prospect of copperwiring Ethernet service to all 230 student desks in our 20 dormitories.
I got into a little trouble by publishing an admission brochure that claimed in no uncertain terms that networking the entire campus was a done deal. So when a trustee meeting began discussing funding the project, I had to distribute copies of a presumptuous brochure that had been enjoyed by thousands of prospective students and their families. So we invested the equivalent of about 4 boarding student tuitions, networked every desk, and defined Proctor's stake in techology-in-education: access. Today, of course, our computers have wireless access to the web and our intranet.
Math teacher Doug Houston has a Smartboard in his classroom that projects his computer screen. The board is sensitive to touch, so he changes pages by tapping projected links.
And so it goes.
