Mobile wireless laptop carts

This classroom technology option offers 32 wireless laptops and a laser printer, secured in two mobile carts.

This setup allows instructors to bring small, networked computers to students where access to network and power wiring is difficult or expensive, and where bench or desk space is at a premium.

This technology has become useful in wet lab courses held in Goddard and Leidy, where students browse the web for bioinformatics and other scientific resources, access Penn Blackboard, as well as analyze, share and email data collected during a laboratory session.

Technical specifications

Our setup includes the following items:

• 20 Airport Extreme-equipped 12.1" iBook G4 (1 GHz)
• 12 Airport-equipped 12.1" iBooks (mix of 500 and 600 MHz varieties)
• HP LaserJet 2300 series printer
• Apple Airport Extreme Base Station wireless access point
• Dr Bott ExtendAir omnidirectional antenna
• Two Bretford 32-station Wireless Laptop Carts

The laptops run Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 and a variety of network, bioinformatics and productivity software.

Contact support for more technical information, or if special software is needed for your course.

Reservations

To reserve this equipment, log in to the Penn Biology Applications site and place your request via the Mobile Wireless Laptop Cart reservation form.

Using the laptops — four easy steps

1. Power the mobile cart and connect its Ethernet cable to an available network outlet in the room. Wait 30 seconds for the printer and network devices to intialize.

2. Unlock and open the cart doors, and unplug laptops from their power supply cables to distribute to students.

3. A student opens the laptop to wake it. The laptop is networked and ready for use and is already set up print to the cart's printer.

4. When finished, students should close the laptop to put it to "sleep". It is not necessary or recommended to shut down the laptop, though this does no harm.

The laptop will recharge its battery when replaced in the cart and connected to its power source, so long as the mobile cart itself is connected to an electrical outlet.

At least three hours of charge time is recommended before your event. Power adapters cannot be removed from the cart for your students. If the batteries are low, charge time is required to continue using the laptops.

Security

The cart has locked doors. But the cart is highly compact and can easily be rolled where it is needed. To prevent theft, the cart body should be secured to an immovable object via the provided cable and padlock, when not in use.

It is the responsibility of the course instructors and related staff to distribute and collect all laptops, as well as physically secure the cart when not in use.

It is recommended that instructors collect a form of identification (e.g. PennCards or Driver's Licenses) from students who are loaned equipment for the duration of the course session.

Maintenance and repairs

This setup is designed to be as low-maintenance as possible.

In addition to physically securing the cart, instructors should power the cart for three hours before the start of class, to allow the laptops to recharge fully.

Laptops can be shut down instead of put asleep, but this should rarely be necessary, and only when the cart will be in storage and unpowered for longer than a week.

The laptops each drain about 10% of their battery charge per day while asleep (and the cart is unpowered).

If a laptop is not working properly due to a software problem, it can be reset to a working base condition within 20 minutes and then put back to use. Please contact support if this service is needed, or if any other problem is encountered.

New images can be created for various courses; contact support for special software requirements.

Funding

Most of this project was funded by the Department of Biology. Partial funding was obtained over a period of a year and half from two ICDF grants made available through SAS Computing. Continued funding of this project is shared between SASC and Biology.

ICDF is intended to integrate technology with undergraduate coursework within the School of Arts and Sciences, but it has been replaced with a new grant proposal system. More information on the current incarnation of the ICDF program is located here.

Thanks

We would like to express our appreciation to John MacDermott for giving the initial pilot project the green light and committing funds for the initial 12 workstations. We would also like to thank Lory Eighme for locating funding for the bulk of the current setup.