EdnTop: A Portal for Education in the Post-PC Era of Wireles

— beginning in the 1960s with mainframe computers connected to classrooms, if at all, by wired teletype terminals;
— followed a computing generation later by mini-computers and dedicated terminals;
— followed in the 1990s by legions of personal computers, so-called “PCs” often wired to LANs (Local Area Networks) in client-server environments; most connected to the internet and the World Wide Web.
— and now comes the wireless Personal Digital Assistant, or PDA.
Most everyone recognizes that the internet is changing nearly every aspect of our world, making “globalization,” worldwide, a reality the far reaches of which are, as yet, only dimly perceived by most of us.
Today, the buzz word is “wireless.” And that word now means many things: PCs with “wireless” 802.11b LAN/WAN connections as well as small hand-held computers, “Personal Digital Assistants” or PDAs, from many sources such as Palm, Hewlett-Packard, Agenda, SONY, and soon many, many others. Some of these devices now have “wireless” connections to the internet. All of them promise a World of “ubiquitous” computing — access to programs and data, world-wide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Moreover, the accelerating pace of change guarantees that “education” in the traditional sense of teaching “facts and data and how-to-do things” is a hopeless race against time: the classroom and the teacher cannot possibly keep pace with changing world realities. Some of what is taught to a child of age 10 will be wrong or irrelevant by the time the child leaves high school. Some of what the student learns in high school will be out of date by the time that student leaves college.
We are now in an age of life-long learning. Our task is to provide learners at every age with a mindset, the skills and the tools to be effective and efficient at self-instruction for the many years following the end of formal education.
One of the tools that will play a role in life-long learning is the wirelessly connected PDA. Let’s now explore that reality.
PDA Realities
The PDA is profoundly limited by one underlying reality: It needs to be small, light-weight, and battery powered. Moore’s “law” of computer capability doubling every 18 months has not applied to battery technology; battery energy density has improved very little over the past decades. If the PDA is small and light; its battery must also be small and light.
Thus, PDAs present a severe and increasing challenge since they do not have and will not soon have the energy and the processing power to execute in acceptable time large programs with much data. The limited battery power of all PDAs imposes fundamental limits on what PDAs can do.
A second reality is that to be us

eful in today’s world PDAs need wireless internet access. The answer is a new wireless, microwave technology that is just now arriving after several years of development and now acceptance and adoption, worldwide, by over 2,000 companies and organizations. The technology is called Bluetooth. See www.bluetooth.com. For the most recent news, see www.zdnet.co.uk/news/specials/1999/04/bluetooth/
In brief, a Bluetooth PDA communicates using very low power microwaves (that preserve battery life) over very short distances, (up to 10 m.) with any other Bluetooth using device. For example, to a classroom PC also with Bluetooth and a LAN wired connection to the internet.
Starting in 2001 and 2002, most newly designed cell phones, PDAs, PCs, and other consumer electronic devices including TV sets, autos, microwaves, CD players, and other household devices will be Bluetooth enabled. Bluetooth enabled devices are expected to be in hundreds of millions of consumer devices worldwide by the year 2005. Nearly every possible consumer electronic and electrical device will soon be internet aware and internet addressable.
When and how will education benefit? Answer: when Bluetooth enabled PDAs are very inexpensive and in the hands of teachers and students. I expect that such devices will b