Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Bad Science » Wi-Fi Wants To Kill Your Children… But Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch sells the cure!

The wifi debate has not gone away and there seems to be two camps. Those that laugh it off and those that are resolute in saying it poses a threat. Becta are sticking with the HPA guidelines and many LAs are issuing their statement as the one to follow.

What interests me from the original guidance's from BECTA , is that they claim that wifi should only be a back-up to a hard wired network, not a replacement. Safety worries aside wireless can be annoyingly unreliable, depending on the fabric of the building and a few years ago we had tremendous problems with villains pharming some of our schools wifi connections to download films. I would follow BECTA and use wifi as an add-on to hard wire not a replacement in full. Wifi is great for flexibility and at a time when teachers need to be on-line to plan for Renewed Framework, the portability of Wifi means teachers can plan with ease and not wait to get into an ICT suite!

As for the safety issue- the post on the Guardian Bad Science page makes very interesting reading. See below- Thanks to Keith for finding this article by the way


Bad Science » Wi-Fi Wants To Kill Your Children… But Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch sells the cure!

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