In Wisconsin, 15 school districts are using the Kajeet mobile hotspots to help bridge the learning gap between students who have internet access at home and those who don't.
School districts set restrictions on the use of the devices. For example, students can't stream Hulu videos or play online video games. School officials can control what websites are visited, and often data usage is capped at 500 megabytes per day.
The devices are strictly for homework, not entertainment, said Annie Fredriksson, coordinator of library media and instructional technology for the Kenosha Unified School District, which began deploying the mobile hotspots in January.
When we started Kajeet in 2003, we wanted kids to be agile with technology, to be empowered and safe, and we wanted to help them respond with confidence to what's happening in their world. Not incidentally, we want parents, educators and guardians to be involved too. Being part of the mobile world is not just fun, it’s a shared responsibility.