Conclusion

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Based on the research, wi-fi has produced effects that have significantly changed the daily lives of students and teachers in many ways. The benefits of wi-fi technology in general are very much widepsread with examples of increased convenience coming up time and time again. This is the same with educational institutions. Wi-fi has dramatically changed the daily life in college by addiing "mobility" factor to traditional teaching and learning practices. Essentially, learning and informative communications can be done anywhere.

All has not been smooth though in the transition to a digital mobile world. Wi-fi has also led a trend with students that many have critisized to detrimenting the quality of teaching at lectures, both small and large size alike. However, in considering this major drawback socially is a combination of many different distractions with electronic devices like laptops, mp3 players, cell phones. It's the cumulative effect together that has led to an outcry by professors against wi-fi. There will always be people in the class that will be distracting. "People who are abusing wireless are equally as distracting as the guy with the newspaper, passing notes, text messaging, people typing on laptops" [Piplani 2005]. Thus, institutions cannot point at wi-fi at the lone cause, but it's the cumulative effect of many devices. It is inevitable for some students to be distracting, but now ,instead of reading newspapers or playing with cell phones, students are using laptops instead.

Technologically, as time goes on, engineers will make sure that the the wi-fi standard will improve in the areas where it is weakest: security, speed, and reliability. It still relatively new technology that is spreading quickly throughout the nation. 802.11n and Wi-Max will be two technologies that attract particular interest to the Technology Departments of many educational institutions.

In the applicability sense, universities really need have professors implement programs that harness the advantages or opportunities that wi-fi presents, rather than have compete against it for students' attention. This allow professors to have some degree of control over the the disruption that can potentially arise. This is done through development of further interactivity between professors and their students--make students actively choose to participate in class to learn. This will allow professors to work together with the service of wi-fi, leading to a superior learning experience for students. Many US universities such as UC Berkeley and UC San Diego are already experimenting with programs and infrastructures that allow this with some having success. More and more universities need to consider this option to really make wi-fi a worthwhile investment for education. The convenience factor for wi-fi is a given for its added value, but it's the potential opportunities for promoting interactivity and improving the overall student learning experience that will allow wi-fi to truly progress the academic objectives of US universities and dinstinguish them as the elite educational institutions of the world.

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