Schools to get $9M to support wireless off campus

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday will announce 20 pilot projects that will receive government funding to pay for wireless broadband connections for laptops, smart phones and other mobile devices, which students will be able to take with them after the school day ends.

The program is intended to give students - including those from low-income families who may have no other Internet service at home - access to homework assignments, study guides, digital textbooks and other educational resources outside of regular school hours. Called Learning On-the-Go, the program will reach nearly 35,000 students across 14 states in the 2011-2012 school year.

It will be paid for through the government's E-Rate program, which funds Internet access in schools and libraries and until now has never been used to pay for off-campus connections. E-Rate is one of four programs that make up the Universal Service Fund, the federal program that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural areas through a surcharge on long-distance bills.

The projects that will be funded include programs that will pay for laptop connections for elementary and secondary school students in New Orleans, wireless cards for high school boys from low-income households in Philadelphia and smart-phone access for students with Attention Deficit Disorder or Asperger's syndrome in Canton, Ohio.

The money will go to projects in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, California, New Mexico and Iowa.

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