Last year, Broward County Public Schools embarked upon an ambitious, $68 million Digital Learning initiative with two goals in mind: (1) to provide students with greater and more equitable access to technology, and (2) to improve the district's tech-support model. The result: There is now one wireless laptop computer for every six students in the district--and tech-support costs have plummeted.

"We usually pull inventory to see what's old, what's out of date, what's out of warranty or not worth keeping or fixing," says Angela Coluzzi, director of network integration. Before the 2005-2006 school year, Broward discovered there were between 40,000 and 50,000 machines that should be replaced.

One of the key components of the technology refresh initiative was the laptop cart program. Under Coluzzi's leadership, the district delivered 2,000 mobile laptop carts throughout all schools, each loaded with up to 20 wireless-equipped Apple or Dell laptop computers, a Cisco Aironet 1000 Series lightweight access point (for carts at schools that did not already have access points installed throughout their buildings), and a Lexmark printer.

The cart program was the result of a study, conducted by the University of Miami, of four pilot schools in the district, in which each student received a laptop to take home. Researchers wanted to see if giving every student a computer would boost learning. Interestingly, the study showed that, rather than helping students learn, the laptops often got lost or stolen--and the gain for students was not as high as expected.

Given that outfitting 275,000 students with their own laptops would be cost-prohibitive, Broward officials decided that it made more sense for students to share laptops during the school day. "As long as the teacher had the ability to give students use of the computers when [he or she] wanted them to use one, [the students] saw incredible gains," says Coluzzi of the research.

Bretford Inc., the cart vendor, worked with Broward County to customize the 2,000 carts, adding rubber bumpers around the inside and rails around the top of the cart.

They also added two wheels, turning the carts from rather unwieldy four-wheeled vehicles to something far sturdier that could travel easily across gravel. That was the result of a meeting with teachers and principals after a pilot of the program to find out how useful the carts were.

"One of the main problems was getting the carts in and out of the portable classrooms," explains Coluzzi.

The technology refresh program also included the purchase of 5,000 Lexmark multi-function printers/ copiers/scanners--the first step in a long-term goal of providing printers to all 13,000-plus classrooms in the district. Teachers are using the devices not only as printers, but also as scanners to scan bubble sheets from quizzes and tests into their computers, so formative assessment data can be imported automatically and are available instantly in the teachers' Excelsior Pinnacle gradebooks--and, in turn, in the district's student database. This saves teachers valuable time and reduces the amount of time school leaders have to wait before analyzing results.