Date: 11/2/07
Author: Jean-Paul Renaud
Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

A glimpse of the future: An ambulance rushing through traffic instantly transmits a patient's vital signs to a hospital, letting doctors know what to expect before paramedics arrive.

Police officers monitor a hostage situation on a public bus by tapping into a camera inside the cabin from the safety of their squad cars.

Maintenance workers doing inventory of city supplies order more materials from the convenience of a handheld wireless device tucked in their pockets.

That future may not be so far away. The Broward School Board agreed Tuesday to work with eight other government agencies and private universities as well as several cities to blanket the county with a wireless signal in a project called OneBroward.

Using the broadcast towers that rise over each of the district's 270 schools, officials believe they can transmit a signal that could cover all of Broward. Pilot programs will begin this summer, although officials have not determined how they will be structured. If those are successful, the entire county will have wireless Internet access, in one form or another, in 18 months.

"The possibilities are unlimited on how we use this," said school board member Robert Parks. "One of the big things for the school district is that it's going to eliminate the digital divide, where all families have access to the school district at home."

Allowing police to monitor security cameras placed in public places has some parent activists watching closely to make sure technology intended to protect does not become intrusive.

"I am cautiously positive," said Ivan Baratz, a parent advocate and chair of a district advisory council. "I would watch it very carefully. I would be concerned that they don't step beyond their boundaries."

But having remote access to cameras is just one possibility that comes with a countywide wireless network.

Students, for example, could access their homework, read their teacher's lesson plans or send their homework from home.

Eight other agencies and several cities, including the Broward Sheriff's Office, the North Broward Hospital District, Cooper City and Lighthouse Point, have their own plans on how they would use the technology.

Some of those ideas will be tested starting this summer, when a few of the school district's towers are activated.

"We're hoping to pilot some programs that take the application beyond education and into security," said Lighthouse Point Mayor Fred Shorr.

Shorr hopes to install cameras in four parks around his city, allowing police officers sitting in their cars or behind their desks at headquarters to watch from a distance.

"What you have is a camera that's trained at a park where children play all day long," he said. "Instead of having somebody on site all the time, the camera is there."

The district has similar plans, hoping to wirelessly tap into the cameras now mounted inside 1,200 school buses through a computer in district headquarters.

School officials, who are also working on a five-year, nearly $8 million plan that will place live cameras in every school in the district, say the security this technology will provide far outweighs the costs.

"Safety and security is a top priority for us," said Phyllis Schiffer-Simon, who is helping establish the OneBroward plan for the school district. "The price we have to pay to be more secure and have our children more secure is worth it."

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