Laguna Beach, CA — Alan Barkley didn’t really need much convincing. The president of Laguna College of Art and Design had been considering a laptop requirement for faculty and students for quite some time. It’s just that he hadn’t yet experienced the Mac. Then Barkley watched his 12-year-old son use a PowerBook G4 to create a slideshow of party guests in minutes during a faculty event. Soon after, he took a wireless PowerBook along with him on vacation and found that it made him quite productive. In almost no time, the former PC user became a Mac convert and Laguna began its pilot computer requirement program. Now, students, faculty and staff members are benefiting from 24/7, wireless computer access.

It was Dean of Visual Communications (and Apple Distinguished Educator) Gary Birch who first got the ball rolling on what would soon be known as the “Create Anywhere Campus.” Having experienced an epiphany of sorts with his own laptop ownership, Birch was eager to share his vision with Barkley and Laguna’s student body.

”I had a profound personal experience with my PowerBook G4 — it literally affected my life,” declares Birch. “When I went wireless, suddenly my backyard or wherever I happened to be, became my office. My wife and I could sit and work next to each other, versus me retiring upstairs to my ‘sanctum’ for hours. Because all of this changed for me, I envisioned it changing for our students as well.”

Pictorial Persuasion
Birch had additional thoughts about a laptop initiative on campus. “There’s the whole collaborative aspect of it,” he explains. “I believed that people who had laptops could sit next to each other and compare their work and wirelessly share files. This whole cultural change, plus the idea of anytime, anywhere collaboration, led us to develop our pilot laptop program.”

Not long afterwards, Birch and Barkley were at the same college function. Birch, who rarely leaves home without his trusty PowerBook, took Barkley’s son aside. After doing a quick demo of how to import digital images into iPhoto and create a slideshow, Birch turned young Iain loose with a still camera. Moments later, Barkley was proudly showing off his son’s digital prowess to Birch and the assembled guests ... and the Mac laptops took one giant step closer to becoming Laguna’s system of choice.

Seeding Program Spurs Interest
Although Laguna is a fairly small college (less than 350 students), finding the funding for the laptop initiative was still a major consideration. To seed the program, Birch and Barkley offered students in the graphic design department a special “incentive.”

Says Birch, “We said, ‘Okay, we’ll buy fewer desktop systems for graphics and we’ll give $1000 to each student who wants to purchase a PowerBook.’ We had about $25,000 to spend; we only thought seven or eight students would take us up on the offer. But about 30 people jumped on it! We had to scramble to come up with some extra money, but that was a good problem to have.”

Learning Never Stops
Confirming Birch’s theory, the new laptop program offered immediate benefits. In arts-related classes, digital files are often big and complex. Typically, it’s a challenge for students to make sure they have every necessary component of their projects on hand. But with the mobile laptops, all students have exactly what they need, whenever and wherever they need it.