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In the Field
Feature Story:
May 2004
CTCs on the Move: 
A Look at Mobile Labs 
By Valerie Weagle 
Access to technology is an important issue for CTCs
across the country. Despite very different missions
and target populations, several Department of
Education CTC grantees have tackled the access problem
in a similar way… by making their technology mobile.
ACC contacted three centers to find out the what, why,
and how of their mobile lab initiatives. 
Meet the Programs
Delaware Tech is a 2003 grantee of the CTC grant
program. WHEELS (Working to Heighten Education &
Employee Learning Skills) is a customized mobile
computer classroom housed on a 40-foot bus. It boasts
state of the art computer hardware and software
including 13 fully networked Dell Pentium Laptops and
a hydraulic lift for wheelchair access. WHEELS
primarily serves the rural and urban areas of
Delaware’s Kent County where public transportation is
limited and access to technology and to Delaware Tech
are inadequate. WHEELS has served as a training
vehicle for local corporations and provided a variety
of computer-based learning courses to adults and
children. 

The Grand Rapids Community Media Center was a 2001
grantee of the CTC grant program. MoLLIE’s (MObile
Learning Lab for Information Education) mission is to
provide the tools, training, and transmission of
digital technology to under-served areas in the Grand
Rapids community, an urban area of Michigan. MoLLIE
has done a significant amount of work with area
schools, bringing multimedia equipment and instructors
the schools would otherwise not have access to. 

NashvilleREAD was a 1999 grantee of the CTC program.
Their Global Mobile provides a range of services to
underserved children and families in the Nashville
metro areas. They offer a variety of programs ranging
from basic computer skills instruction and training on
computer based programs like Word, to programs
focusing on academic subjects like reading and math. 

NOTE:+ They also serve as a language lab for ESL
students and provide services for GED prep students. 
Why Have a Mobile Lab?
Shelby Jones Crawford, Program Director for the
Delaware Tech WHEELS/Ed Express Project, noted that
Delaware Tech is adept at understanding their audience
and who it is they need to serve. “There are many
pockets of urban and rural individuals we want to
reach with technology and with the opportunity to gain
educational training.” Many of these individuals do
not have access to technology or do not have the means
to pursue it. 

How then do you then give them the opportunity to
fully participate in the technology revolution? 
Build a computer lab on a bus and drive it to them. 

Davy Heckman, Program Coordinator for the
NashvilleREAD Global Mobile Program, was dealing with
a similar problem in an urban area. “We sensed a large
population who didn’t have access to computer
technology but who were either unwilling or unable to
travel to the labs in the community.” 

Mannie Gentile, who works with the MoLLIE project in
Grand Rapids to bring multimedia education and digital
technology to area schools, mentioned the problems
with transportation in the school district they serve
-- there is very little of it since buses are shared
district-wide. In order to give students at all
schools the chance to participate in the project
without building a lab at each school, build one lab
and bring it to each school. “In this manner we can
serve a wide and diverse population.” All with the
same equipment! 
How Do You Plan for a Mobile Lab?
Careful and extensive planning is key to the success
of any project, but perhaps even more so in the case
of mobile computer labs. Every project must address
issues of technology, staffing, and programming in its
planning stage, but planning for these aspects of your
project takes on a unique twist when you take your
classroom out of the traditional walled building and
into a commercial vehicle. What good is it to have all
your technology in perfect working order and a
well-trained staff if they can’t get to the people who
need them? Crawford likens the process to an
orchestra: “All of the instruments must be playing at
the right time and at the right tempo.” Everything
must work in concert. You cannot wait until the last
moment to plan for this sort of undertaking and expect
it to be smooth sailing. Be ready with a Plan B, and a
Plan C, and a Plan D. 

With the mobile lab a relatively new phenomenon, there
are few existing resources to draw advice from. You
may find yourself on your own, in uncharted territory.
With no example to work from, Crawford had to be very
specific about what she wanted with those hired to
construct the vehicle. Not being a large vehicle
expert herself, she had to do a lot of independent
research and educate herself about the operation of a
bus. She had to decide on the best cabling, learn
about static-free carpet, and decide what type of
chassis was needed for the bus. And then there is the
issue of where to put this bus once constructed. It is
a huge investment that must be stored in a secure
location, which ideally is in place prior to
completion. Delaware Tech was fortunate to be able to
partner with the Delaware State Police who offered to
house the vehicle in an undisclosed location. As part
of her research, Crawford kept a notepad in her car
and took notes from owners and drivers of large
vehicles, and spoke to the folks at the Bloodmobile (a
motor vehicle equipped to collect blood donations) to
ask what they would recommend. 

Community support and involvement are also essential
to success. Involve those you would like to reach.
Without your clientele on board your project’s success
is in jeopardy. Mannie Gentile warns that you can’t
develop projects in a vacuum. “Draw staff, or at least
guidance, from the population or client base that you
are intending to serve.” When Gentile joined the
MoLLIE project one year into operation he noticed a
serious flaw in the project’s design. It was designed
and implemented by non-educators, technology heavy and
education light. The staff hoped that he would take on
the task of developing some new MoLLIE curricula for
each academic subject. “Fortunately, as a career
educator, I was able to get them to realize that
proceeding in such a direction would be redundant and
an inefficient use of resources.” Instead of writing a
new curriculum, it would be more effective, and most
helpful to the teachers they work with, to link MoLLIE
to the existing state standards and curriculum. The
project should not operate independent from the
schools, but in cooperation with them. “MoLLIE is so
successful because it meets the needs of area
teachers.” 
The Pleasant and Not-So-Pleasant Surprises
Even the most well conceived, best laid out,
thoroughly scrutinized plans can sometimes fail to
predict all the possible challenges. The staff of the
WHEELS project did not anticipate their incredible
popularity. Scheduling has become a tremendous
balancing act for them. Luckily, they do it very well,
but “not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears.” The
vehicle now operates from 8:00 am until 10:00 pm most
days. This popularity led to a less welcome surprise
as well. The vehicle was so well used that the
generator had to be replaced. 

For NashvilleREAD, Internet access posed a challenge.
They work with a satellite ISP (Internet Service
Provider). In the inner city, a number of places their
vehicle travels either have buildings blocking the
satellite or electrical wires interfering with the
signal. “We have learned the best places to park and
have found other ways to get Internet access at our
problem sites.” 

For the Global Mobile, however, the biggest surprise
was in their program design. Their mobility has
allowed them to partner with such a diverse group of
community organizations that they serve all segments
of the community from preschoolers to the oldest
seniors. A different working dynamic is established
when you go to the home base of your partners than
when your partners come to you. It becomes less about
establishing your own programming goals and more about
fitting yourself into the goals already in place for
the partner’s programs. They learned that their
community partners never wanted them to provide
complete courses, but to supplement the programs they
were already offering. This meant taking on a
different role with every organization they work with,
sometimes a language lab for ESL students, sometimes a
study facility for GED classes. “No clients come
directly to us. Rather they come to our partner
agencies that use us as an additional benefit to their
clients. This required us to rethink our evaluation
process.” Thus, they have required their partners to
allow the Global Mobile to use their evaluation data
to evaluate the lab’s impact on their clients. 
Has It All Been Worth It?
Thorough analysis of program success takes time.
WHEELS takes an aggressive approach to evaluating
their success and their effects on the community.
Students complete an evaluation after every single
class, which helps staff find out what brought them
there. They have found that exposure to their vehicle
tends to make people more comfortable with technology
as well as more comfortable with going to school. Some
clients actually end up enrolling at the college.
Crawford notes, “It is truly gratifying to know that
our commitment to help Kent County residents to
discover the possibilities that computers offer in
upgrading skills and continuing education is
appreciated. The greatest returns on our investment
are found in the personal stories of WHEELS’ students
all across the county.” 

MoLLIE has served 1,800 students thus far and shows no
sign of slowing down. Their arsenal of digital
camcorders, iBook laptops, and knowledgeable staff has
brought much needed equipment and opportunity to
schools and programs that would not have access
otherwise. Some of the projects MoLLIE has completed
with students include mini-documentaries on endangered
species and toxic waste and a 20-minute dramatization
by eighth graders of Homer’s Iliad. 

By April of 2003, the NashvilleREAD Global Mobile
project had developed partnerships with 11 community
organizations and schools, and delivered services to
over 3,000 adults, children and families. It is still
at work bringing computer literacy and technology to
those in the Nashville metro area with the least
access. 
Just Remember...
Taking on the task of putting a computer lab on wheels
is not a decision one should come to lightly. While
the rewards and the successes can be great, the
challenges should not be underestimated. Three
essential bits of advice can be gleaned from our
featured Community Technology Centers’ experiences: 
1. Plan, plan, plan. Extensive pre-planning is key to
the success of a mobile project. Start early, in some
cases even before you have secured the funding as the
WHEELS project did. The unique, symbiotic relationship
that is created when you join technology and mobility
comes with an array of concerns and will require more
time than planning a traditional lab. Be prepared and
budget for surprises.

2. Do your research. You are making a significant
investment; you don’t want to waste time and money on
equipment or technology that is doomed to fail. Be
sure you have considered all your options and
anticipated all the obstacles before making the
commitment. 

3. Know your clientele. Don’t try to develop your
project in a vacuum, as though its operation will be
independent of the people it serves. Community
Technology Centers are, after all, for the community.
WHEELS held over 100 information sessions for the
community prior to the start of the project itself.
MoLLIE realized a year into its program that it was
taking the wrong approach in its instruction and
reoriented its goals to be more in line with the
existing goals of the teachers and schools it served
rather than creating new curricula for them to teach. 
Advances in technology, such as wireless and satellite
Internet access and the increasingly powerful and
ever-more compact computer, have allowed us to rethink
the traditional computer classroom. By making your
classroom mobile, the same technology used to equip a
single classroom in a distinct community can serve a
multitude of different locations that are not
geographically defined, thereby reaching a much larger
and more diverse audience. These mobile programs are
an important contribution to the work towards insuring
that all people are given the opportunity to
participate in and benefit from the technology
revolution. 
Resources
For more information on our featured CTCs, please
visit their websites: 
WHEELS:
http://www.dtcc.edu/terry/ccp/pages/w_wheels.html 
MoLLIE: http://mollie.grcmc.org/what.shtml 
Global Mobile:
http://www.nashvilleread.org/communityliteracy.html 

Apple and Gateway both offer examples of mobile lab
technology. 

Learn about a mobile computer lab at work outside the
United States. 

Special thanks for contributions to this story go to: 

Shelby Jones Crawford, Program Director, Delaware Tech
WHEELS/Ed Express Project 
Mannie Gentile, Project Manager, Grand Rapids
Community Media Center MoLLIE Project 
Davy Heckman, Program Coordinator, NashvilleREAD
Global Mobile Program 
Click here to see other feature stories . . . 



 FROM:
http://www.americaconnects.net/field/featurestory_mobilelab.asp

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