elsewhere

Essentially a Microsoft promo video on the NSW DET deploying Windows 7.

STUDENT absenteeism is to plummet in high schools as wayward pupils are lured back to class by free laptops.

Source: Laptop of learning in luxury

he he… yeah right.

I work in a school with daily absenteeism of 25% or more. Laptops are not going to change this updated: I should say, they are not going to make this figure plummet, the reasons for this absenteeism are social.

The DER as it is unfortunately named, is about to hit NSW schools. This letter provides a convincing statement of what I’ve been thinking. In my school, equipping every teacher with a computer, projector and IWB (or even just the projector) – and a couple of days of professional development (formal or informal) would have been a better investment.

Vendor for the 220,000 $500 DET Learning Devices (netbooks, sort of) will be chosen from:

ASUSTek, Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and local technology supplier Anabelle Bits Pty Ltd, a division of ASI solutions

I wonder if the NSW DET read this? TechCrunch: “I find Netbooks unusable for three reasons: they’re underpowered as PCs, the screen is too small for web surfing, and the keyboard is so small that effective typing is impossible.”

Whilst I think the NSW DET needs to give teachers one of these student laptops for the development of learning activities, I hope they don’t think it meets a teacher’s actual computing needs.

An Expression of Interest has been released for supply of a “DET Learning Device”, in other words, a laptop for students. The SMH provides a summary or you can read the full EOI.

The Mandatory Requirements of this new machine make for interesting reading. At a first glance, I don’t think there’s a netbook on the market that will meet the entire spec. For example, the specification says “must have inbuilt stereo speakers”. The Dell Inspiron Mini machines only have one speaker (hence, not stereo). The Intel Classmate PC has a maximum of 8Gb of Flash storage, the Mandatory Requirement specifies at least 16Gb. This minor issues, obviously, can be easily overcome.