Elsewhere

NSW DET and Windows 7

Date Stamp:

15 October 2009

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

Laptops to reduce student absenteeism

Date Stamp:

26 June 2009

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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.

A response to the DER

Date Stamp:

16 June 2009

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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.

NSW DET culls netbook list

Date Stamp:

24 February 2009

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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

Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren’t Good Enough

Date Stamp:

3 December 2008

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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.