Laptops for schoolchildren

[anteater]

Just had a meeting at school where it was hinted that all children from year 5 up will need a laptop as part of their school equipment within the next 2 years.
Does anyone have children who have a laptop as part of their kit?
And if so, how is it going?

My son is in year 3 and uses a Alphasmart computer as he has CP and can't write well, anyway, what will the laptops be used for? If its only written work I would look into the Alphasmart Neo.

All children???? And who is supposed to pay for this, pray???? (Cos it won't be HMG!)

Shit a brick. I wish I worked in a school with funding plans like that. We have a school of 1300 and no interactive white boards at all. We have a handful of projectors that can be linked to a laptop. At present I share one with 16 other members of staff. The staff only got a lap top each this year. We don't even have an OHP in each room

And this is the third year he sixth form don't have text books!

The parents, I bet!

My son's secondary school recently conducted a poll about this. They wanted to know how many parents would be willing to pay £30.00 a month for the hire of a laptop for their year 7 child. Apparently help to meet the cost might be available.

And who pays if the laptop gets broken or stolen?

It's a nice idea - in an ideal world I've love my son to have his own laptop - but £30 every month is quite a chunk of money.

I'd much rather the school spent money exapnding its out of school hours IT facilities in the library so children without access to computers at home could stay at school to do homework. I'd happily contriblut some money to this. At the moment, so my son tells me, there aren't nearly enough computers for pupils to use when they need them.

no interactive whiteboards MB? that's shocking! all the secondary schools we visited last year - that's a good 10 of them in two different boroughs - had whiteboards in most classrooms.

We have none at all

We have computer suites, but in order to get one you have to book it for the full half term....which is pants because most of the time I need to be in the lab.

We even have to book the over head projector as they don't have one in each room. How crap is that???

crap indeed. I thought the government was making more money available for improvements to school facilities. This definitely seems to be the case in our borough.

what a shame martinbishop
I'm in a v small special needs school and we have them in all classrooms
they have been fab fab fab

That is such a shame as they are a real advantage to the classroom ,we have them at sons primary school .

My ds's school has an ICT suite but I don't think any of the computers are laptops. Are they expecting you to to fund a laptop for school/home use??

At St Ceclia's, Wandsworth, "each pupil is provided with a laptop computer which is wirelessly linked to the school?s network". It is a new secondary school.

A laptop in year 5 seems very extreme (but will seem normal in 10 years time).

A slightly different case I know, but there is a school (or possibly schools) in Birmingham where every child in the school is given a PC to have at home. The funding must be enormous! Makes me cross for those schools in counties nearby who do not receive anything like the same amount of funding but still have the same overheads. The whole school funding problem makes me furious!

It will become a case of can schools afford 'not to' offer the latest IT equipment to a nation who has priced itself out of manufacture.

And actually the funding required is low when you take into account the economy of scale.

Our school bought 22 laptops for class use. 10 got stolen and sold on the estate and others still work but need constant maintenance. Kids keep nicking the keys, one was dropped and the screen broke (luckily it was one of the ones that was later stolen), usb ports break.all good fun.

ds school had a laptop project running in 1993 when he was 5 and they had apple laptops to bring home on a rota!

We have laptop trolleys that contain about 20 laptops each, and we wheel these into classrooms as and when required. They are equipped with wireless routers, and when not in use, they are left recharging via a single plug.

I can't really see where a personal laptop would be useful enough to justify the cost.

A lot of kids have bought their own pendrives, so they can easily transfer work between home and school. My DS uses his MP3 player, but these are not allowed in my school.

I have to say I think kids use computres far too much in schools. Computers limit the imagination - you can only do what the program designers thought you might want to. (I speak as a system adminstrator in a university ). I think there are far better things money can be spent on in schools than a computer for each kid - and laptops are more expensive and more fragile than table tops. And who is going to maintain them when the kids "customise" them ? You would need an army of technicians for that !

Aren't there health and safety issues over the children carrying laptops to and from school, or do they use special light ones?

I feel that individual lap tops are not that important. Too much stuff seems to get 'lost' in my experience, things don't get printed off etc

We are hoping to get the trolly set up that you describe ST.

That would be excellent.

Often you just want them to do 15 mins research on the internet, niot traipse over to the computer room, where they spend most of their time messing about with fonts etc.