Laptops for Primary school children?

[Easy]

Our letter from the school fundraisers tell us that they have raised money for a locking cabinet to put the laptops in !!!

Why do primary children need laptops? As a business we could buy 5 or 6 desktops (even with space-saving flat screens) for the price of 3 laptops, plus they can be padlocked to wall (lots of the businesses I teach at do this), they're less likely to get broken, and the keyboards must be easier for young children than a small laptop keyboard.

Is it just me that thinks these laptops are wasting education money?

The laptops are easier to store, they don't take up the space that is needed in the classroom and also they are portable allowing all the classes to use them. They use them to access all sorts of information, they can use them in a huge variety of subjects and the fact that they are portable saves time as the children don't have to move rooms to access the computers. We have them in our school and they are brilliant. Work can be stored and accessed again easily.

And with lap tops you can avoid the considerable disruption of moving children to the computer room for what might only need 15 minutes of work. You could wast that much time again getting them there and back and calm.

Also, and I realise that this might seem stupid, children are often veryy poor at trasfering skills from one topic to another. I have lost count of the times that kids 'can't' do maths in a science topic which I know they have already done in maths. Kids are great ones for putting things in pidgion holes. They see ICT as something that goes on in ICT lessons, WEnglish in English, etc. By having laptops in the middle of an ordinary lesson, say history for exaple, you will help to break this compartmentalisation down

You can also use them while doing other stiff that can't ge done in the ICT room, like science experiment , for example. In a previous school I was in they had 20 lap stops that the kids could used to data log experiemnet...this was in secondarty but you could do similar things in primary

I've got a laptop and I've just realised how much more fragile than desktops they are - and I've been told, a lot more expensive to repair. Things like replacing the keyboard or the screen... I know they'd be under guarantee, but still. On the other hand, if the money's there...and you don't have to worry too much if they break...plus you can lock them away, so they don't get stollen or damaged while not in use...it might be worth it!