A netbook for every child

[Little-Miss]

Do any of you have something in place were you sell Netbooks to the children or something similar? I have a few questions....

How is it managed?
How does it work with licenses?
Who supports them?

I've seen a post from a few years ago where it just sounded horrible. Anyone got any updates?

[Ric_]

@Little-Miss: It does indeed sound horrible (and pointless). Netbooks are ten a penny nowadays and cost a pittance. IMHO kids should just be allowed to use their own device if they want to and all we should have to do is provide the infrastructure for them. No end-point support.

Citrix has some nice information and there is an awesome Dilbert cartoon on it

Just realised... we can even use the buzz words of the moment for this scheme... 'private cloud computing'

[pcstru]

We've been looking at this over the last few years. The eLearning Foundation has a lot of information available and runs various schemes which may include some small level of subsidy. They have a conference coming up, which can be very useful to meet and talk to people who are at all stages of the process. Well worth getting in touch with them.

We put off the decision but did experiment by giving netbooks to two tutor groups in year 8 and year 9. This will be the second year for the year 9's and so far there is no indication that it's made any (positive) difference to their results - but it is a small sample set. One of our feeder schools has run a scheme and claims a significant impact on results but I suspect they have put a great deal of effort in to cultural change (teachers being able to use them effectively in lessons etc) which complicates the issue of whether it's the access to technology or a change in teaching culture that has affected results. Would they have achieved the same thing if they had given the same focus to proper use of pencil and paper?.