For £3500 what would you get for your school?

[MrWu]

Near year end, money gets frantically spent before they lose it forever(never understood that mentailty)

SMT has ask me to give some suggestions to spend it for the Classroom(i would have put it towards a SAN lol)

Flipcams- bit boring, Raspberry PI- not sure,PCs - not enough to replace enough to please everyone.

So any good suggestion that's good for classes to use ?

[bossman]

@MrWu:

Have you got any visualisers?

Great to use around the whole school and pretty simple for the teachers to use.

I know they are just a webcam on a stick but its a thought

[synaesthesia]

Decent content for your VLE?
Remote access system/VPN. Not strictly for the classroom but just as effective.
What sort of school? If it's primary, then perhaps some beebot style things (and maybe even a few Pi's to compliment!)

[MrWu]

Bossman,

Yep they have Visualiser,although no harm in getting some more though.

Synaestheia,

It's a secondary school, and we have the Frog VLE, it does need more development though

Just a thought at the moment, a bit of a tangent but I was thinking of trying out a Kinect for PC, to see if teachers can develop newer ICT courses for September?

Looking Ahead: 10 Future Developments with Kinect in Education | KinectEDucation

[synaesthesia]

Not a bad idea. Wonder if you can combine that sort of thing with Lego Mindstorms? Would be very apt for next term's curriculum, and would almost certainly capture the imagination of KS3 if not the slightly older kids (teachers included!).

[pcstru]

SSD's - because for the cost, they make a huge difference to users experience.

Netbooks that students can borrow (we do a Library Loan scheme which is quite popular).

3d printers for DT - because they have goo potential to engage pupils with DT and IT.

[MrWu]

Hi pcstru,

Oh yes! We have quoted for 100 SSDs for teacher's PCs / classroom PCs. We cant afford brand new PCs this year so we are giving them (old PCs)an interim upgrade until we could move them to newer PCs.

Will look at 3D printers as well, thank you.

[MrWu]

Not a bad idea. Wonder if you can combine that sort of thing with Lego Mindstorms? Would be very apt for next term's curriculum, and would almost certainly capture the imagination of KS3 if not the slightly older kids (teachers included!).

They even have apps that translate google sketch up with Kinect. Well for 99 quid its worth getting one to try.

[has]

Large tv's to be used for digital signage by using small pcs and xibo.

[teejay]

I would be looking at getting some fun stuff in for the new ICT curriculum. What about some android/apple/windows tablet/phone type devices to play with programming them? Robot kits, Arduino, XBox/PS3 dev kit, environment monitors.

[mylearningltd]

Divide it by the number of students and give them all WHSmith Vouchers so they can buy a new batch of pencils and pens to lose or destroy for the coming term..
The parents would be chuffed at least....

[sonofsanta]

Big projector and screen combo for the hall. We had a 4m screen and stupid-bright projector installed for about £3k (i think) a couple of years and it was some of the best money I've spent.

Boring options: replace 5 aging projectors with newer, brighter, no-ongoing-costs Casio LED projectors. Or replace some switches somewhere.

Regarding Kinect, you may want to wait until the Leap to invest in motion control stuff.

[SYNACK]

Home Automation stuff for some of the classrooms/suites with prox sensors and a decent controller to implement schoolwide powersaving by turning lights off when there is no one in the room or when you want to mess with them
Buy INSTEON-Compatible Home Automation Products at Smarthome

A 3D scanner to go with the 3D printer above
DAVID 3D Scanner - Gallery

3D printer is also useful for printing cases/components for Microcontroller/Pi stuff

A CAVE Airbus Hamburg's 5-Sided Cave | Christie - Visual Display Solutions

The Kinect Stuff is cool, there is also the Microsoft Surface 2 table Surface 2, the Light Table which I'm sure I saw floating around on here a while back for collaborative stuff.

Boring stuff:
Networked projectors/Windows 8 Tablets
Better AC for server room if needed
Secondary moniters for key staff, Techs, Office, Principal, DP etc.

[Oaktech]

replacement whiteboards. we have a load of 5 series smart boards that don't hold cal properly.