If every student had a laptop......

[broc]

In the brave new world post-BSF, when every student has a laptop, has anyone got any idea how schools will manage to keep the batteries charged/recharged during the day?

 

I only ask because I have seen several BSF related documents which refer to schools having aspirational goals of every student having their own laptop, but nobody mentions how these will remain useable for a full school day. I know that today we can buy laptops which have dual battery/extended battery capabilities and at my school as long as staff remember to plug the charging trolleys in overnight they will last a full day, but what are the chances of having 1000 students in a school all remembering to fully charge their laptops overnight at home so they can use them all day at school?

 

How, when & where will students be able to top up their batteries I wonder?

 

Will every classroom need 30+ power sockets?

 

What happens when the batteries give up the ghost through being 'abused'? Who pays for the replacements outside of warranty?

 

How many spare laptops will be needed to keep 1000 fully operational?

[GrumbleDook]

Laptops will be stored securely in bays with the facilites to charge them ... this is expected to be done during break / lunch time and PE lessons. We do it by giving students individual access to a charging shelf ... with their own key!

 

At the moment there is only one supplier that meets this need ... Lapsafe.

 

Also remember that they *will not* be using their laptop for every single lesson or for the full lesson. In 4 hours of lessons you can expect it to be seriously used for 1 1/2 hours ...

 

We have the issue now of actually getting the students to use them. The technology is the smallest part of the problem ... when exactly are teachers going to re-write every single scheme of work so that everything can be delivered electronically? WHo is going to pay them to do it? WHo retains copyright to the materials and if you buy something in how do you get everyone to use the same resources, but still differentiate?

[GrumbleDook]

Spare laptops ... we have 1 for every 20 ... and spare for most of them too ... and we still struggle. When you have to put an insurance claim in then a spare laptop goes to the student, taking one out of action ... and the spares are usually used so that if we have a hardware fault we swap the hard drive into the spare ... the student goes to lessons ... we fix it ... they collect it again.

 

The only time they get something different is if there is a software issue (what do you mean, you though Limewire was ok? And now nothing works?).

 

Laptops are time consuming ... we have 200+ student laptops ... it takes up 75% of the team's time. Give a student a laptop and expect that out of a class of 30 you will only have 120 in and working ... 6 will be at home, 2 will be 'with the technicians', 1 will be on an insurance claim because they used it as a goal post and one will refuse to bring it to school because they can't see the point in it.

 

Whe you get it working right .... wow ... it is good. We have an English teacher that sends the work to students electronically and those with laptops access it the lesson (a split group ... some with and some without) ... and work on it and email it back ... she annotates / marks the work electronically and send it back. It has made a difference to those students and their predicted KS3 grades ...

[Face-Man]

arrh but a least I'll be able to pick one up on e-bay.... :twisted:

[alan-d]

Laptops for every student is a costly waste of time.

 

We have approx 250 around school. If we had PCs instead I could half my technical staff and reduce my maintenance budget by 75%. These are the ones that are not carried everywhere by some snotty kid who doesn't care about the cost because it can be repaired 'for nothing'.

 

If you are going to give kids 24/7 access to the basic office products and email then PDA's are probably the way to go with PCs to carry out the high end graphical stuff. They are cheaper, easier to carry around and therefore less likely to be thrown about.

 

Laptops for all kids has been tried in a school and was scrapped due to the climbing costs of maintenence, and that was a project where the parents paid for them over a couple of years. The school paid for them initially and carried out any works not covered by warranties.

 

Until manufacturers produce hardware the size of a PDA which can run the same type of programs as a PC it will cost thousands to give each kid a laptop.

[MkII]

PDAs and Mobiles run wordprocessors, spreadsheets and the web (my old SE K750i mobile does). The screen is too small for most stuff - but you also have inbuilt voice recording. You can easily transfer work to and from school.

 

A5 pads running that i-paper mono but very bright on no power once an image is fixed seems to be the future to me. The One Laptop Per Child project laptop looks very similar to this.

[eean]

We have an English teacher that sends the work to students electronically and those with laptops access it the lesson (a split group ... some with and some without) ... and work on it and email it back ... she annotates / marks the work electronically and send it back. It has made a difference to those students and their predicted KS3 grades ...

 

Sorry to ask an educational question on a tech forum but how has it made a difference to their KS3 grades? By the sounds of it she's just using a laptop in place of a piece of paper - OK the laptop is motivational (but that will wear off) and will help with editing and spelling (but they can't use one in the test) - but apart from that what's the difference?

Don't get me wrong, I think that laptops have huge potential - given the right software - but there really isn't that much really good quality software out there.

 

I read somewhere: "ICT should give allow us to do new things not old things better."

 

Would it be better to take the money spent on buying and maintaining laptops and do something crazy, like... oh, I don't know ... teach them to read?

 

rant.end(0)

[alan-d]

As you say most of it is motivational at the moment but the reality is that the age of pen & paper is rapidly dissappearing.

 

Not being a teacher I can only presume that grades are improved because the student can see the spelling errors and (some) gramatical errors as they produce the work. I'm assuming that this gives the impression that quality of work being produced is of a higher standard.

 

You are right in saying that good quality software is rare, unfortunately we are seeing more and more teachers being conned by the flashy lights and pretty colours without actually thinking about the educational value of such products. At the current rate of progress in schools there will no longer be a need for teachers as we see them now, all that would be needed would be a tutor to guide the students to teach themselves using new technologies.

 

We are already seeing electronic examinations being piloted.

[GrumbleDook]

We have an English teacher that sends the work to students electronically and those with laptops access it the lesson (a split group ... some with and some without) ... and work on it and email it back ... she annotates / marks the work electronically and send it back. It has made a difference to those students and their predicted KS3 grades ...

 

Sorry to ask an educational question on a tech forum but how has it made a difference to their KS3 grades? By the sounds of it she's just using a laptop in place of a piece of paper - OK the laptop is motivational (but that will wear off) and will help with editing and spelling (but they can't use one in the test) - but apart from that what's the difference?

Don't get me wrong, I think that laptops have huge potential - given the right software - but there really isn't that much really good quality software out there.

 

I read somewhere: "ICT should give allow us to do new things not old things better."

 

Would it be better to take the money spent on buying and maintaining laptops and do something crazy, like... oh, I don't know ... teach them to read?

 

rant.end(0)

 

And an educationalist answer ... good and effect use of ICT can promote and encourage independant learning. The students doing the work on their laptops were able to follow a series of instructions with less teacher intervention and still work at a higher rate. The idea that teachers prepare materials and students work at their own rate is not a new idea ... and has been done through a number of different methods before the latest bunch of initiatives to do with ICT, one of the key factors is that by using ICT you can give feedback to students a lot quicker.

 

There are a heck of a lot more, but they are based around resources on Learning Platforms that are part of well written courses ... but I thought the example of just a single resource that was used in different formats (eletcronic vs paper) to teach both students with and without access to technology.

 

Don't get me wrong ... I don't think it is the answer to everything ... and to make sure it has an impact it takes a heck of a lot of time, preparation and resources ... and my school has not even got anywhere close to where we should be ... but just looking at sites like e-subjects.co.uk can give you an ida of the difference they can make.

[webman]

... unfortunately we are seeing more and more teachers being conned by the flashy lights and pretty colours without actually thinking about the educational value of such products. At the current rate of progress in schools there will no longer be a need for teachers as we see them now, all that would be needed would be a tutor to guide the students to teach themselves using new technologies.

 

And that's a bad thing? I can see the unions putting up a fight though

[alan-d]

lol - point taken

 

Unions won't get much of a say if it's proven to work

 

I would imagine it would be one of those things that is phased in over a period of years and we'll see schools closing as there would be no need for them as students work from home using optical or fingerprint verification at registration etc etc etc

 

(Come the revolution!!!!)

 

[daveyboy]

Laptops for students......................Yeah right. which fool thought that little gem up?

 

I wonder what colour the sky is in their world.

 

Apart from the the things mentioned here - I've never heard of a student getting mugged for their school books - But a laptop is a definate probability.

I wonder if 100% of students bring their books into lessons 100% of the time? - And what makes people think laptops are going to be any different? - At least books bounce when dropped and can be used after drying out.

This is 2006 and dont get me wrong - what do I keep hearing about the state of disipline in schools? (respect for kit, etc, etc)

 

I wonder just how many will end up being 'Lost' (sold for a pretty penny) or just abused.

 

 

Schools give access to over 4 billion pages at the touch of a button - some blocked, disabled, etc - yet I still hear people wanting access to social networking sites like bebo etc, and others like YouTube.

 

I look around TES etc and find teachers encoraging students to use MP3 players in class - hell, if I let them, my school would have a £30000 networked client / server MP3 player.

 

Staff - "How do I draw a angled line accross a page in MsWord?"

 

My one question is :- Does all this stuff really make the difference?

 

Nah I dont think so.

 

Bl***y blind leading the blind.

 

Go find a teaching forum and read their rants on the curriculum.

 

Soon our students will go to RM educational center - and all of us are just RM classroom technologists

[GrumbleDook]

It used to be that for major websites it could be done by one person who could code and knew pretty colours ... or someone who could be an artist and managed to handle something like GoLive ...

 

Now, you have a designer or design team, that come up with th elook and feel ... and the coder or coding team that translate the backend technology to fit into the design ... with plenty of communication between them both.

 

Future methods of learning include ... each student having a device, or access to a device, to be able to access their own learning space ... and electronic site where they can pull up information and resources about any course they take. Some of those resources may be completed online, some may just be places to look for information (go to the library and get out $book and read sections x, y & z), other may be notes from lessons where a teacher has been present or info about the next lesson where a teacher is present ...

 

Yes, there will be a reduction of time spent with a teacher ... and by getting students to have the skills to learn independantly then you need less classroom based teachers ...

 

Where do they got then? You still need facilitators ... the buzzword used to describe someone who helps students learn but not necessarily 'imparts their wisdom' on to them ... you need a tutor / mentor ... to deal with the issues like ensuring students are managing their time on their courses and so on ... and then you have the subject specialists ... the people that create the materials that the students follow.

 

Now, there is nothing wrong with a single person doing all those jobs together ... they do at the moment (usually) but in future they will be able to pick and choose the bits they are good at (and schools will be able to stop them doing the bits they are bad at!)

 

Yes, teachers that have worked this out are split into two camps ... those that are not happy (because they know they will have to change and adapt ... and they don't like that) and those that are already looking for the right place for themselves in the new scheme of things ...

 

Strangely enough, the latter group tend to be the ones interesting in things like Moodle, emerging technologies, personalised learning tools ...

 

hmmm ... I wonder which group I would rather work with?

[hawc]

Our Science rooms have power sockets built in to the floor, only thing is that the teacher is not allowed to move the tables (that really annoys them when they see what other teachers do with the tables almost daily!)

[Quackers]

Every student in Year 9, 10 and 11 has a netbook at our school. They are stored in my office and charged every night, and collected in the morning. We have been doing this since 2009 and it works well. Takes 20 minutes to place all 300 on charge at the end of the day, and students collect them in a morning in a 30 minute window or break/lunch.

[GrumbleDook]

It's quite interesting to re-read this thread (from *moons* ago) and look at the ideas behind it ... the same discussions are going on today but with different devices and some different educational terms.

 

We now have iPads and Flipped Classroom rather than laptops and independent learning.

[daveyboy]

Dook, for once I agree with you. The same discussions....

 

Staff - "How do I draw a angled line accross a page in MsWord 2010?"

 

I said six years ago: -

 

My one question is :- Does all this stuff really make the difference?

 

Nah I dont think so.

 

Hummmmmm. Same s**t different day/year.

 

When is someone going to make Discipline, Honesty, Hard Work & Resect the new 'Buzz Words' or next big 'Innovation in Teaching & Learning'.

 

When are we finally going to see 'Free Range' Children again?

 

Sad. Really sad.

[ricki]

HI

 

I think this will be the technology to get round battery life problems

 

Powermat Wireless Charging System review - Peripheral - Trusted Reviews

 

Richard

[tmcd35]

It's quite interesting to re-read this thread (from *moons* ago) and look at the ideas behind it ... the same discussions are going on today but with different devices and some different educational terms.

 

We now have iPads and Flipped Classroom rather than laptops and independent learning.

 

It was a fascinating read and mirrors a few internal discussing we are having about using iPads in the classroom.

[SYNACK]

It's quite interesting to re-read this thread (from *moons* ago) and look at the ideas behind it ... the same discussions are going on today but with different devices and some different educational terms.

 

We now have iPads and Flipped Classroom rather than laptops and independent learning.

 

It is interesting and telling that after all the hype and supposed educational improvements the same problems and gaps still remain. Sure it is a bit closer in some areas and there are different choices of hardware avalible but the basic structure of education has stayed the same.

 

Makes you wonder how much value and traction any of this wave of educational fancies will get when reality and pragmatism kicks in.

[dhicks]

Laptops will be stored securely in bays with the facilites to charge them ... this is expected to be done during break / lunch time and PE lessons. We do it by giving students individual access to a charging shelf ... with their own key! At the moment there is only one supplier that meets this need ... Lapsafe.

 

6 years on, is this still the case? I was just thinking the other day that a decent way to go about making a secure drawer system for individual laptops might be to use the 19" rack standard. You can get 19" racks in pretty much any shape and size you like, and a single-U of rack space could quite nicly hold 2 smaller modern laptops, complete with charging cable zip-tied to the back. You just need to put together a modular system with a 19" rack-mount controller that could control, say, 32 solenoid-latch tray compartments. MiFare (Oyster / debit / etc card) on the top for authentication, network connectivity with a simple web-based interface and integration with MIS and other backend systems and you've got a handily modular system suitible for large or small classes worth of equipment - you could even make larger copartments for things like cameras to be lent out.

[GrumbleDook]

I'm not at that school anymore and they have dropped the scheme for a number of reasons, including the increase in home devices (meaning that the need to get families online is not a prime target) , the difficulties changing enough of the curriculum to have a large enough impact and the increased amount of IT around the school.

 

The model has worked in other schools and has left this school with pretty much the perfect infrastructure to move over to BYOD when the curriculum is ready for it ... And that is the key thing really.

 

When it was being done well it made a difference, but proportionally too much time, effort, resources and money was needed in comparison to other things which could be done. If nothing else ... It show that you use technology as appropriate.

 

As for the storage and charging solution ... the units do now come in a variety of configurations including access control by MiFare cards, library systems, etc. Lapsafe are the folk to speak with about it ...

[SYNACK]

@GD, I think that this goes to show the main issue with these systems, the wetware that expects to use them to revoloutionize education with them with no effort or change on their part. I don't think that a digital curruculum and school will really work in any widespread and sensible way until the staff are all up to using it. While they are still being assessed on how to click a mouse in teachers training collage and there are still a large proportion that would prefer to go back to chalk slates the whole thing is a pipe dream.

[tmcd35]

I think the target obsessed curriculum has a lot to answer for. I find older teachers who have been in education longer than the GCSE's are more open to embracing teaching with new technology. Our biggest hurdles seems to be younger (late 20's, early 30's) HoD's who refuse to see the benefit of such systems.

 

We are tackling the problem from the other end. In the new year each department will get one iPad for the teachers to play with and use as they will in class. Later departments who use them may get more and has teachers get comfortable we'll experiment with a trolley for pupil use. The long term go is 1 iPad per pupil....

[SYNACK]

I think the target obsessed curriculum has a lot to answer for. I find older teachers who have been in education longer than the GCSE's are more open to embracing teaching with new technology. Our biggest hurdles seems to be younger (late 20's, early 30's) HoD's who refuse to see the benefit of such systems.

 

We are tackling the problem from the other end. In the new year each department will get one iPad for the teachers to play with and use as they will in class. Later departments who use them may get more and has teachers get comfortable we'll experiment with a trolley for pupil use. The long term go is 1 iPad per pupil....

 

I think it is dangerous to generalise, some of the older teachers that I have dealt with are not massivly technologicly skilled but very eager to learn, I've also dealt with some that could not be bothered to learn how to use a power switch. Same thing with younger teachers, I get some that are great, willing to learn and have a good clue to start with but there are also some that could barely work a light switch without help. The 'quality' is not dictated by the teacher training collages as they do not seem to test anything related to computers other than how the keyboard works.

 

Teacher training is simply inadiquate for the task of integrating technology, you think dealing with teachers is hard, try correcting the nutjobs that teach the teachers. This is the issue that no-one has the stones to deal with, the huddled protectionalist training environment that they are trained in does more harm than good and no-one will deal with it. The problem is ingrained as it is trained in from the get go.