Laptops for Pupils and Community Wireless

[Lee_K_81]

Hope this is in the right forum.

 

Has anybody implemented a scheme to supply, or put parents in touch with a company who will supply, all pupils with a laptop on a lease / hire purchase / finance agreement scheme?

 

How did it work? Who was the company who supplied them and at what cost (to school, parents)? Did the company supply technical support?

 

Also has anybody implemented a community wireless, especially if combined with the above laptop situation. Again costs, experiences, recommended (or not) suppliers, etc. greatfully recieved!

 

Many thanks in advance.

[eduabncs]

The nearest to this we have in Birmingham to my knowledge is the Aston Pride IT project www.astonpride.com

[Lee_K_81]

Yeah,

 

Spoke to a supplier today who is apparently negotiating with BGFL, and a Birmingham school to implement something at their school. Just quite expensive and wondered if anybody else had done anything similar, most likely in another part of the country. I'm sure some schools in Brum have done the laptop thing though.

[Ric_]

If you have a suitably expensive wireless system (such as managed Cisco/3COM or BlueSocket) you could have a separate SSID/VLAN for pupil use and use on the fly virus scanning.

 

Your RBC may have something to say about you checking AV and patch levels of machines... they won't be happy if you infect their network.

[amacken]

Regarding laptop for student schemes, there are many of them. I am currently in discussion with Evesham, Stone and XMA regarding the ins and outs of their schemes. All are at almost no cost to the school as payment is by way of "donations" from parents via a leasing scheme in conjunction with the E-Learning Foundation, fully insured etc etc.

[CyberNerd]

OLPC !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6246989.stm