irfdude

I wholeheartedly agree, but have come across an issue where I asked for a pay rise but have been told without recognised qualifications it wont happen. Luckily my bosses are happy to pay for me to do it, now I just have to find something that matches my requirements and satisfies their criteria.

I deployed 90 Acer CB3-111's and 20 HP 11 G4's at a primary school about 3 years ago now. Reasons for choice was solely price. The white Acers were £25 cheaper per device then other "better"models. This worked out to over £2k which paid for 4 charging trolleys. The Acers seem really cheap and plasticky, but this means it was really easy to change a screen. I even let the kids have a go (device was completely broken but they didn't know that) School Radio & Digital Leaders In that time I only had 1 broken screen and 1 damaged charge cable (got squashed in the door) Keys are fairly hard to prise out which is handy so no lost keys yet. That's it! They were spread out from Y2 through to Y6 so yes were very robust. Only downside as far as staff were concerned was the white shows up dirt. Easily sorted. In that time I've never felt they needed a bigger hard drive. Only thing I would consider is to have as much RAM as they could afford. But if you are deploying a large number this could be the difference between 2 extra GB of RAM or 20 more devices. I managed to get 3 different companies to send me sample devices (PITA to sort but well worth it). We had a whole term with around 20 devices of different models. In that time SLT were amazed they couldn't see any performance difference between £180 model and £500 models. So in the end it came down to price. After 3 years I haven't noticed any deterioration with the batteries. But they were generally kept in a charge trolley which had a timer which only charged overnight. I've tested one and on a full charge with constant non stop use lasted 6 hours. This equates to about 4-5 days occasional classroom use before they needed charging which I think is amazing. - - - Updated - - - That was only meant to be a quick reply but I kept thinking of things to write.

Reception to Yr 2 kids couldn't be trusted, they managed to break all the cables or charge ports on various devices. Kindles and Surface tablets. I trained a group of Yr5 and Y6 digital leaders to be responsible for mobile devices. Their job was to go round at the start of the day and unplug all the devices and tidy the cabling.Then at the end of the day to go back round and plug them back in to charge. Most devices could last a week on standby to be honest. Early years had their tablets in a cleaners caddy type thing which the Teachers/TA's/Staff were responsible for keeping charged. These Kindles just had a child account activated and locked down. They couldn't fiddle round with them at all. Re staff just wanting something to do the same thing I had a teacher that just wanted a device to let their class go on a kids website. I just got them to use chromebooks which I added a bookmark for them to click on. No need for new devices. Biggest drawback I've come across for trolleys/charging boxes is that the cables invariably get crushed when the door is closed. Unless you get a load of really short cables I suppose.

Just give it back and buy a decent video camera and tripod for £200 to record lessons. The ipods we used were a PITA to get footage off of. No one ever used the cloud editing.

Any chance of a broadcast or recording for those that cant make it? No worries if not, I appreciate it would add to your workload.

Just had a call from someone having the same issue in Devon.

I will chip in with my observations. 400 pupils 50 staff with windows laptops. I rolled out GSuite about 3 years ago. This was about 100 Chromebooks for students and the plan was to provide them to staff as well. The kids loved them and pushing out apps was a breeze. Combining the C/B's with chrome casts was also well received as a way of showcasing pupils work. With Scomis providing Sims on a browser via html5 it meant I staff could also still access it. The biggest stumbling block was staff in the end. They were too heavily invested in Smart Notebook. And the effort involved in converting all their notebook resources was a too big an undertaking at the time. Also I could never get the Chromebooks working on a smart-board. This was a problem as every classroom had a Smartboard. Apart from this one issue the roll out would have been a 100% successful. They still use them and plan on extending Chromebooks for student use funds allowing.