Dec 30 2006
Wireless Laptops – our next step.
So the time has come around when we have decided at school that to take our first major step towards a goal we have had, a vision for the future of our school. We would like our children to have a uninhibitied personal choice when to use technology; whether that be a calculator or sharing an online spreadsheet on a laptop.
We have kicked many ideas about throughout the last year and a half or so, including the ideas of using PDAs. I understand that there are many teachers out there who are doing great things with the little devices but we felt that they were a sort of halfway house. They had limitations in software and no keyboard.
There was also a time when I explored the idea of a mini suite in the classroom – setting aside some room to install a bank of say 8 very good desktop PCs, perhaps with the monitors attached to the wall. This altered to utilising one of the growing number of desk / PC mashups 
a computer that can be folded away. I then realised I needed to clear all the tables out for the Christmas party.
So after a really useful conversation with friend and colleague Peter Hardern – we have settled or returned to the idea of having wireless laptops. But not a portable set, a set for each classroom. Initally we will look at this model for 4 classrooms – years 5 and 6, about 40 laptops, 10 per classroom. We then have the opportunity, if funding allows in the future, to either extend the existing number in those rooms or to trickle this further down school.
So which make and model? Well since exploring the vast amount of online apps that are currently available it would be interesting to go against my initial reaction to get super fast machines etc and go for more of a thin client model. Perhaps with an active class blog and a wikispace that acts as a online portfolio – there may not be any need to buy MS Office.
I would really appreciate any thoughts from colleagues who have recently taken a similar plunge or who have thoughts on this model.
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Hi Tom -
Thanks for the ITM comment!
As you might already know, I have a strong bias towards Macs, so that would be my recommendation. I think you get more bang for your buck with these machines. You don’t need a lot of extra software and they are easier to maintain.
At my school, we’ve had laptop carts available to teachers (they had to check them out and were shared) and we’ve seen mixed results. There’s been a fair amount of demand for them, but they don’t particular lend themselves to spontaneity in terms of teachable moments. Some teachers also seemed to have problems with troubleshooting the carts, too. This year, we have moved toward dedicated carts in classrooms and we’ll see how that goes. Our 7th and 8th grade classes have carts and about 4 kids are sharing 1 computer for the entire school year. We’ve been looking at going to a 1 to 1 model at some point, so this seems like a logical precursor and almost inevitable in this day and age. All of our teachers have laptops which really helps, too. Funding is not particularly an issue for us, which makes these decision a bit easier.
Hope this helps…
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