Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueMac
it sure means a lot more money goes into the laptops, if they are Macbooks, which are about $2000, and each student in the grade gets one, and there are about 80 students in the grade, then that is $160,000. And obviously, that money comes from the taxpayers paying property tax
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I'm just curious where in the world you have come up with these numbers BlueMac - and you may want to rethink them..
All the articles seem to reference Macbooks - not Macbook Pro. Base White Macbooks retail is $999 - base educational price is $949. This is a large purchase by a school system, which means they probably got it for even less than that.
Your concerns about viruses / damage / etc. affects all school computers everywhere. That is why they hire IT Staff (depending on the school system, some have IT staff for a specific school, some have a staff that maintains multiple schools) to take care of things like viruses, updates, software installs, etc. It wouldn't matter if the computers were desktops or laptops - they both could be vulnerable to virus'. I'm sure they keep a base image of an install for a system so if the system becomes corrupt, hard drive damaged, virus infestation too deep to be cost effective to repair they can then just reimage the system, apply any updates since the last image, and the system is ready to go again.
In terms of quizzes and software - there are quite a few programs out there that are specifically designed to generate and give tests - they can randomize answers, offer multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc. A lot of learning material is also moving to elearning including online testing and extra online resources for students.
It doesn't mean that traditional teaching is going out the door - even with full online courses there are instructors are there to help students learn (and I don't see full online going for pre college any time soon except for possibly some home schooling where certain tests need to be recorded by the state).
Computers are a tool that can be used in the classroom. The school expenses are there for new equipment on a regular basis and schools usually upgrade every X years to keep equipment current.
Basically I'm saying:
1) The cost isn't as much as you think
2) Support personnel are required due to the amount of computers already on a given campus - whether it be dedicated personnel to a given school, or a shared team between multiple schools.
3) Virus issues - wether on mac or pc will be dealt with similarly - certain amount of time cleaning, if it will take too long and/or leave the system with vulnerabilities the system will most likely be wiped and reimaged
4) Computers will get damaged on a campus - it doesn't matter if its a laptop or a desktop. In a room I had setup at the school I work for, within 2 months of brand new systems in the room 1 had a power supply fail, 1 had a hard drive fail, and students decided to use their pens to obviously count things on the screen and left marks on the LCDs.
5) Computers can't replace teachers - they can only be used as a tool. Good teachers with a good curriculum can take computers and make them really benefit the students and the school - bad teachers, well, they were bad to begin with and having a computer won't make them any better or worse.
6) Schools usually have some sort of filtering on their net connection doing content filtering and/or transparent proxying (so all web queries are forced through a specific system to be filtered) to block inappropriate websites - students that locate ways around those blocks usually get caught at some point or another and what happens to them depends on the schools rules.
Just my $0.02 on the topic.
