[Offtopic] Laptop lease

[Meadows, Roslyn M]

Andrew - my only suggestion would be to get Tablet PC's! Once you have
used one as a teacher you never want to go back to using a normal laptop
again (which is what I have had to do now that I am back at my old
school - although I am still tempted to purchase my own Tablet!). If in
doubt, get Toshiba or Fujitsu to give you one or two - or several - on
trial. 

Although you can correct and comment in Word there are so many teachers
that insist on work being printed out by students so they can correct
and comment, or if submitted electronically they will print it off to
mark it. Using a Tablet PC it is SO easy to correct and comment on work
with the pen (stylus) and resubmit to students - making life so much
easier for English, SOSE etc staff, and also saving on printing costs.
Not only that but you can comment on PowerPoint Presentations and in
other programs too.

Plugged in to a projector you can write notes for students (rather than
using a whiteboard - fantastic for Maths staff!) and then save as a file
to give to students who are absent, you can also annotate powerpoint
presentations etc. I guess their uses are only limited by your
imagination. I have not had much experience with ewhiteboards; but I
wonder if you would need these if you had the use of a Tablet PC hooked
up to a projector. From the demonstrations I have seen of eWhiteboards
there is nothing that can be done with them that cannot be done with a
TabletPC +  projector (someone please correct me if I am wrong)

The only problem is losing the stylus - make sure they are attached by
lanyards. 

Tablets are a bit more expensive than normal laptops - but definitely
the way to go in an educational sense, and some private schools (and
Frankston HS) have already brought them in for students and staff.

Last year I had a Fujitsu, my students had the Toshibas, I thought mine
ran much better than theirs (although maybe that is because I did not
allow it to be loaded it up with spyware!)

At Lauriston they were provided by Computelec.

Good luck - let me know what you decide.

Cheers
Ros

Roslyn Meadows
Bentleigh Secondary College
9579 1044
0412 614 062	
-----Original Message-----
From: offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of WEIR Andrew
Sent: Thursday, 23 August 2007 3:00 PM
To: Information Technology Teachers' Offtopic Mailing List
Subject: [Offtopic] Laptop lease

 
Two questions really

1. Who are people using to supply school laptops for staff use)
2. What are the specs that people are looking for regarding laptops with
a three year lease.

We need to replace about 200 of them at the end of this year we would
like to stay with Toshiba as we have docking station for them.

Andrew

Andrew Weir
VK3HFT
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