Finding Affordable Laptops & F/OSS In Education...
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 2:01 am
I just started teachers' orientation today for our Christian school and am very excited to be able to be teaching the fifth graders this year. During our morning meeting our school principal proposed that we buy five 'new' laptops to be used by our faculty and high school students, and I was appointed to help out w/ the basic IT work @ the school. I am very pleased to have been chosen for the job, and would like to see if F/OSS can be used to help in the education of our children and have our school save some money. I have been trying to see what deals I could find online to save money on buying our computers, and these are the first two ideas I considered: $300 Dells w/ Ubuntu (the price then raised to $514!) or getting some older refurbished Thinkpads from usanotebook.com w/ a 5% educational discount. Is there any other ways I could find affordable laptops I need to consider?
I have also shared my proposal to the principal to allow our students to try Linux and F/OSS and see how they would do, and I will begin a project to get a nice Linux box in the classroom. The real problem is, many of the veteran teachers @ our school aren't really on par w/ their own computer skills and Linux may not be for them, so do you think there are any precautions I need to take if I were to try to introduce them to Linux? Also, what educational software does Linux have to offer to help develop children academically?
I have also shared my proposal to the principal to allow our students to try Linux and F/OSS and see how they would do, and I will begin a project to get a nice Linux box in the classroom. The real problem is, many of the veteran teachers @ our school aren't really on par w/ their own computer skills and Linux may not be for them, so do you think there are any precautions I need to take if I were to try to introduce them to Linux? Also, what educational software does Linux have to offer to help develop children academically?