Students in California's Fresno Unified school district have a little something to be excited about this week, as officials have just invested $650,000 in 1,000
Asus Eee PCs, set for classroom deployment over the next few weeks. The concept is to use the miniscule laptops alongside good, old-fashioned textbooks, with each student being given the chance to create a "digital portfolio" of essays, drawings, and whatever else they can get away with. The computers will remain in roughly 60 classrooms, and will be shared by students -- but some worry they'll hinder the learning process by distracting pupils. Says Stephen Lewis, a geology professor at California State University, Fresno, "Teaching and learning is a person-to-person business. Are we moving toward a remote-control classroom?" We're not sure what he means by that... then again, we drifted off half-way through his statement to watch a video of that dog on a skateboard.
posted November 28th 2007 6:14PM
Just because I disagree with you guys doesn't mean I'm wrong. This is as stupid as Halliburton & Dick.
How about some Black Friday giveaway winners?
WTF is with announcing who won the previous contest in the same heading as the contest you want to know who the current winner is. Bleh
Ok, seriously now, I saw your first comment and I thought "oh thats funny, spam with bad grammar". But, when you comment over and over that is just scummy.
@EngadgetFanBoi
I actually doubt they got models for bigger storage. Most schools use networked drives for storage now.
Maybe they got models that can go on Engadget.
You know, to teach kids how to use the reply button.
And really, who needs geology?
the school district that i work with bought 1400 macbooks for the school and staff. neeneerz.
I graduated high school last year and my senior year our school gave everyone a laptop, seems like it is becoming more and more popular, even though most teachers still went old fashioned
I think this is awesome and i would love to receive an Eeepc for school. For one this would help SO MUCH with logging in problems on our network, all the class trying to get the only two computer labs, with kids saying they don't have a computer and they can use the internet off the library wifi or any other hot spots.
This is so cool, the EeePC is teh best.
Okay at my highschool in San Jose California, we tried the whole laptop per child thing. They wanted to be paperless ect ect. All I remember from freshmen year is playing counterstrike and wc3, downloading porn and such. Once we found out the admin password to install things it all went to hell and the next year they didnt hand outlaptops, they were "Class sets" which the teachers never even used!
Oh in math we would have chat rooms on aim with everyone sharing answers hahaha 8-)
Wow.
And people said buying all these for third world countries was the useless idea.
Guess they've never been to Fresno.
i go to Roanoke County Schools, all students and teachers in the school district are given brand new dell laptops. now some things are limited like changing settings and backgrounds but all of our text books are on there and we use a program called BlackBoard to receive tests and homework(so we never have an excuse for not doing it)haha! but they do cause many distractions like students playing games and watching dvds or doing something else ur not suppose to, and for this reason some teachers dont even use them for classroom work which i think is a great waste of money and resources but im only a student. Laptops are a great resource and tool for students but not all students will use them for what they are intended for, but i dont think that the should be looked at as distractions and taking away from the learning process...
hopes this helps
I wonder how soon these will be showing up on Ebay.
In high school I can see that giving laptops to honors level or AP level kids would benefit them greatly. They are usually more disciplined in their work ethic and stay on task better than kids in regular level classes. I have not seen many of my classmates stray off task with computers in front of them in my AP classes but in regular classes everyone is goofing off playing games instead of writing their essays.
Eee PC in the class?
I just got one. It's great but I would not use it for anything else than on the road. For the daily work the screen is simply to small.
Plus I still think the price is to high and comparable with a full laptop.
As long as the kids are not taking them at home on a daily basis I think the decision was not very smart.
I've had my Eee PC for one week: boots up in 10 seconds, fits in a small backpack, no disc or hard drive to break, great web browsing and OpenOffice. In other words, the perfect computer for students at schools or to take home. And, you can reset it to factory from a DVD at any time. For busy IT folk at schools, this will be a welcome break from having to keep Windows PCs & Macs working. I predict in a few years, students will be required to have something like this, just as they must have graphing calculators today.
Good idea Bullard High School.
After reading the article - and some of the comments here - I would have to say that this type of concept is a necessity or just required.
From the stats on Fresno, CA (avg annual income 32k) I don't think that alot of kids would have a computer at home - there really is no need for kids to be online at home anyways - it's just replacing the TV as babysitter model. To the person that was yapping about Vista capable system etc., those would already be in the computer lab for whoever to use and misuse. I wouldn't allow internet access on these systems, but utilizing them to access a school/student intranet is the vibe I got from the article, pretty neat.
There was a complaint in the article about the old computers not being repaired or upgraded instead. From my experience, getting old hardware to support the latest os from whoever sometimes costs more in the long run. What's the price of SD Ram right now? PC133 anyone? motherboard, cpu, ram, hard drives, optical drives, mouse, keyboard, monitor - just for the price of an integrated motherboard with the heatsink, fan, and 1 gig memory, you would be getting closer to an EEE or OLPC.
$650 for a EEE or OLPC with a service contract seems just fine - the space and power savings alone are worth it to get a EEE or OLPC instead of a tower or "real" laptop which will most likely be underpowered when another os update comes along.
The more we use computers are work, the more we will require computers in the classroom. It's a dependency, and I like to see it happening more often. And on top of all that, don't forget the licensing requirements and costs for a mac or microsoft os.
At 650$ a pop they could have 2 units with extended warranty which is way better then any one unit even with overnight - onsite - instant replacement - 24/7 support .
Typical government thinking spending your paytax $$$ and then everyone wonders why the dollar is tumbling down .
Did they order from Newegg? Maybe they'll get 5,000.
As a matter of fact, I go to a school with a one to one laptop program in New York. Its really cool how we download our homework and stuff. But we use Apple laptops.
Many of the things are limited on our laptops and are only available to the administratior. There are many great programs for this like Kids GoGoGo from Apple. Working with the computer adminstator as a student in the computer club , I know first hand on how students laptops are monitored over our schools wireless network. We have very strict rules, and although we do goof off sometimes, most kids know better than to do stupid stuff. Plus every one's looking forward to when we get new MacBooks with Leopard next year. Another cool thing was how one of our teachers taught his class from Europe using the built in iSight camera on his laptop.
Unlike most of the comments regarding this purchase, I will not be guessing about what the district did.
The purchase was made by the new Chief Technology Officer who has no educational background (not a former a teacher).
While it is true that the machines come with Linux and Open Office, the district reimages them with XP and Microsoft Office, plus some other over bloated software, leaving them with only 94MB on its HD. Therefore, there was no service contract that was purchased since all work is done inside of the district, due to union constraints from the all of the MCS -- not the teachers. Also, the price for any additional software was not for any OS or office Aps, as some have speculated. The district made a separate deal with Microsoft for its OS and office suite -- the same deal that any California district can get, although district officials like to brag about this deal.
This district has updated textbooks so this does not factor in the the comment that some schools in the Central Valley do not have updated textbooks (however, most of the textbooks are totally overpriced and are terrible pieces of curriculum and most teachers do not like the new science adoption).
These computers were purchased without any educational program in mind -- the main purpose of the computers was to generate a gee-whiz news story and provide good press for the school district. The local story in the Fresno Bee quoted the Superintendent as saying the purchase of these computers was to entice parents to send their children to FUSD -- the district in recent years has lost enrollment to surrounding districts. Fewer students means less ADA (daily revenue generated by a student's attendance).
Most of these computers have never even seen a classroom as of this writing. Also, the keyboards are way too small for any average sized 4th grader -- their fingers are just too big.
These computers are for the 4GB HD and not for any other version as some on here have speculated. By the way, the district did not purchase any SD cards or USB flash drives to use with the computers. All of the work is supposed to saved on the district's new Sharepoint site -- a site which has yet to be developed.
Any yes, they are intended for use on the Internet and on the districts Intranet. The reason why they were purchased was because of their size. They have a small footprint -- also, they are intended to be with two students. Yes, that's right, one 7" inch screen for every two students --not one-to-one as some think.
Now, that you have a bigger picture of the computers, how they are to be used, and the district at large, I wonder what your impression are.