The last school newsletter for this term was released today, and it contained more about the netbooks.
Summary:
-At the ‘P&C’ meeting they’ll discuss issuing the netbooks and how years 10 to 12 will get to use them.
-24 netbooks have already been allocated to teachers
-Lake High gets exactly 147 netbooks for students
-They’re not planning to let us connect to the school network or the printers
-The units come with a red external case (ugh)
-If you break yours next year you wont get the brand new model as a replacement, you’ll still get the old one (how does this work out?)
Thats about it for now.
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hey, ive heard from our IST teacher. that the student laptops will be red.. the teacher laptops are black..
laptop covers arrived at our school. black.
Awww.. I wanted a white one
haha. lol. me too… hey. do u know if it is possible… to watch stuff on the laptops?? because if you cant install anything… and if they dont hav the codec.. ull be only listening..
Hey Brad, This is an impressive Blog, and you collected a great deal of information. You are really on the money with this approach, and should be congratulated.
Ms Lofts
Deputy Principal
Rose Bay Secondary College
Thankyou very much. That means alot to me
As far as I know, the laptops are for both public and private school students. Can you confirm or deny? Thanks.
From the news articles i’ve read on the web, the laptops are only for public school students.
It’s a bit confusing because some private school teachers have been given the laptop already, yet others who have made enquiries have been sent the following email:
“Teacher laptops are a state government initiative and are allocated to government schools as a school resource for loan to secondary teachers in the state system.
Regards
Tony Sullivan
Project Officer, Communications”
I think the private school teachers who have been given the laptop are former DET employees who are still approved to teach in a public school, and those who have been rejected do not have the approval.
The DER NSW netbooks (lenovo) are for public school students only.
Federal funding was provided to all school systems (public, independent and private) and it is up to each system to decide how the funding would be used.
NSW DET decided to go down the netbook path as desktops would also require space, power, networking, support etc and thus have a higher total cost. By choosing netbooks and installing a managed wireless solution we have reduced the extra costs.
Some private schools have purchased desktop computers, others have also gone down the notebook path. Some catholic schools near me have provided Apple ibooks, with the parents paying the extra costs.
Well I know for a fact that some of the DET lenovo ones have gone to private school teachers. These teachers are all former employees of the DET and still have approval to teach in public schools. But when some of their colleagues try to get a lenovo from the DET they are rejected because they are not approved to teach in a public school.
Note not all former employees of the DET are approved to teach in public schools. After a 5 year absence from the DET, they need to reapply and be interviewed again to renew their approvals.
The DET Lenovo netbooks were allocated to the High Schools to distribute – not directly to the teachers. If a school has allocated them to part time teachers who also work in the Private sector I could understand this. But no school will have allocated their limited supply of netbooks to teachers who do not work in their school.
Note that at this stage there are only a small number of teacher devices allocated to each High school – this will be increased over time.
I would suggest that the Private sector teachers who you have seen with the Lenovo netbooks have either purchased them themselves or their school has provided them – but they are not part of the DER NSW rollout.