Science Teacher Confirms Rollout Order

My science teacher has told our class today exactly how the laptops will be handed out.

The rollout will go in alphabetical order, according to the name of your high school.

Airds High School in Campbelltown will be the first to get their Lenovo S10es. Lucky them.

But Young Technology High School will be the last to get theirs. (If primary schools got them, Zig Zag Public School, named after the railway, would be last)

Our school, Lake Illawarra High School will be somewhere in the middle. (‘L’ as in Lake not ‘I’ as in Illawarra.)

History Hates. Moodle for assignments + Filter Info

I spoke to another History teacher who seems to be the first person i’ve come across who hates the idea, calling it a waste of money.

There are a few reasons why she claims this:
-Students will forget to bring them, or forget to charge them. There won’t be enough spares for those who forget and not enough powerpoints for those who forget to charge up overnight.
-Especially in ‘this district‘ (housing commition?), some students will scam the government out of extra laptops (e.g. Asking for replacements, even if originals aren’t broken)
-No Wifi in F block [History/Geography], although, according to the tech admin, they will install new Aiport stations in the Library and F block and it will be ready by July.

These seem to make pretty good sense, but they’re free! How can you argue with something that’s free?

I was lucky enough to have the school network administrator for my computers lesson today and she was more than happy to share her knowledge of the laptops.
She unfortunately knew only as much as I did when it came to the laptop itself and government plans, but she did know how they were going to be used at our school.
Moodle is an online application that lets you access work and tasks online, and it also lets you submit assignments and such over the internet, from home.
You can access Moodle via this link, just login using ‘lihs’ as the username and ‘lihs’ as the password (without the ”).
Then from there you can login using your usual login details – your first initial followed by your last name for the username (e.g. bbennett) and your birthday as your password.
She says that subjects like IST will be using Moodle straight away, and then other subjects such as Maths and Science will use it, and eventually History, Geography and all the other subjects will eventually catch on.

She also has some theories about the filters. Hoorah!
She has apparently heard from someone that there will be the standard filters at school but when you get home there will be ‘more relaxed’ filters. But the amazing thing is, she is totally against having filters at all. She says that it is our own responsibility.
“High school kids especially should know right from wrong”
“You hear swear words on the TV, and porn is readily available in the real world anyway”
“There have been parents trying to sue the government because their children have seen nude picutres on the internet”.

Laptops not for note-taking; Will be used a lot in Science

According to an interview with my DIG (extended History) teacher, the laptops will only really be used for in-class research tasks, but they will not replace books.
Regular notes will still have to be written into your books.

The same teacher said that subjects like Science will have lots of resources available and that’s where we will be using them the most.

This is the first of many interviews with teachers about the laptops. Over the next couple of weeks we will ask all the teachers we can and come up with some answers as to the questions you keep asking me!