One Netbook Per Child

It’s still early days for the project, but it’s striking how the netbooks are already becoming integrated into the day-to-day work of the classes.

This photo, taken towards the end of the day in P5B, shows how the netbooks are becoming just another tool on the students’ desks. Not only have the students not had to take a trip along to a dedicated computer suite, there’s none of the sense of computers taking centre stage which can happen when the class is having a turn to use a trolley of much larger laptops. These netbooks were being used today in a way that reminded me more of the way people typically use calculators, just pushing them to the side when not required.

This maybe an unexpected advantage in terms of embedding the use of ICT into classroom practice; the small size of netbooks allows them to be easily used on small classroom desks alongside jotters and other stationery.

I also heard from Mr McEwan today that battery life is not proving to be as much of a problem as we had though it might be.  The netbooks started going home with the students at the weekend, where parents had agreed, and the students are now charging them ready for their day at school. In general, the battery charge is lasting long enough for a day’s school use. The ones I saw in use today had their display brightness set quite high, suggesting that more life could be achieved if needed by encouraging dimming of the displays.

The students are now carrying the small chargers in their bags, and topping up the battery if needed during the day using power sockets around the classroom. This doesn’t seem to causing any problems and suggests there may be no need to purchase additional chargers for the classroom. It’s looking like the most useful thing we could do at the moment is provide a couple of long “power strips” to enable charging of multiple netbooks in a single place in the classroom.

We also had our first casualty today, with one Eee PC where the on-off button appeared to have been pushed in too far, and had become loose.  Advice from IT was that a failure like this is never covered by equipment warranty. A makeshift repair proved possible, and the machine will be returned to service.

This Quick Use Guide, available in various languages from the Asus web site, includes some well designed, step by step guides which look like they’ll be helpful once the Eee PCs go home with the children.

Eee PC 4G Quick Start Guide (pdf, 14 pages, 1MB)

Tonight I was invited to attend the Parent Council meeting after concerns had been raised about the project in the light of current finance constraints. Time was limited, but the meeting was well attended and the members showed a strong interest.

The topics covered included such things as costs and benefits, home use, damage risks, future plans and home internet access.  I explained how access to the net, and online resources, was becoming more important than access to computers, and how that had led to Scotland’s Glow project and our increasing interest in providing net access as conveniently and cheaply as possible.

It was interesting to hear a couple of early observations from HT Mr McGillivray:

• noticeably improved “time on task” during a poetry writing lesson
• a strong sense of ownership of the devices, and very careful handling

I have agreed to attend the next meeting and demonstrate Glow to the Parent Council. I am sure any interested parents would be welcome to attend.