Musings on Maths, education, teaching and technology.
As net-books continue to outpace the rest of the PC industry, prices falling and specs improving, are they ready for prime-time use in schools?
I have dallied with eeePCs back in the day, I was impressed then, unfortunately school didn’t back that up with a permanent wireless network and they have been little used since. Back then the main issues were small screens, small keyboards and small batteries. All of these features have been greatly improved over the past two years.
The £60m 2-year DCSF project has kicked off at our school. For the uninitiated this is a government funded scheme to put laptops into some of the most disadvantaged homes in the country.
Computers for Pupils
Computers for Pupils is a £60 million, two-year programme (2006–2008) aimed at helping some of the most disadvantaged secondary school children improve their education and life skills by putting a computer into the home and providing internet connectivity. It aims to narrow the achievement gap between those children and their peers. Up to 100,000 pupils in England are expected to benefit from the initiative.
108 local authorities are involved in the programme, with funding allocated through the Standards Fund Grant. Local authorities identified as having eligible schools and pupils attending in their area have been given funding to make this happen. They are also receiving help and advice covering all aspects of the scheme.
Our school has been allocated 270 laptops, which is obviously a fantastic thing. However we have nearly 900 pupils so it has also become a somewhat divisive issue. The allocation has taken into account a number of factors, including something of a post-code lottery. Explaining to one pupil why they have a laptop and another why they haven’t has been awkward today.
With the possibility of internet access also being provided in the near future this is overall great news. We have been making good headway with online homeworks in Maths, using MyMaths and Achieve, and this will dramatically cut the number of pupils who cannot complete these at home.
I haven’t seen the machines yet, as ever with technology I suspect that had they will have missed the boat with the range of excellent low cost laptops that are seeping onto the market such as the eeePC.
eeePCs come pre-installed with the wonderful Firefox browser. The 7-inch screen means that screen real-estate is at a premium so I have listed below some Firefox add-ons that I recommend.
Get rid of those pesky adverts:
Adblock Plus – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
Adblock Updater – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136
Shrink the menus:
Compact Menus 2 – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4550
Hide all the menus and toolbars:
Fullerscreen – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4650
Speed up that fox:
Fasterfox – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269
Change the text size at the click of a button:
QuickZoom – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2540
Were this a personal machine I would probably add some others, but for pupil use in the classroom, this is my list so far.
Do you have any others you would add to the list? Please let me know in the comments.
Full Screen mode (F11):
Normal mode:
Well my eeePCs have finally arrived at school and I have to say I’m more than impressed. They may be diminutive in stature but they are feature packed and surprisingly well made for the price (ours were roughly £170 each).
Thanks to Ewan Macintosh for the image.
So yes, the screen and trackpad are a tad on the small side, but they are quite usable. The cost and speed saving build of linux works great straight out of the box, although the tech guys at school are finding it a little buggy to get hooked up to the wireless. They are also avoiding altogether any attempts to access network drives etc for the time being. Hopefully as uptake grows, so will support for these issues.
Initial impressions from the children are that they love them! Hopefully I will have them all wifi’d up this week and will be able to start using them on a lesson by lesson basis. Our main first uses will be access to MyMaths.co.uk, playing online maths games as rewards, and I’m looking into copying the videos from our Mathswatch CDs onto them, might have to invest in some headphones for this.
More soon….
The Guardian has an article today discussing the rapid adoption of eeePCs in schools, apparently with Ministerial support.
I’m still impatiently waiting for my 6 to arrive, they won’t be ordered until the school’s trial of Wi-Fi is underway and as with all things in school that is taking longer than expected 
Jonesieboy’s trials have had me waiting even more eagerly.
Well I’m very excited, in a bid to trial wifi in our school, and spend some of our remaining budget I will be getting at least 6 new eeePCs next week. Initially they will be mainly for web access to the excellent MyMaths and other resources, but I’m sure they will become an integral part of the classroom in no time. I might even get the pupil blog/wiki off the ground at last!
Andrew Brown, one of Learning and Teaching Scotland new technologies team has made a little video here exploring the machine.
Photo from Matt Westervelt’s CC Flickr stream
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