School owned laptop/portable/wireless computers?

[Matthew Strickland]

Hi all,

Is your school still purchasing laptops/netbooks (or other wireless devices) for students to use? If so which are you opting for?

We are still predominantly a Windows school (mostly windows clients and servers), as well as Mac's + Adobe software for both.

This is all fairly 'classic' for the fixed hardware + software.

But we do get stuck with purchasing school wireless devices for students, because ideally they need to be networked to be used by more than one student.

Since we're not a Google App school this rules out multi-user for Chromebooks, and Surface RT is somewhat limited in a domain environment.

So we end up with Netbooks (with extra RAM + SSD are ok) or more expensive traditional laptops.

It seem's were stuck between what's best for BYOD, and what works in a multi-user single device environment.

I have some idea's going forward but keen to see if others still purchase wireless hardware for students, or leave it up to BYOD?

Matthew Strickland

Karamu High School

[Yvette Ireton]

Hi there

We are a BYOD school and are still purchasing ex-lease Teachers/Tela laptops (upgrade model - HP Elitebook 8560p) for students to use - we have 6 available for student use that are stored in the Library for booking out - we don't purchase new laptops for student use, but we do upgrade these laptops every 3 years (makes them 6 years old at the end of life). 

As we are a GAFE school we are also purchasing Chromebooks and have 12 available for student use.  

Quite a few families here can't afford devices so we will continue to offer this service.

Thanks

Yvette

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Network Manager
Golden Bay High School
12 Waitapu Road, Takaka 7110
Ph:  03 525 9914
http://www.gbh.school.nz

[Patrick Dunford]

Does that mean you are using Office 365 instead of Google Apps?

 

People need to look more closely at the solutions, because Microsoft’s effort with Office 365 is pretty limited (like Apple iCloud is), and GAFE has a lot more capability.

Although personally, I don’t like any of them.

 

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[Matthew Strickland]

Hi Patrick,

I personally like GAFE at junior school, but O365 at senior. We use O365, but there's no reason why we couldn't run both, especially if we were to split junior/senior and have staff aware of it.

Both have their advantages, O365 having 1TB of storage per user, 5 full offline licences of Office for each student, ability to edit on Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, and via chrome on a Chromebook.

But it seems to me, wireless devices a better suited 1:1 - possibly excluding the chromebook which can be passed around user to user, at school or not.

Matt

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[Andrew Godfrey]

We are using chromebooks for general class use as we made the decision to go with GAFE over four years ago so most of the time students only need a browser and for more advanced stuff we still have the trusty old computer labs (some are using wireless) which are running Windows connecting to our Novell backend.

You could possibly use GAFE for chromebook logins and still use O365 for your apps as long as O365 runs okay on a Chromebook. You can disable mail, drive, google plus and others for your students but still synchronise your directory and passwords.

Our iPads still spend most of their time sitting in a cupboard as they don't do the multi-user thing very well and are more limited when being used to create content.

We are installing Ubuntu with Libre Office and mandatory profiles on a few of our older laptops to extend their life as Windows can be quite slow on old hardware. We don't use Windows servers but you might be able get a Samba client running that will prompt the student to login.

I had a look at an HP Stream last year which might fit the bill for you being the same form factor as a CB but with Windows on it.

The great thing about BYOD is that students are free to choose ( in our case ) the device that suits them (guide them away from small screens though) and it does not need to be multiuser. As a teacher though, you need to consider whether they are going to be able to do all the things you ask them to do on their device given that they will not have the exact same software as you.

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Andrew Godfrey  |  Network Manager  |  Burnside High School  |  Christchurch | New Zealand