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Every senior student in New South Wales, Australia gets a laptop
- Thread starter tcmacintosh
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At the last election they promised a laptop for every student in Year 9 and up but they weren't talking about this. Curse you NSW!
To be serious though it doesn't really affect me anymore. I just graduated on Friday. It is kind of disappointing that just after we leave, my school gets the laptops and my sister who is in Year 8 has been able to use them.
I prefer my MBP anyway. I can type faster on it for one thing.
It's not a normal notebook, but a mini. I have seen those, and they are disappointing. Cobb county schools will have apple laptops
http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/6458
Well despite not seeing the point of giving every student a laptop to keep, I don't understand how they're working these numbers. With the term "mini notebook" being used to describe these things, I don't even know why a price of $2250 per laptop was being thrown around. That's extremely excessive for what is probably a "netbook", assuming that they're not giving each student a Sony TT, which is an extremely awesome luxury product....
If there are 197,000 high school students (year 9 to 12, as stated in the article), and each laptop was (most likely) a netbook of some sort, even giving out $1000 netbooks to every single high school student (in NSW) would cost the government $197m.
Then again, they're not even talking about anything THAT ambitious. They're talking about senior year students only, so how can the NSW government not afford it when $4.55 bn dollars is being spent to fund all the states? NSW should get a lot of that, and should have more money than they know what to do with.
Furthermore, this is assuming each one would cost $1000. I'm sure a deal could be worked out where each netbook would cost around $500 AUD. What exactly are they going to give each student? It certainly shouldn't be a gaming rig.
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Personally, I think the government is just **** with money. That's why $1 billion wasn't enough.
If there are 197,000 high school students (year 9 to 12, as stated in the article), and each laptop was (most likely) a netbook of some sort, even giving out $1000 netbooks to every single high school student (in NSW) would cost the government $197m.
Then again, they're not even talking about anything THAT ambitious. They're talking about senior year students only, so how can the NSW government not afford it when $4.55 bn dollars is being spent to fund all the states? NSW should get a lot of that, and should have more money than they know what to do with.
Furthermore, this is assuming each one would cost $1000. I'm sure a deal could be worked out where each netbook would cost around $500 AUD. What exactly are they going to give each student? It certainly shouldn't be a gaming rig.
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Personally, I think the government is just **** with money. That's why $1 billion wasn't enough.
Problematic? How about "idiotic"?
It's like telling the taxpayers "Hey, we're taking your money and buying a laptop for a senior who can keep it even if they don't go to college!"
Why don't they get some base-line performance stats, talk to the teachers, develop some curriculum, train some teachers, buy them for 8th and 9th, analyze the stats the next year to justify and additional purchase for the new 8th graders?
I went through ALL THIS a few years ago when we ALMOST did a 1-1.
There have been some positive results from Henrico, Maine, and I believe Michigan, but alas there's mostly anecdotal evidence that this is a good idea.