Laptops for the class

Roger Frost reports (The Guardian Summer 2000)

Hamilton School in Leicester is asking parents to contribute £5 a week to a laptop computer for their child to use. Taken home at the end of the day, the laptop will allow children to finish off schoolwork, and should they need information or worksheets they will be able to pick this up from the school Internet website. In this taster of tomorrow’s school today, parents will be able to keep track of their child’s progress, timetables or attendance via the Internet. It almost seems as if illness is no longer an excuse to miss lessons.

Hamilton is one of the first to pilot a scheme run by partners ABK, Nortel Networks and Toshiba. The school have been experimenting with some 36 laptops and found them to be a huge hit with pupils and teachers. The cutting edge is that each machine is fitted with a wireless radio link from Nortel that allows children to go into any classroom, be on the school network and gain access to all sorts of resources. They say it’s making a major difference to the way the PCs would be used within the school - otherwise they would just be used as word processors. Says a Nortel spokeperson  “We are moving away from the idea that computers are put in a suite, where children go to ‘do ICT’.  We are moving to a model which embeds ICT in every nook and cranny of the school curriculum”

So Hamilton now wants to go large with their scheme. They see the way forward as technology pupils can take away but that entails funding that few schools can absorb. Indeed scaled up nationally, it would need £2-3 billion per year – a major acceleration – several times the government’s current commitment to technology in education. Hence it’s over to the parents.

The upside, says ABK’s Mike Fitton, is that the laptop could be used as the family computer and the deal based on a subsidised rental, is a good one. “What we are trying to do is to offer a complete package that gives peace of mind: it has Internet access; it’s insured; it’s warranted and if it should break down there is an swap out. The laptop can be bought by extending the contract but the discussions we have had to date is that parents seemed quite happy to rent on the basis that £5 per week provides a constant refresh of technology every three years”.  

Surprisingly, the scheme hasn’t been aimed at rich areas but ‘Education Action Zones’, where access to technology could provide a boost. The consortium hope to set up a loyalty scheme in conjunction with national companies and that would allow parents to collect reward points to offset the costs.

Nortel are hoping to blend their scheme with a similar initiative from Microsoft called  ‘Anytime, Anywhere Learning”. This was launched in March, after a two year pilot project found impressive gains in children’s motivation and learning.  Microsoft’s approach has been to encourage schools to set up charitable foundations to boost funds through the tax breaks available.

After an open day where Hamilton School where parents of year six and seven were invited in to hear of their plans, head teacher Eddy de Middelar could report only surprise. In a room packed with parents, safety not money seemed not to be main topic, “The costs were compared to pies, pints or packets of fags. The only concern was about all these kids going out and about with laptops worth £1400 a shot - everything else was very positive”. 

After discussing ideas like minibus drop offs at strategic pick up points, a local solution never mind a local revolution in educational technology seems interestingly close.

Contacts

www.nortelnetworks.com

www.microsoft.com/uk/education/aal

www.educationrewards.co.uk