What are school districts buying?

According to  the Digital Learning Environments newsletter, January 2011 (to which I am unable to link directly as you have to take out a free subscription), school districts in the USA are allocating their hardware purchasing budgets as follows:

Districts are looking more and more at the cost savings of purchasing netbooks but are still buying full-featured laptops. Here are the results [of our survey] in order of popularity.

Netbooks - 43%
Laptops - 31%
Desktops -14%
Tablet PCs - 11%

I find this quite interesting because my perception, from a UK perspective, is that tablets are emerging as a force to be reckoned with, but are not there yet. In terms of cost-effectiveness as measured by such things as battery life and range of applications, I would say that netbooks definitely have the edge over tablets.

What do you think?

This article first appeared in Computers in Classrooms, the free newsletter for educational ICT professionals.

Comments

[John McLear]

Tablets don't offer the same performance and flexibility at netbook does. Given the choice of 30 netbooks or 15 tablets it's a no brainer. Why would you pick tablet over netbook at current?

[F2MKE]

Really interesting survey results... This reflects my view of where the UK schools are currently trending too. Furthermore, it makes a great deal of sense...

There are significant potential savings to be had by combining the value of Netbooks with the Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model. My pretty extensive research so far concludes that most traditional education and productivity focussed client / server installed applications have web-based alternatives - usually as engaging and more akin to what the kids - and teachers - are used to outside of the classroom. Netbooks - its all in the name - are perfectly designed for this type of use. Mix this with the massive time savings currently incurred by having to keep client installed apps running - patches, new versions, etc., etc., and the savings go further whilst classroom confidence can only increase!

Suddenly the traditional look of a school's network with file and directory servers, backup solutions and so on is questionable.

The savings go further too... The resources typically required to run web apps are far less than what's needed to run that latest version of your preferred office suite, or graphics package. The Netbook (or any other device) now has a longer useful lifespan.

"But I'll still need to refresh my kit to support the latest version of Windows!"

Probably. Or you could switch to an Operating System with the clouds in its sights. Jolicloud and Google's Chrome OS maybe?

If you're interested, I've written a bit more on this at http://www.f2mke.co.uk/education/2010/09/21/how-much-ict-infrastructure-does-a-school-really-need-to-manage/

I've focussed upon savings - well I guess that's de rigueur? But the above approach lends itself neatly to the nirvana that was the 80s marketing strategy for Braun's Independent - "anytime, anyplace, anywhere.". Or, the less favourable "Martini Learning" cliché?

Touchy, feely tablets are definitely up and coming... Since making the extremely nervous and shoulder perched gadget angel encouraged, over sensible angel, switch from my trusty, nothing can beat this, Blackberry Bold to the shiny iPhone 4... I am completely sold! Ever since I have found myself occasionally staring longingly at the long row of silvery numbers that adorn my credit card dreaming of that iPad that could so easily be excused to be mine :) But that's just it... Even with Android on the scene and getting better and better, tablets are currently just too expensive. My nearly 3 year old Samsung NC10 Netbook just keeps on powering up, lasting on battery all day and keeping my ICT life relatively pain free...

If you're still interested, I've rambled a little on the practicalities of Smart Phones at http://www.f2mke.co.uk/education/2010/09/01/smart-phones-a-serious-contender-for-everyday-productivity-learning/ and general Cloud stuff at http://www.f2mke.co.uk/education/category/education/cloud/

I'm enjoying following ICT in Education and Terry's insights - great stuff and thanks!

Mike Pickett (F2MKE)

[Hamish]

I would have thought tablets would be a better option. We are looking at buying more tablets than anything else this year. We decided this because the future of technology has moved to one of a physical keyboard and moved to a virtual keyboard. Eventually gesture technology will take over this, and our view is that touch screen will have a better transition into this than a mouse/ keyboard will.

Thoughts?

[Tami Brass]

I feel like my school has chosen the best of both worlds. We have Intel Classmate PC Convertibles for all of our middle school students. They have the capabilities of a netbook plus the tablet features (we use OneNote across most content areas) but are ruggedized for kids. A Classmate is about the same price as an iPad but can do much more.

[Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant]

@John I have to agree with you, John. I hope to be writing a post soon about my experience of this, but for now suffice it to say that using an iPad to write and publish some blog posts whilst holed up in a hotel during the BETT show was fraught with difficulty -- and what got me through was, eventually, abandoning it in fabvour of the netbook I had brought with me also. I love the iPad, but this experience really brought home to me that it does have a few imnportant limitations when it comes to my own particular needs.

[Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant]

@Mike

Thanks, and also for the links. I think you're right: to summarise, tablets look great, and are probably the thing of the future, but for various reasons (in my case experience, from your point of view cost) they are not quite there asa viable option yet. Having said that, some schools have of course gone down the tablet route and are very pleased with the outcome, so I guess it's "horses for courses".

[Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant]

@Tami I like the idea of a tablet-netbook combination. I did try out a laptop-tablet combo some years ago, but thougt the hinge it swivelled on not robust enough for school use. It would be interesting to learn how your netbook-tablet stands up to school use.

[Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant]

@Hamish I think you're right that tablets are probably the way to go in order to take advantage of touch-screen and, especially, gesture technology, but I do think that tablets have limittaions in other areas. Perhaps the ideal soultion is a hybrid (see Tami's comment)?