Dec 03 2008
A Little Laptop Action, at last … yippee ki yay!
After last weekends Federal COAG ICT largesse, its reassuring embattled Premier Rees has wasted no time in calling for new DET NSW technology supply tenders.
As part of the Federal edrev, DET NSW have on their wish list the lure of a sub $500 “compact learning devices (CLD’s)” for all 197,000 Year 9 to 12 students and more importantly wireless connectivity for 571 DET schools to be installed by February 2010. Tick, good. Very.
Guess the other 1500 DET sites, mainly primary schools, with students K to 8 don’t yet qualify for CLD’s or wireless connectivity and will fall further behind other systems, for a while longer. Cross, very. Maybe DET Primary Schools should just apply for an XO ala OLPC. Seems about how valued they are by DET NSW, currently.
The $1245 per student increase is also welcome news and may indicate Rudd is genuine in his bid for transparency in his new style of federalism. Lets hope so because Australians were promised a new approach to the passe blame game during the last election campaign.
Hopefully this rapid tender announcement reflects a state government committed to delivering the long promised technology improvements for Public Education students in NSW. I agree with Simon Job who also hopes Netbook specs don’t fill the tender, but Alex Serpo over at ZDNet believes the new CLD’s will be linux OS on netbooks to meet the $500 tender. (edit 12/12/08 or have a look here for yet more opinions)
Maybe we’d just be better off with these, or similiar.
Celebratory restraint me thinks, until we see the actual laptop specs and roll out begin, the wireless functionality and most importantly the vital TPL to support teachers. Will teachers as learners receive one? I wonder?
Almost makes me want to celebrate and yell “Yippee-kay-yea”, almost. But Hans has still not left the building. John McClane has work to do yet.
picture credit: DoctorWho’s at flickr
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