I feel your pain! (Score 1)

I work in an Aussie school, and we've just recently wrangled with the idea of how to best outfit our students with PC's. It's funny, no matter what way we looked at the problem, just about every affordable idea we came up with was really only a workaround way of sharing the machines. For technology to be fully integrated into the curriculum and highly available at the point of learning, there's only one solution. Give every student a laptop. It's expensive, and we can't afford to do it, so I imagine you may not be able to either, but it really needs to be said that it is the best solution.

I remember when we handed laptops to all of our teaching staff, we had theories that it was the best way of giving them access, but nothing like the actual reality. After the deployment the increase in the use of technology (actively encouraged by the schools policy makers) was incredible. I don't think that it would be any different with students. Don't listen to any of the nay-sayers who will tell you they'll be too distracting in class, or the kids will lose them or break them, these are all things that can be worked around.

That's if you can afford it. If not, beware of those who want to cut corners. Schools are notoriously underfunded and there's a temptation to penny-pinch, but the students will suffer as a result. Thin clients for example, suffer badly from not coping with a lot of video/sound/CAD software, and while you can get away with them in certain areas, teachers favour a homogeneous environment throughout.

Anyway, I can bang on about this forever. I guess I'm trying to say that nothing good can come from cutting corners. It's a big responsiblity you've got there, and I hope it works out for you.

L8r.