Not only does Dell offer good deals, but in the past, companies like Pepsi have offered to fund computers for schools if you will sign a contract with them to offer only Pepsi products at school. Even though this is not an issue for us, I feel for you because we are always trying to bring new things into our school, but if our group had to shell out money everytime something was outdated, we would never get to do anything else. I think our school-not the PTO-holds one fundraiser a year to help with costs for computers. Good luck and keep up the good work.
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating-in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life. --Anne Morris
All of our classrooms have 2 computers each. The media center has 4. We then also have a mobile lap top system as we do not have a seperate computer room due to space constraints. When it is time for computer class the lap tops are brought into the classroom on a mobile unit. These were all provided by the board of Ed. Last year we were 2 lap tops short and some kids had to share. Then the PTO bought the additional 2 lap tops so that now each kid has their own lap to use. We have a person on staff who handles all the programming and set up.
We were not asked to provide these, but we had earned enough money to splurge on something for the school. After tossing around ides we decided that letting each kid have their own lap tops to use during computer class would be the most beneficial.
While we are not responsible for replacing computers, we did fund an entire computer lab 5 years ago. We do not offer replacement because it is the school's responsibility for the upkeep and when the school is footing the replacement bill you would be surprised how long it takes for a computer to become obsolete... I'm sure they would have 'required' newer computers two or three years ago if we were footing the bill...
We have 2 to 3 older computers for each classroom (30 classrooms) and they are used primarily for Accelerated Reader. The upper grades also use them for students who do not have a computer at home to type reports on.
Dell offers a pretty decent deal on computers for schools. They are new, have whatever the current bells and whistles are, and are able to spread out the payments if necessary.
Computers in the classroom fall into the jurisdiction of our PTO to fund. There isn't any other funding in Georgia these days for them. I am wondering how many computers you have in your K-5 classrooms and of those how many are connected to the school's network (or are they just stand-alone). Also interested in any special funding sources for them. Thanks! We replaced 14 obsolete computers last year so that each class has at least one recent model. Now our network is changing which seems to cause our secondary computer to become obsolete in that it isn't robust enough to handle the new network. We have a request for 27 new computers.
Lastly, Our computers are used primarily for ACR, prepatory for state testing, & free time games. Does anyone's school use their computers in a progressive way that really facilitates learning? Open to new ideas.
