said by fcisler:They did away with a textbook.....they didn't say the content.
I remember in senior year - two textbooks I received had a piece of paper in the inside "Take this code and go to (url here) to download a PDF of this textbook!" along with a code on it.
If the content is the same.....why not use a laptop?
If the school cannot lock down the PC's....well....that's another story.
In my building there are 200+ PC's set aside for complete public use. They are locked down so tight that in the 3+ years - there has not been one incident where someone was able to breech security. And yes - I know this. Random PC's are sporadically monitored and one of the first I setup, I just took out of service. The MD5 checksums on each of the PC's were IDENTICAL (excluding documents and settings, as a couple of the programs write cache files there - but thats it). I've seen people try and get in...but they give up.
Then again - if you looked at them, you would not be able to easily tell that the OS was windows.
The difference is the level of skill in the IT department. A lot of public school districts just don't have the money to hire in a good IT person to lock the systems down, regulate them, clean them, and perform preventative maintenance on them. Laptops require a lot more maintenance than a textbook does and last time I checked, textbooks are cheaper to make.
As a techie, the idea of laptops for all students sounds great. However, as a network and systems admin, it is a nightmare to implement a system like that. One thing is for certain, if I had a child, they would have a laptop when they got into middle/high school.
