The Reader

My school just bought 100 HP  netbooks for all the fifth graders and next year, another 200 will be bought for 6th grade (the netbooks will stay with the grade not the student).  Our IT director said the reason we went HP and not Macbook was purely financial--less than $300 each for a netbook.  I don't know the configuration of the netbooks we're using, and I'm assuming a bulk deal on price.  Still, I don't know of a school willing to pay $100-200 more for each iPad that can't word process, do powerpoint, photostory.  My students' netbooks are loaded with software and there's no extra charge for data because they're wifi enabled and use the school's network.  I can't see it happening in schools.  Without a real word processor, it's not worth it for schools. 

All of us teachers got new Toshiba tablet PCs 2 years ago. (Be assured-not government $$, we're private). I love its
functionality--I just finished grad school and the tablet was great for
downloading research articles, inserting them into OneNote,
highlighting text and making notes right on the screen with the tablet pen, writing papers.  I dock my laptop on my desk at school and can connect it to my Smartboard--the iPad can't compete at this point--and it's not meant to, but for classrooms, netbooks will be the way to go, IMHO.

See ya,
bailey

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