[LINK] NSW Nettops for Students to Keep

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:15 AM 1/12/2008, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>  ... IT outsourcing experience shows that TCO is 5 to 10 times that 
> of the base hardware.  ...

Yes, the total cost of ownership for computers for students is likely 
to be far higher than the amount the Federal Government has allocated.

However, my main concern is that no one seems to be worrying about 
what the computers are going to actually be used for. Even if the 
cost of running the computers is paid for, is anyone investing in 
content and training for the computers to be educationally useful?

It is as if just having a computer will somehow help the students 
learn. The EdNa people <http://edna.edu.au/> are doing an excellent 
job helping teachers come up to speed with computers, but they could 
do with a funding boost, as could the TAFE sector who are doing a 
very good job with vocational e-learning <http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/>.

There will, of course, be issues about allocation of computers. I was 
involved in planning some short university courses where the 
administrator worked out it would be cheaper to give each student a 
laptop than print course notes. There were five modules in the 
course, so if you did all five, one at a time, you could end up 
owning five laptops by the end. ;-)

More on:

* EdNa: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/06/online-network-for-australian-educators.html>.
* Australian Flexible Learning Framework 
:<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/09/documents-for-e-learning.html>


Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University