Rosemary Boswell

Subhankar

We dispersed Toshiba Portege M200's to about 20 teahrecs last year. Those batteries last about 2-3 hrs. This year, we're going to be using Fujitsu LifeBook Tablet PC which we got with an extra battery and a CD/DVD drive. I used it at NECC for a 1/2 day workshop + and it lasted the 6 hours. Great solution for use in very old buildings w/o elec. 2 grades or 175 students will be using them in Sept. They don't get too hot.It's just amazing what you can do with the tablet PC - very much everything you can with an interactive whiteboard. We have some wireless projectors as well which allow the teacher to show a student's work on the screen as well as the teacher's. Students love to be in the spotlight and they strive to excel. We have at least 1 projector and a pulldown screen in each classroom - some are connected to a DVD/VCR. Wireless access points are in the many buildings thruout the campus k-12. More than 50 teahrecs now have tablet PCs with CD/DVD drives so they don't need a separate player. We have 4 computer labs - 1 used primarily for a language lab both via tape recorders and computers w CDs. We are training the teahrecs on how to use the Tablets (and this sometimes means very basic use) but they come away from the 3 1/2-days of training with excitement and confidence that they know how to use the Tablet and now are ready to prepare their lessons. Several new digital cameras and older Compaq tablets are available for checkout from the library primarily for use on campus but sometimes the students take it to a Watershed site to take pictures for their projects etc. We also have a help desk - mostly me - who is available to answer their questions right then and there. Or they can come to the Computer Room, where I walk them thru the solution. New technology is great, but there has to be support behind it.

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