Indiana high school students required to rent netbooks

evsc It’s not unusual for college students to bring laptops to class to take notes. But not only has the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation in Indiana decided to allow the use of laptops in high school classrooms, the schools will rent netbooks to students for $70 per year on top of their existing annual textbook fee. Students from low income families who qualify for free or reduced lunch prices won’t have to pay the fee.

Students will be assigned a netbook that’s theirs to keep until they graduate. They’ll come with a one-year warranty, but students will be expected to pay for repairs or replacement if the netbooks are damaged after the warranty expires.

The school has ordered 7,200 netbooks from HP and teachers are expected to star training with the machines soon. It’s not clear from the article which netbook model the school has ordered, but given the fact that these things are supposed to last at least 4 years, I’m hoping they went with the HP Mini 2140 or the yet-to-be-released HP Mini 5101, both of which are a bit more durable than your typical netbook.

Posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009, 9:47 am by Brad Linder

WPW

They should really wait for the Tegra or Snapdragon Smartbooks to be released. They will be cheaper and have better battery life. With the reduced price, the students could rent-to-own the device rather than pay $70/year just to give it back later. Any world as to what grade levels are required to have them? Is it just high school?
Brian

Sorry, I don't believe computers should be part of any normal educational cirriculum. Students need to learn how to deal with concepts, not with tools. Equations should be done by hand (no calculators!), papers should be hand written with emphasis on penmanship and readability.

Computers are great productivity tools. But they can make people suffer regarding penmanship, grammar and most importantly, attention to detail.
luede

i live in evansville but now im in college with my eee. Im glad i didnt get stuck having to rent one of these. I hope this gets declared unconstitutional like our student activity fee was. I wonder what the policy is for students who already have a netbook,because there are at least 1000 more students in the school corporation
luede

just read the article looks like all students are required to rent and bringing their own is not an option
MonkeyKing1969

I'm sure there is some sort of 'mental floss' monitoring software on the netbooks that keep the children safe, happy, and cocooned within with the silk of mid western values.
MonkeyKing1969

Ha! No high school will ever give kids netbooks with a Linux destro on it or Google Android. The superintendent or some County 'education official' would then have blood spurting embolism. Later that week that weird lady who is always ranting about THE DEVIL during Halloween will stand-up at the Board of Education meeting mumbling words like 'communism', 'Obama', and 'dirty hippies'.
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MonkeyKing1969

I'm sure there is some sort of 'mental floss' monitoring software on the netbooks that keep the children safe, happy, and cocooned within with the silk of mid western values.
MonkeyKing1969

Ha! No high school will ever give kids netbooks with a Linux destro on it or Google Android. The superintendent or some County 'education official' would then have blood spurting embolism. Later that week that weird lady who is always ranting about THE DEVIL during Halloween will stand-up at the Board of Education meeting mumbling words like 'communism', 'Obama', and 'dirty hippies'.
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http://www.BigEventFundraising.com Clay Boggess

I think this is a fair policy. If you use, you pay. If you break, you pay. If you keep, you also pay.

Indiana high school students required to rent netbooks

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