Essex County Council is buying thousands of laptops
equipped with wireless technology for its schoolchildren in an
attempt to boost e-learning in school and at
home.
Essex Council has struck a deal with Intel to buy laptops, which
will be equipped with Centrino wireless Lan technology, with the
ultimate aim of equipping every child who needs a PC for school and
homework. The county has about 200,000 pupils, but the Essex
roll-out is a gradual one which will see between 4,000 and 5,000
laptops allocated to children by the beginning of the next school
year in September.
Essex is now evaluating which type of broadband technology it will
need to install in its schools to provide the necessary bandwidth
to support the 802.11b-based wireless Lans in the classroom. It is
looking to choose a standardised access platform across sites.
Anthony Burdis, senior IT adviser to Essex County Council, said,
"The laptops will have to last all day without being plugged in, so
we chose Intel machines because the laptops are equipped with
Speedstep technology which increases battery life."
Burdis said the cost of the laptops will be less than installing
desktop PCs and rewiring buildings to provide connections. Many
schools are old and new wiring would be difficult to install and
pupils would not have the same mobility, he said.
Finance and insurance is being organised by the Essex E-Learning
Foundation and parent teacher associations will help schools pay
for each PC at between £4 and £5 a week over three years. Burdis
said the machines would cost less than £1,000 each, including all
software, and at the end of three years the machines would be
replaced.
Children aged between five and six have already received laptop
training, but the majority of the first users will be of late
primary age or at secondary school level.
The school networks may also be made available to the wider
community, including businesses. The plan is to "cluster" some of
the networks together to allow groups of buildings to share the
same bandwidth. This would allow organisations outside the
education sector to connect to the internet, said the
council.
Burdis said the expertise the IT department was garnering from the
laptop roll-out would put it in a good position to play a
consulting role for similar schemes at other local authorities.