What hardware should your classroom have?

Often you hear the cliché, “Back in the day, life was much simpler,” and in terms of technology, despite companies spending millions on making life easier for us, things are much more complicated. Back when the “new” curriculum was invented, schools that had computers generally had PCs running Microsoft Windows. Any devices such as cameras and video cameras were built for Microsoft. The Internet was still in its infancy so sharing things like video, images and even text was either impossible or impractical or very basic.

Fast forward almost 20 years of the technological era in schools and many things have changed. We now have 4 popular Operating Systems and several devices to play them on. Not sharing work online is now almost inexcusable and services such as YouTube, WordPress and others have given us ways to do this. However, one problem is figuring out which hardware we should invest in. Tablets or laptops? Windows or Mac?

I’m beginning to be certain that there isn’t a correct answer to this question and I believe that certain hardware is suited to certain tasks. I’m going to list the 3 most popular devices and give my thoughts on their biggest strengths and weaknesses. I’ve excluded Macbooks because they aren’t popular in Irish schools; I’ve also left out Android tablets as they have almost the same strengths and weaknesses of iPads. Finally I left out desktops because they share almost the same attributes as laptops except you can’t move them around.

Windows Laptops

Strengths:

• Microsoft Office – Open source and online alternatives still can’t compete
• Flash – Flash is not dead in primary education despite what tablet people will tell you. Try using Scratch on an iPad.
• Keyboard – The physical keyboard is not dead yet.
• IWB compatible – Generally very easy to plug and play into an IWB and projector without any issues
• Cheap – It’s possible to get a fairly decent refurbished Windows laptop for less than €200
• Printing – most printers are set up nicely for Windows machines

Weaknesses

• Videoing – Two problems. There generally isn’t a decent camera on them and they are also too bulky.
• Battery Life – Battery life on most laptops is improving but not as good as tablets
• Slowdown – Windows is notorious for slowing down after a while. It always needs a good clean out. Again this is something that’s improving
• Slow to load – When you turn on a Windows machine, it can take ages to even get started.

Chromebooks

Strengths:

• Google Apps – Despite what I’ve said above, I think Google Apps are good enough for most pupils in primary schools
• Flash – Flash generally works on Chromebooks
• Android Apps – Many Chromebooks can now run Android Apps. This can be very useful.
• Keyboard – The physical keyboard is not dead yet.
• Battery Life – Battery life is excellent in general
• Instant On – Opens up and ready to go in less than a few seconds
• Always up to date – As Chromebooks run on the Internet, the latest version of Chrome OS is always on.
• Never Slows Down – As everything is online, the speed is only dependant on how fast the Internet speeds are
• Accounts – it doesn’t matter what machine you use, once you log in, you have access to everything you’ve ever made.

Weaknesses

• IWB compatible – Not as easy as a “normal” laptop as most don’t have VGA ports
• Videoing – No decent camera, too bulky to hold and very poor video editing software. You’d be reliant on what YouTube offers.
• Decent Internet needed – As Chrome OS pretty much relies on having a good Internet connection, if you’re working in a school that has less than 10Mb Broadband, this isn’t going to work at all.
• Expensive – They are expensive considering that they don’t do a lot of what a laptop does. They would need to be well under €200 each before being viable to replace laptops.
• Accounts – for Chromebooks to work well, everyone will need their own username and passwords. This can be a pain especially in younger classes.
• Printing – depending on your printer, this could be a real pain

iPads (which includes iPods and also there’s a note for Android tablets in there too)

Strengths:

• Battery Life – Battery life is excellent in general
• Instant On – Opens up and ready to go in less than a few seconds
• Videoing – iMovie is probably the only decent piece of affordable software for video editing. (Android note: I’m afraid this does not apply to Android)
• Apps – If you like apps, Apple has the largest app store in the world.
• Light – they are very portable and can be carried around

Weaknesses

• No decent Office program – sure there are online apps and Apple’s own suite, but they aren’t as good as Microsoft Office
• IWB compatibility – They render your Interactive Whiteboard non-Interactive. If you have projectors rather than full IWB set up, this isn’t a big deal.
• Flash – Unless you get very “hacky”, Flash does not work on iPads. (For me this was one of their biggest mistakes.)
• Keyboard – The physical keyboard and the iPad doesn’t come with one. Even if it did, there’s very few apps you’d use with them.
• Regularly Upgraded – there seems to be a new iPad every 6 months and older iPads become obsolete quite quickly. Older iPads can be lethargic.
• Expensive – whatever gloss people put on them, they are expensive. Even a refurbished iPad3 is over €300. Expect to pay around €500 each per iPad
• Incompatibility – Apple have their own ports and their own way of doing things. Plugging into a VGA projector requires an extra gadget, plugging in an SD card requires another add on, you’ll probably also need to buy an Apple Server so the iPads can be synced and you’ll probably need other devices to get around the other problems. All told, these are a royal pain in the backside.
• Printing – depending on your printer, this could be a real pain

What would I do? I think I’d go for a mixture of things. In a typical classroom, I’d like to think I would have the following:

• 3-4 laptops –> for Office-related tasks, easy printing
• 3-4 Chromebooks –> for Internet, Google Apps access
• 2 iPads –> Movie Making and the very odd app
• Access to 12-16 iPods or other similarly sized devices
• Access to 12-16 Chromebooks

Personally, if iMovie didn’t exist, I wouldn’t buy an iPad. The simple matter is that no other handheld device that provides a decent movie making app. Yes, one can simply upload what they’ve recorded on YouTube and do simple edits but for decent editing and adding effects, there is nothing out there on any handheld device that beats iMovie. I do like a couple of Apps on iPad, especially BookCreator but it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me.

I do think Chromebooks are the happy medium between laptops and iPads for primary schools but I also believe they should be much much cheaper than they are. They should be about half the price of a laptop and I’m sure it’s very possible for this to happen.

I also think the laptop is not dead yet. It may happen one day but that day hasn’t come. MS Office is still a must have program especially for teachers and the ability to print easily and plug it into projectors and so on still give it an edge over the other two.

I briefly referred to iPods and I see them as an all-in-one reference tool combining a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, calculator and much more into a tiny device. I’m fairly sure there’s plenty of maths-related tools such as protractors, compasses and so on can be achieved with an iPod. It would also double up nicely as a translator or Irish-English dictionary. They also make a decent dictaphone, camera and video camera.

I didn’t mention products like Microsoft Surface, which combines the best of a laptop with a tablet. The main reason is that decent ones are simply way too expensive for schools. If a school is cash-rich, however, an alternative to iMovie that is brilliant on Windows is Adobe’s Video Editor Program.

I’m sure people who love certain brands will argue against this list and say that their device does everything. However, these are only my thoughts and opinions. There were hopes a few years ago that students would only require tablets to do everything they needed but this just hasn’t happened. Certain tablets are very strong in certain areas but they really never got over the issues that schools have. Similarly, some Windows laptops excel in other areas but fail to do so in things like multimedia, especially video in my opinion. If anyone has any thoughts, I’d love to hear them by commenting below.