Cheap Computers in My Classroom? 43
richeddy asks: "I am going to start teaching elementary school in the near future. As a new teacher, I have the crazy idea that I might be able to actually teach my students a few things that other teachers just don't seem to be able to teach. This involves teaching methods that might be a bit unconventional. To this end, I am interested in building and installing a network of classroom computers that the students can use in real-world ways. That's right, no glorified flash cards in my classroom! I want my students using computers for research, presentations, writing, data collection and analysis, etc. In order to do this, I am going to have to personally foot the bill for the hardware and software. So I am looking for suggestions on what direction to go. I figure that I will need 5-7 computers to accomplish my vision, and I can't imagine paying for Windows and Windows apps. It looks like my only real option is to build the systems myself, which isn't a problem. Any ideas? Suggestions? Comments?"
Cheap O computers (Score:3, Informative)
You could get the $200 PCs from Wal-Mart.com
I home this help "some".
Good luck!
Cheapest way is lindows (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm, what cheap PC is everyone talking about now? (Score:2)
You're taking a big chance (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're asking about the computers and not your style of teaching, but I'd like to put my two cents in for what it's worth. I don't know what this school you are going to teach at is like but many institutions are scared of change. By starting off right away and using, as you put it, unconventional teaching methods, you run the risk of irking the powers that be in the school. Since you are new, you haven't given them any reason to trust your instincts or abilities. Perhaps after a few years of proving yourself as a competant, exciting teacher they may be more receptive to your quirky ideas.
I want my students using computers for research, presentations, writing, data collection and analysis, etc.
I'm not sure what you have in mind, but I am wondering how many elementary school students are going to be ability to demonstrate the skills you list above. Again, you run the risk of other, more established teachers telling you to cool off and take a few years to get acquainted with the abilities of a typical elementary school child.
I admire your dedication to your field and, although I am usually a strong opponent of computers in the classroom, your approach sounds interesting (I, too, am against glorified flashcards). I just want you to realize that you are taking a fairly big chance with your career by following unconventional teaching approaches right away. It works out nicely in the movies but the powers that resist change in the real world tend to be much more formidable then their cinematic counterparts.
Good luck,
GMD
Re:You're taking a big chance (Score:1)
Re:You're taking a big chance (Score:2, Interesting)
In many divisions only division approved equipment/software may be used in schools. You may need to justify every little detail of your plan to the divisions IT department (even if you are using your own money)
go easy route (Score:3, Informative)
Rig up an overfgloriified client server rig (Score:2, Insightful)
You then could set up every machine to get all files every night and then give each child a account on the main machine, so when the machines update themselves they will all have the same accounts. You could do this with all the configuration.
THought you did say elementary school and this all would be a lost cause if the kids are too young. Before a certain age the os doesn't really matter.
I think this is a good idea and could be used in the future for computer based testing etc
Just make sure.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just make sure.. (Score:1, Funny)
"The internet, death of language and communication." -- me
Re:Just make sure.. (Score:1)
At this age, I think there are a lot of basics that students need to learn. I think that computers would be more of a distraction than anything else.
LTSP (Score:2, Informative)
Don't be fooled into thinking that the performance will equivelent to the server spec averaged over the workstation machines, the peak performance of the server will be available to each user. Having just one box to administor, and being able to lock it in a cupboard should simplify setup & administration.
Re:LTSP (Score:1)
This is exactly what I wanted to suggest. It's the best solution, especially in terms of maintainance work and fault-tolerance. Make sure to see this clip [k12.or.us] (RealPlayer unfortunately) to see how adding new computers to your lab would look like if you choose the LTSP way. Take a look at this links:
Good luck!
ACCRC (Score:2, Informative)
Hardware isn't the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
You may be able to get somewhere by having the kids visit some of the children-topical websites that are up. As for their making presentations, and doing coursework online... I think you'll run into problems.
I strongly suggest that before embarking on this ambitious project you get ONE computer, and try to set it up so it'll be capable of everything you want. That way you won't wind up with kids working around the big, useless boxes sitting on their desks.
Re:Hardware isn't the problem. BeOS? (Score:1)
However, if you want all your computers to look the same, then you could run BeOS on all the computers. It looks and feels the same on both mac and PC, so your students wouldn't get confuesed. (Yes, Be Inc. was purchased by Palm, but the OpenBe Project is getting close to a release, and you can insert the open modules directly into the current Be distrubution).
good luck!
What is your goal? (Score:5, Informative)
Second -- and my main point: What is your goal? Is it to teach the children the objectives for your year that you have them, or is it to teach them all the things you think they should learn? Almost every 1st year teacher I've ever known (myself included) has spent 12 hours a day or more on lesson plans. This is especially true for elementary students. You don't say what grade you'll be teaching (and there's a big range and a BIG difference between kindergarten and 5th grade), but I don't know a single elementary teacher who spent less than 10 hours a day on prep and grading during their first year.
Do you really want to add setting up a group of computers on top of that? Is your goal to teach or to make a new record for quick teacher burn out? If you are not teaching the basic goals, as stated in your state's/county's/city's guides, it won't matter what miracles you're producing or what the kids can do with computers, you'll be on probation and out the door by the ned of the year.
First year teaching, especially in elementary school, is rough. If you want to succeed as a teacher, spend your first year teaching and finding out what it's like being totally, 100% responsibile for a class of children (including dealing with the administrator and the parents) without your teeachers or an experienced teacher helping you through 1/2 a semester of student teaching.
I admire and applaud your goals, but trying to do all this in your first year is asking for burn out and a new career. Spend this year, and likely the next, learning your profession. After you've been teaching for a few years, then make plans for how you're going to integrate the computers into your classroom. You'll do much better if you tie the computers in directly to the required objectives (in Virginia teachers are responsible for teaching the material stated in the Standards of Learning for each grade -- and yep, the Standards of Learning are called S.O.L.s), so when you're setting them up you can show administrators how they tie in directly to what you're expected to teach.
You'll also do much better this way in the long run. You're pacing yourself instead of trying to do everything at once. While your students in the first year won't gain benefits from your computer plans, in the long run, if you pace yourself, you'll reach many more students without burning out.
Re:What is your goal? (Score:2, Informative)
- Little/no IT support
- Lots of expenditure without training
- Most training does not support teaching and learning
- Very few programs specifically, directly support teaching and learning
If what you're doing does not directly support teaching and learning (emphasis on learning), it's not your job. And with a 25-hour job (that's first year teaching with training; I didn't even know what a lesson plan on my first day in my own classroom!), anything that is "not your job" is something you should not, cannot, and ultimately will not do.I highly recommend the Jere Confrey et al.'s "A Framework for Quality in Educational Technology Programs" in the May-June 2002 Educational Technology and Fulton and Honey's "Emerging technologies in education" in the July-August 2002 volume of same. These articles provide a good background and rubric with which to judge technology ideas, projects, programs, and implementations.
Research your ideas first. If they're good ideas, others will help you with them (this is a new field, starved for truly good ideas and overrun with mediocre to bad ones). If they're bad ideas, you'll find out.
Re:What is your goal? (Score:1)
You're new at this, aren't you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, you are going to be too busy the first year to muck about with computers for the classroom. If not, you're probably doing a disservice to the kids. (OTOH, if you get it going in the summer so that all you have to do is wheel them in...)
Are you going to support them? On a teacher's salary? How long until junior wants to see if the class goldfish can live in the CD rom drive? If not, do you have any idea how bad the odds are that someone who works IT for your school will have a clue? Again, good luck.
If you really have new, useful ideas, you could probably do more good sharing them with other teachers, not testing them on some unwitting students. If what you are thinking truly is new (and see my first comment: it probably isn't) you could qualify for some grant money. At this point, getting the okay from your principal is very important.
Finally, I strongly urge you to read High Tech Heretic [amazon.com]. Even if you disagree with his conclusions, you should at least be able to argue against them intelligently.
Suggestions (Score:1)
Also, you're right on the windows front. I would slap FreeBSD on those boxes and use the excellent suites that come with that to get those kids hooked on the better side of computing. (Damn, did that really sound like it did?!)
Good luck! (Score:2, Informative)
That said, I've very successfully taught small kids to build computers from spare parts and installed Linux on them. I then started bringing them up on, what else, Python. We used donated computers, which we stripped for parts. We then tested parts and built new, working computers which the students then took home with them. This was in a summer program, but I see no reason you couldn't do the same with your kids.
I'm interested in hearing the ideas you have for effective use of computers in the classroom. Remarkably, this is a very new idea and you're likely to be on the forefront of ed-tech innovation if you have good, workable ideas.
get the 200$ walmart pcs and load Mandrake 9 (Score:2)
asking the parents to help seems like a good idea, create an invoice and share it with everyone what you've spent on the machines. after a few years of a volutary "lab fee" you'll have those machines paid for.
What about a multihead setup. (Score:1)
I've never tried it, but it seems to me that if you only need 7 or 8 monitors, setup a box running Linux, with 4 Matrox G450 PCI cards. 7 heads for them, one for you (or 8 for them, and you get one running off the AGP slot), A bunch of USB keyboards and mice (unless anyone knows of a better way of connecting that many input devices), and you have the added benefit of having a single box to maintain. Few if any licensing issues, add Wine or VMware, depending on your needs, and you can run the occasional windows app. This'll keep hardware costs down overall, but your box had better be pretty fast and robust.
Plus, using some creative monitoring you can watch exactly what each of your students are doing on the system and the net and easily curb their activities as required without having to run to each PC or run additional software (VNC, comes to mind).
Your crazy idea might be just that.... (Score:4, Insightful)
He went to a local community college, then transferred to the state university and eventually ended up becoming a very rell-regarded biochemist.
You don't need to go to an elite school or have access to lots of high tech gadgetry to learn. Make it your goal to have your fifth graders reading at a 10th grade level and you'll be doing them a far more valuable service.
Don't be a dumbass (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree.... (Score:3, Informative)
LTSP (Score:4, Informative)
Re:LTSP (Score:1)
Wal Mart (Score:2, Informative)
Elementary school?!? (Score:2)
<rant>
School bureaucracies today are among the worst pin headed bureaucracies. School boards and teacher unions tussle over who controls the money, not about education.
In particular, there have been two conflicting fights, one raising test scores to match the Japanese among others, the other reducing class size (which seems more a cycical ploy to hire more teachers and enlarge the unions). No one seems to consider that Japanese schools do NOT have small class sizes, have longer days, go to school on Saturday, and have much more homework.
One of the more recent ways to spend (ie, control) more money is computers in school. Fine, in high school. WTF do elementary school kids need computers for? They need to learn how to do arithmetic on their own, how to write on their own, the elementary stuff.
</rant>
Is the concept of actually teaching passe?
What exactly do you think elementary school kids need to learn?
Easy (Score:2, Informative)
I would get a set of mid- to endnineties Macs (pre G3). Why? Networking is dead sinple via appletalk, there is an absolute myriad on scientific software out there for Classic, and the hardware is dead cheap.
Sites like Lowendmac [lowendmac.com] are teeming with examples how to put older Macs into good use in the classroom.
Don't end up getting tangled up in Linux, please.
Dirk
Oh yes, and if you really, really want to use a free *nix, use OpenBSD. [openbsd.org]
Two nice sites for cheap computers. (Score:1)
Just let me know. (Score:1)
My 2 cents of advice (Score:2, Insightful)
As a new teacher, you have no idea what you're in for. I'm not saying this to be mean. I'm not saying it because I get a kick out of scaring soon-to-be teachers. I'm saying this because it's the truth. Teaching is wonderful, but very rarely a Dead Poets Society vision of inspiration, especially with elementary school students who have a hard enough time with long division. My advice to you is to wait a year before trying anything experimental. Establish yourself at the school. Make nice with the other teachers, especially those teaching the same grade as you. Get in there, and just experience what it's like to be a classroom teacher. You might decide that there just aren't enough hours in the day for your set curriculum, much less additional computer lessons. Depending on what grade you'll be teaching, you might realize that computer-based presentations and data analysis might actually be somewhat over the heads of your average elementary school students.
Once you've been in there for a little while, if you still feel that computers in the classroom is something that you want to do, you will probably need to talk to your school's principal, and maybe even your local school board. This is where your fellow grade level teachers will come in handy - see if you can all get together and do something as a unified grade level. It's one thing if one newbie teacher wants to do computer stuff. It's another if the whole grade level comes up with a curriculum and can present it realistically, with lessons and plans and everything. If you do something like this, your school district may well pay for at least some of what you'll need.
If you feel you absolutely have to do something like this right off the bat, see if you can start an after-school program. That way, the students who want to learn about computers can, and those who don't have a need at this point in their lives can concentrate on their math homework or what-have-you. Back when I was in 5th grade, there were about 10 of us who participated in an after-school BASIC programming course. Nothing against my other classmates, but this kind of thing would have been lost on them. By doing BASIC after school, our teacher had a much easier time of it, because only the kids who were really interested in it were there.
Wait a year. Make some friends. Figure out the office politics at your school (yes, there will be office politics). Find out what has been done before at your school, what has worked, what has failed. See what teaching is like WITHOUT trying to add in more material. You might figure out for yourself why other teachers just aren't able to teach additional subjects.