Advice on buying technology for students

Is your district releasing a similar letter?  Kids to Santa: We Want an iPad for Christmas

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

As the holiday season nears, gift buying will move into high gear for many of us. I am sure that some sort of technology device is on many of your children's wish list. New products like the Amazon Fire and Nook Color tablet along with low-cost netbooks, iPod Touchs, and tablets are adding a lot choices (and confusion) to the low-cost computing scene. Smartphones (iPhones or Androids) are popular and powerful.

I thought it might be helpful if I outlined some specifications of any device you might buy students if you'd like them to use it to complete school work (as well as play Angry Birds and send text messages.)

While I won't recommend specific models or even kinds of devices, I would encourage you to buy a piece of equipment that meets these requirements if it is to be used for most school work. Your child's device should have:

• an 802.11x wireless networking capbability (the district provides filtered wireless access in all buildings to students)
• a virus protection program (if running a Windows or Macintosh operating system)
• a color screen
• an onscreen or external keyboard or other means of entering text
• an audio port for earbuds or headphones
• a minimum 4 hours of use from one battery charge
• a full functioning, recent web browser (Firefox, Explorer, Chrome, Safari) that will allow it to access GoogleApps for Education tools and documents, our student information system student portal, Moodle 2.0, the state's content databases, and the library catalog along with other e-resources the district provides

You may wish to consider getting a device that has

• either internal or external data storage capabilities (USB port for flash drive or an internal storage)
• ability to run Flash (this is to view some online videos and animations until all sites convert to HTML5)
• machine-based productivity software (Office, Open Office, iWork) for use when an Internet connection is not available
• the capacity to run graphing calculator software or apps

Smartphones with about any OS, netbooks, iPods/iPads, e-books, or a full-sized laptop (new or used), should do the job. At the current time, we do not provide e-books for dedicated e-book readers (like Amazon Kindles or Barnes & Noble Nooks) since these devices both only read books that are purchased for the specific device. 

We do not have district-wide rules related to the use of student-owned technologies, but individual buildings and classroom teachers will have guidelines for their use. You might wish to check your child's teacher or principal for specific rules.

Whether it is writing a paper, solving a math problem, researching a topic or collaborating with fellow students, technology can help your child do his or her school work and develop good technology skills along the way. 

And hopefully also play Angry Birds when the studying is done.

Happy holidays,

Your technology director

Comments

[Jen Hegna]

I feel a copy, paste, send in the future. (LOL) This is something I have thought about quite often as parents are doing their shopping. Just recently, I couldn't believe, that the Black Friday Mendards Flyer had a $79 Android Tablet for their Door buster special. It was a Polaroid, and I had never heard of it...but still - it is interesting. Is your district sending this?

Jen

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Jen,

Once it goes past the principals, I'll be sending this out. if you or any reader can use it, please do - no citation needed!

Yeah, Menards is getting high tech - I see they have wireless keyboard cases for iPads for $29 too!

Doug

[Kenn Gorman]

Thanks for the list - I just convinced my department to reimburse me for the Kindle Fire I purchased and will be using next semester for my classes.

I also wanted to thank you for not suggesting any one platform or device - I think one of the best ways to get more technology into classes is to create a 'generic" list like you did, and let students (and parents) decide how they want to access the information.

I am looking forward to the first week of next semester when I inform my students that my classroom is an "open tech use" room. (...also wondering how often I will find and confront students who are not using their technology devices for academic uses...)

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Kenn,

Good luck with your new classroom! Let me know how you like the Fire. I am tempted!

My suggestion about classroom discipline and student-owned devices is having collaboratively designed rules governing their use. I've addressed this if interested.

http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/issues/Taming_the_Chaos.aspx

Doug