Cobar High School joins the Digital Education Revolution
Wednesday July 15, 2009
Cobar High School’s Librarian Paul Green and Yr 9 English teacher Sarah Piper..
Cobar High School staff recently took delivery of 12 laptop computers as part of the NSW Government’s $16.5 million Digital Education Revolution laptop investment for Year 9 teachers and students.
The first roll-out of new state-of-the-art wireless ‘mini’ laptops to Year 9 teachers
commenced this month and a second laptop roll-out will occur later this year so that approximately 60 per cent of teachers in all secondary schools will have individual laptops by the end of the year.
Around 92,000 students will also receive the ‘mini’ laptops, with the first Year 9 students to get theirs in Term 3.
“From 2010 to 2012, each Year 9 student starting at a NSW public school will receive a laptop,” Minister for Education and Training Verity Firth recently announced recently.
“More than 200,000 laptops will be distributed over the life of this $386 million program.
“Teachers and students will receive the same laptop to ensure consistency and each device includes over $5,000 worth of innovative Adobe and Microsoft software.”
Cobar High School principal Peter Cochrane said the initial 12 computers issued to the school have been allocated to the librarian and the Year 9 Advisor along with two each to Year 9 teachers in all staff rooms.
Librarian Paul Green and Year 9 English teacher Sarah Piper said on Friday initially they have been pleased with the capabilities and features of the smaller sized laptops.
“They are smaller than an A4 sheet of paper, which is a good size to sit on a desk,” Mr Green said.
“They have six hours of battery life so students should be able to use them during the day and then go home and charge them up at night ready to use again the next day.
“And with 160GB of hard drive, they have plenty of guts,” he said.
Ms Piper said with the range of programmes on the computers (that includes Microsoft office, Adobe, Photoshop and Windows media Player as well as a camera) she could see the laptops will be very beneficial for Information and Communication Technology lessons.
“And they come with hard cases which will help to protect them in school bags with things like drink bottles,” she said.
All the teacher and student laptops are password protected with filters to block inappropriate material and encoding to ensure they are not a target of theft.
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