Connected Learning

Reported today in The Australian, that the NSW Dept of Education has chosen Gmail to provide it’s 1.5million student email accounts.
Whilst many many say this is a “brave” move away from traditional Exchange server environments. I would congratulate them on being realists and not spending huge money on infrastructure and maintenance when this is how most students will interact with mail accounts anyway. Software as a service is currently looking like the way of the future and this roll-out will be interesting to watch.

The Australian IT section today covered the NSW decision to fund laptops as part of the Digital Education Revolution funding. The story also covers some of the other options available such as thin-client and desktop.

NSW has decided to supply high school students solely with laptops due to their portability and features.

“The portability of laptops provides students with flexible learning
options,” a state Department of Education and Training spokesperson
said…With laptops you can get a 50 per cent reduction in power
consumption,” Mr Cronin said. “I’m not at all surprised that NSW has
chosen this path.”

He said laptops would eventually replace textbooks as more curriculum went online”