[Fsfe-uk] Fsfe-uk] Essex laptop for pupils plans

[MgtDee]

I am a school ICT coordinator and am considering ways of extending internet 
access to pupils who do not have it at home. How much does it cost, a laptop 
with open source software? I had never really considered it. I already provide 
pupils with open office CDs. When I buy laptops or PCs for school or anywhere 
else I am generally told that they cannot be sold without an operating system 
ie the current version of MS Windows....
Margaret Derrington





Dear all,

anyone interested to follow this up and to find out more details?

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3514384.stm

>From the article:

 New drive to give pupils laptops
[...]
 Essex is the latest education authority to urge parents to make
 tax-deductible contributions to a charity so schoolchildren can have
 laptops.
[...]
 The Anytime, Anywhere Learning initiative - pioneered by software company
 Microsoft - involves the setting up of a charitable "e-learning foundation". 
[...]
 The authority hopes shortly to announce major sponsorship by a computer
 firm. 
[...]

This might be a good time to approach them and to find out, if this is yet
just another marketing trick to get kids into using proprietary software. We
could surely offer them CDs with OpenOffice and a free operating system for
the laptops. :-)

Any volunteer?

Thanks,
Marc