do schools need fast computers?
 

Allright. In my state, victoria, in which I do not currently live,
the opposition has blamed the govt. for not having enough computers, and the ones they have are slow, old ones.
Now, my argument is this: do schools NEED fast, new, lots of computers?
Sure, it is nice to have them, but do schools really need this? Do you need all the students hogging the computers playing games when another student has homework to do? When trying to instruct a class, does a teacher really want to have to keep telling johny in the back corner to not play solitare, to pay attention? I don't think so. Do all students need personal access to a computer (generally speaking, not for computer classes.)

tell me what you think. Do schools need the latest, greatest computers?

titanium_geek

I don't like the answers to the pole. They certainly don't need the latest and greatest. What they have may be horribly inadequate, though. The ones at the junior high school I went to could barely run Internet Explorer.

What I think they need is whatever it takes to get the job done, and then a little extra, just in case.

I wouldn't necessarily say they need the latest and greatest, unless it is served for some type of purpose, educational reasons, etc.

Like Brane Ded mentioned, I agree they only need to be as fast as to what their purpose is going to be.

:rolleyes: So how slow and how old are these computers?

Why do they need the newest, fastest computers, or any computers at all, when the teachers don't even know how to use them or how to use them as teaching devices? They would probably just collect dust (we're talking about below college level, right?)

Dude, Im from canada. And did you know that the ENTIRE elementary school had given EVERY kid a apple laptop? EVERY kid. I think it is the dumbest move in the world, FFS most of the time when a class goes to a computer lab it takes them twice as long to do anything. Now all kids have laptops. This is among the dumbest moves ever made.

Computer oriented courses are tought all the time below college level. I took at least five computer classes in high school, one of them being Computer Science.

Of you mean how to use windows? Oh oh oh. Or a typeing course? Get real man, you dont need high quality computers to code in or write in. High speed comps are for gaming, thats it.

Media.

i feel a Pentium or low cheap athlon xp comps are all thats needed (my old school had lots of these, took WIN95 like a year to boot up, then we also had new WINXP comps, .... they were just stupid, the only reason they needed the newest comps was to get WINXP to run reasonable well (reasonable for it at least)

any cheep (say $400 comp) will do fine for teaching material, just hook them up as terminals get some good athlon xp 2500+ (right now you can get these like for $75) for the servers, then get a few good comps in the art lab with good 3d support for 3d graphical design/CAD and whatever you need the better comps for.. and 100MHz comp will run a office suit, and web browser (maybe not at the same time.. but you don't need to do severe multitasking in school, just a web browser, office and your set)

Wow! Do you know that almost no high school offers a media course which actually does anything? Do you think you need a g5 64 bit with 8 gigs of ram to edit your videos you shoot in class? NO. You need maybe a 2.0 p4 with 1 512 ddr. That fine for the plunking you do in schools.

Besides which, if your school offers a true media course which ACTUALLY needs professional equiptment, it should have ONE lab for that, and thats it. The others dont need to be fast.

Dont kid yourself here, you arent a producer for movies, you dont need the best. You dont make humongous movies, and if you do, thats your problem. To edit 10 minute clips of movies on an old computer may take a while, but it works.

umm, i never said anything about movies (at least i didn't mean to),, and i only said put some comps in the art place (like half a lab!), of goodish comps (athlon 1500+ should be good enough),. just to edit 3d stuff (some school offer it i think?)

but i never actually seen a computer department that says to teach comps actually teach anything.. the teachers just sit around and say "ok, make a card", so the next 5 days we just do whatever we want, and in the last 5 minutes actually work to type and press "print"............ but you never know, some school might actually need good comps for teachings of 3d stuff (like $700 comps) still much cheaper then any comp with M$ on it as those go for like $1500 for the same hardware!

Nah, I was talking to baldorg not you :)

Yeh, your right. Cheapos are good for schools now, but why do you need a g5 or fx-51 for schools needs? You dont :)

<rant>

I agree with most of ya. What do jr. high and high school students need with computers? Elementary school level students have zero need for them. At that level, it's just a pacifier. A computer lab that allows students to do some basic word processing & some Pascal or C programing is about all that they realistically need. I'd go one further and eliminate or highly restrict Internet access as well on all those computers since there's little of real educational use on the net (IMHO) beyond some sites that offer help with coding. I've seen what co-workers children are asked to do for homework on the web and I was appalled. Teaches the kids to trust whatever they find on the web rather than forcing them to develop good solid library skills, which are much more useful when headed to the next level. With respect to the word processing, a lab that was open only during school hours would be largely useless, so perhaps focusing more computers to a public library setting for use with homework would be more appropriate.

I suppose it would be useful to consider what level of computer skills are really necessary at a college level, and the answer is not much. If you can turn on a computer, aren't scared of it, can point and click, that's about as far as most need to go in most majors. Even in computer science, the mathematics background is far more important so it would be better to funnel the money that would be used for computers that would quickly devalue and become obsolete into funding for more math and science teachers. Much better to come out of high school with a solid foundation in Calculus, Chemistry and Physics than to know how to surf and play games! Beyond that, if I were to fault my education at a HS level, I'd say I didn't have the composition skills that college demanded. It's a little off the topic here, but the school system in Ann Arbor, while perhaps ahead of the curve at the time in computers was lacking there. The English department never taught proper paper structure. When I was tutoring HS kids in math, on occasion I'd look at their English papers and would have to teach them the basics of structure... I guess my point being that often times schools take the popular easy way out even if it costs more money while real skills often just take time and attention.

</rant>

If that was in reply to my post, then you better read it a little bit more carefully. If it wasn't, nevermind.