I notice that my local MicroCenter now sells a dual-core PC with 2GB of RAM for $350; adding in $100 for a switch and $50 for ethernet cables; and using K12LTSP and donated machines for thin clients; and for $500--the cost of a single PC, less than the cost of a single Mac--one could provide a 1:1 student-to-computer ratio in every classroom. Computing becomes so ubiquitous that it is no longer necessary to ration it via the old 'schedule an hour in the computer lab once per week' model.
Peter Daniel Howard wrote:
Um, OK that was a dream...a cyber charter school is just an online school that supports home schooling and/or flexible schedules for say atheletes, not a school that uses the charter approach to divorce themselves from district management/oversight, and in the case dreamed about, from district IT management/oversight.What we need is the concept of a Charter school that applies primarily to IT, but maybe you have to do the whole Charter thing to have that.I think I will take this as encouragement to contact any charter schools in Ga just to see if they can more easily do IT things like Opensource that break from district/county IT management.Best, Daniel Daniel Howard wrote:Cyber charter schools? This sounds interesting...Can you or anyone else elaborate? If there's a precedent for a school to become independent of their district IT department without having to go through all of the paperwork for curricular charter status, that would be of great interest to this group, I suspect. DanielMark Rauterkus wrote:Hi, I think that the questions about homeschooling are important.Likewise, it might be most productive to ask many of the same questions about "charter schools." There are many 'cyber charter schools' that have budgets and the capacity for hiring programmers, teachers, and rely upon computers that are given to the students / families.-- Ta. Mark Rauterkus Mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:Mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> http://Rauterkus.blogspot.com http://Elect.Rauterkus.com