|
|
P&C Northern Sydney Region |
|
|
Technology |
|
Contact Us pc-nsregion-owner@yahoogroups.com
Join Email
Newsletter Group – email: pc-nsregion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Alternative
TinyURL addresses for this page: http://tinyurl.com/pandc-technology or |
Australian
schools are taking part in a federal government program to provide wireless-braodband
laptops to senior students. NSW students to get promised laptops Sun
Herald 30.11.08 Every senior NSW public school
student will get to keep a mini laptop. Some will receive
their custom-built computers, powered by a wireless broadband network, by the
end of term two 2009. Students will be able to keep their computers after
they leave school. The laptops
in NSW public schools will be supplied under a bulk contract. This is an efficient
way of buying computers, with the cost being around $600 each as I understand
it. The computers are described as student friendly, but are nowhere near top
specification. The concept
of keeping large amounts of data on your hard drive is under challenge from
remote (ie not at your house or work) “data farms” and “cloud
computing” – see article link below. People may
have a variety of devices, laptops, hand held etc from which they can access
their data anywhere via broadband internet. No more synchronising between
devices, or carrying data around on memory sticks or DVDs. People have
experienced this type of technology for quite some time now when using gmail
or hotmail, where you can access all your emails from anywhere in the world.
These systems are getting better and have greatly improved storage capacity.
They are attracting more and more people away from programs such as Microsoft
Outlook, which is clunky in comparison. Broadband
speeds offered by Australian suppliers such as Telstra and Optus are unfortunately
still slow and expensive by world standards, but eventually they’ll
improve and make “data farms” and “cloud computing”
really attractive. Cloud
computing can also use the rapidly improving open system applications which
provide the functions of Microsoft products such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint
and Access, and other applications such as Skype, Facebook, etc. This will result
in the use of these programs for free, or much reduced costs, without the
constant need for individaul users to update. The applications will reside in
the computer cloud, further reducing the need for storage on your own laptop
or device. I can foresee
that the next generation of student “laptops” will be much
smaller devices, costing $100 or less – and it may only be a couple of
years down the track. Student
personal devices will be increasingly linked with school systems, such as the
NSW DETs Connected Classroom technologies, which include
interactive whiteboards and video links. See more links
below. David Hope President,
P&C Northern Sydney Region Email: pc-nsregion-owner@yahoogroups.com
Cloud computing ascends the mainstream SMH
19.02.09 This developing technology may quickly render
strategies to give every student a fairly expensive computer obsolete. Worth
a read. LINKS from this story Google's cloud browser Chrome now has 10
million users Microsoft's Live Mesh lets you
synchronise your devices Connect your Mac products
through MobileMe:
Web desktop AirSet creates your cloud
computer Amazon's EC2 cloud
service for web developers Other
Sites OpenOffice.org provides open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many
languages and works on all common
computers. It stores all your data in an
international open standard format and can also read and write files from other
common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free
of charge for any
purpose.
|
PHOTO
REPORT |