By Ron Coates, 1 April 2004 16:00
NEWS Educational ICT specialist RM has scooped the first of four contracts that aim to bring innovation in IT to schools - and it has been named as sole bidder for a second in Lambeth.
In the £16m, eight-year PFI contract with Warwickshire LEA, RM will provide more than 1,500 teachers with wireless tablet PCs. Classrooms will also be provided with digital projectors and RM will manage an authority-wide network and portal.
Phil Hemmings, RM director of investor relations, said: "The tablets will be used as personal productivity tools by the teachers: to prepare lessons, assessments, and access data and material - for all of the many jobs a teacher has to do as well as actually teaching."
The teachers will also be provided with RM's Kaleidos, which is a virtual teaching and learning environment. Through the managed network, which makes use of a net already in place, they will be able to access material, communicate with other schools in the LEA and collect their email.
Each of the four Pathfinder projects aims to try out different approaches to improving education through ICT. The project in Lambeth will see a large number of students and teachers issued with laptops. In the Newham project, those pupils and teachers involved will be given the laptops.
Hemmings said that RM had not bid for the fourth contract, at Wolverhampton and Worcestershire, as the requirements were outside its experience and expertise.
Comments
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1. anonymous
I am a teacher in Northern Ireland where RM/Sx3 have the exclusive contract to install and manage software in almost all schools (The system is called Classroom 2000).
I wonder if the folks in Lambeth know they will be charged £1500 per PC - for a system I could buy elsewhere for £400. Also, do Lambeth realise they have no choice over software? We are told what we can and cannot run and are charged ludicrous support fees for anything else.
Add to that their blocking of web email so everything I say can be logged, and the blocking of search engines (individual schools must ask for Google it to be allowed through). The on-line forums my students use are also blocked and my desires to have my senior students experimenting with Linux are disappearing out of sight.
It seems like a good idea, but as an IT specialist it is a useless tool in the classroom. Lots of 'groovy' features, but sadly it prevents even the teacher having effective access to on-line material, or 'un-approved' software.
Anyone remember 1984?
2. anonymous
Having used the RM Tablet PC, it pales in comparison to some other competing products around, and when you take into the account the additions you need for it, isn't actually any cheaper than a couple of other options. In my humble opinion, an RM Tablet wouldn't last a term in a classroom environment in the casing I saw.