Glasgow kids get classroom PCs and support

Glasgow City Council has signed a £15.5m, five-year deal to supply its primary and nursery schools with computer equipment and support services from Dell.

From 1 April, nearly 7,400 Dell PCs will be distributed to the city's pre-12 schools (170 primary and 122 nursery) as part of a contract agreed by the council's education services department.

Computers will be located in classrooms for pupils to access online learning resources.

Neil McDonald, ICT manager for the council's education services, told silicon.com: "The main benefit for pupils is to give them access to resources and content that are appropriate to 21st century learning."

He added: "The actual aim is to harness the technology for the betterment of learning for young people and the delivery of effective teaching."

All full-time equivalent primary teachers and nursery school head teachers will receive laptops, allowing them to carry out admin from home and to assist with classroom instruction.

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Dell will maintain the computing network and provide a service desk to manage the ICT requirements of the 292 schools. The hope is this will give teachers more time to concentrate on teaching, rather than dealing with IT issues.

McDonald said: "It [the helpdesk] takes away the pain and difficulty that's sometimes encountered by the use of technology."

Ronnie O'Connor, executive director of the education, training and young people department at the council, said the deal will complement the ongoing project to modernise the entire pre-12 sector.

The news follows the council's recent e-government deal with Cisco to revamp its IT infrastructure.