Laptop...+Carts+and+other+deployment+options

laptops have been arranged in different ways:
Tim Levesque Technology Director Easton School Department ||  ||   || These are supposed to go home with the students..would it be unreasonable to require the students to keep them charged? Maybe put a battery depot in the library to handle those who don't..or a small charging area in a few classrooms? ||  ||   || Instructional Technology Director MSAD #22 207.862.6422 ||  ||   || I think having close to a million dollars of easily stolen computer equipment would require some form of security. (This $ est. is for my school) During the summer where will the laptops be stored and secured?
 * < School || Solution || Vendor || Comments ||  ||   ||
 * < www.eastonschooldistrict.org
 * < Michael Hart

I hate the idea of buying thousands of dollars of computer carts. But they do come in handy in times like:

1. Summer vacation. After reimaging its a nice place to secure the laptops and also allows the custodial crew to move all the carts into one room. Lugging 750 laptops by hand would not be cool.

2. Not all kids will want to take them home. Some kids have nicer machines at home. Where do they store and charge their machines at school over night?

3. Lunch, gym, assemblies, etc........carts are a nice secure place to put a laptop.

If you have a SMALL school carts may not be needed. But my HS is large for central maine........and the campus is large. I remember from HS MLTI 1 that the 9th graders liked having a secure place to put thier laptop when they did not need it at school. When you are a teen and responsible for a $1000 laptop you can get mentally fatigued trying to keep it safe and not lose it.

Some other options: 1. Build your own Carts or shelving. We did that for our lunch room. Have nice heavy duty laptop bookshelf. 2. Use the lockers. Not all kids at my HS have lockers.

I guess schools need to think about logisitics that make it "easy" for the student to have a laptop at school.

Having to worry about where to put it when not use, how to charge it at school, etc can make the machine more hassle than its worth.....which can lead to a bad learning experience for the students. ||  ||   || Technology Specialist for Student Support Windham Raymond School Department RSU 14 ||  ||   || We have discussed this. Students have lockers with built in combination locks. If they choose to not take them home. We have bantered around the idea for adding a power strip to each room for those that need a boost during class. Haven't spent too much time on the subject but those points have been raised.
 * < Peter C. Mullen

Carts for us? Assuming the last batch we bought from Da‑Lite, it would be approx $28,500. 1150 machines/30 slot carts. The cart itself, last time we bought them were $550 or so. But shipped added a lot, and they don't come with power so wiring them up added to the cost as well.

I can't imagine the middle school environment without carts. I don't see the high school environment the same. Would the kiddo's home slot be in his or her homeroom? In high school they might never be in that room except for that. As an example.

Summer? I agree. At the middle school level we gather the carts and fill them, then roll the cart to the proper room. At the high school level, we are thinking about a much more self‑service system. It will be up to the student to come to us with issues. It could work the same way for deployment but I haven't really thought about it much yet. ||  ||   || Technical Coordinator Vinalhaven Schools 207‑863‑4800 ||  || Sams || When the MLTI program first started, we ran out and bought a $1500 cart. Wasn't worth it in my opinion.
 * < Joe ||  ||   || Here's a [|visual assortment] at a catalogue shop ||   ||   ||
 * < Randy Pitts

Since then, I've out fitted the middle school home rooms with a 5 shelf unit bought from Sams. It has casters, adjustable shelves and is heavy duty. Along the sides of each cart, I've hooked up a 6' power strip with 20 outlets. All in all, I'd say each unit, with power strip, cost me about $120. After working with these for a few years, I think a better solution would be to buy 3‑4' power strips for each shelf vs the verticle bar.

I'd suggest placing one of these in the home rooms and library to serve as a charging station. ||  ||   || Technology Coordinator School Union #133 Palermo and Somerville Schools jaques_j@union133.org ||  ||   || I agree, carts are not worth the money. A good low cost solution is open shelving with power strips. Extra batteries and a battery charger in the lab/library, very helpful too. ||  ||   || Winslow Junior High School 6 Danielson Street Winslow, ME 04901 ahutton@winslow.k12.me.us ||  ||   || We also prefer the wire racks with a zip tied power strip. We have some custom made units that ended up severing power cords when the doors were closed, most have had the doors removed now. We have the wire racks in almost every room, On days when laptops are not being used it gives a safe place to rest them (like during a science lab.) (We have purchased them at Sam's, Home Depot and even K‑mart.)
 * < John Jaques
 * < Ann Marie Quirion Hutton

We have some industrial wire racks on wheels that we leave in our Cafeteria. (a local business donated those to us.) The kids place their laptops there during lunch, We use those shelves during the summer to move, separate, image and store laptops. They easily roll into a classroom where they can be locked up.

We added a 5 minute home room at the end of our school day. This is when the announcements are given and it gives the kids time to check out or put away and plug in their laptops…that has helped tremendously with management.

There are about 350 laptops here. ||  ||   || MSAD 31 Howland ||  ||   || For MSAD 31, we have had our carts built by our local Region Woods shop. For the price of eight sheets, 3/4 inch plywood, we can have four units built. Each unit has two sections. Top section is for the 24 laptops with individual slots and the bottom holds the outlet strips/chargers.
 * < Barry Van Gurp

After the build, we do a varnish to the unit and install the outlet strips and chargers. ||  ||   || Educational Technology Specialist Ellsworth, ME ||  ||   || These are great laptop storage units. You can get them in all sorts of cool colors so they work for Responsive Classroom environments. They have awesome ventilation. The half‑life on one of these suckers is almost infinite. They're stackable, virtually unbreakable, and you can nab replacements behind any Dairy Queen or Duncan Donuts. * Be careful where you store them over the summer... Kids going off to college love these things. ||  ||   || Tech Coordinator MSAD 50 Technology Director RSU 13 ||  ||   || Like others we are considering making the students responsible for their own laptops (assuming we opt in which has not been decided). They secure them and charge them. At one of the RSU's 2 high school we've run 10th grade 1:1 this way and students have responded fairly well. We use classroom carts for 9th grade 1:1.
 * < Mark Arnold
 * < Glenn Eichel

Lockers in one of the two high schools should work fine for secure storage. In the other high school we'd have to change student culture. Students do not use locks on their lockers. We'd have some charging available in classrooms and a supply of charged batteries that could be checked out of the libraries for day use. Existing carts (both high schools opted for 9th grade 1:1 4 years ago) would be available for secure, in‑school charging over night. Students who lose their take home privileges would be required to check devices in and out of the libraries.

We hope to be able to combine high schools some day. At that time we'd install lockers designed for 1:1 with built in charging. I don't even want to know how much it would cost to retrofit our buildings for that. Even the cost of the cart solution would prove to be far too expensive. Bretford carts are great but expensive. $800‑$1000. We'd need 30 for two schools. Then there's the electrical capacity. In one school we'd need to have CMP add service capacity so we could install additional outlets. That could easily run $50,000. Realistically, making students responsible seems the only option. They became more and more responsible as I looked at increasing costs :‑)

This solution will cost for extra batteries and charging solutions and locks for lockers in one high school. ||  ||   ||