kevin has just announced that under his government every school will have a computer for each student + funds to keep them up to date

highschool IT support is in for a big boom

kevin really cares for the kids and their education

this on top of the nice tax return for buying computars for kids at home too

and he wants us to have better broadband

im no longer voting for better tax guy, or nigel (freemarijuana)

im voting for kev

what does he mean? a computer for each kid in the school, so 800+ pcs or a computer for each kid in the computer/CAD/whatever class that uses computers?

kev ftmfw.

its not all economic fear mongering and trying to get people to vote with their wallets, its about the people!

That's just stupid.

We don't need 1200 computers in our school, we already have 200 or so, and most of them go unused throughout the day.

It's an empty promise that will either A) never happen, or B) waste a metric f***ton of money.

he said each kid will have their own computer at school.. but it was just announced, so no detail yet

he then went on about all education benefitting from computers

i forgot to mention how awesome kevs kiddy care tax refunds were

its not all economic fear mongering and trying to get people to vote with their wallets, its about the people!

Who would have thunk that is what a Labor leader would do!!!!!!!!!1

We already have close to that at our school. Hope we still get the $$$ (I need a quad core)

yeah computers are gonna do a lot for the peeps on the tools. kev is a tool

The schools that already have it in place will have their equipment upgraded (to what, I don't know)

upgraded to VISTA!!!!

How about Air Conditioners ruddy..

how about a seat for all the students first, public schools are way too over crowded, you would only need a PC for 1 in 4 students due to most classes being done w/o them
f*** desktops - get the kids a laptop and make them understand the responsibility of having to look after something expensive

i think more teachers would be better then a whole heap of pcs.

get the kids a laptop and make them understand the responsibility of having to look after something expensive

i think that is a lesson you only learn when it is something you bought and paid for, not something owned by the school or provided by your parents.

Is anyone else suspicious when they announce massive s*** like this a couple weeks before the election? I don't know s*** about politics, but it seems to me that policies like this would take years of planning to implement.

PS, it's a stupid idea

and he wants us to have better broadband

They both want us to have better broadband.

The Labor broadband plan uses a stolen telstra document as its basis. The original Telstra FTTN plan that was rejected by the ACCC. The costing (around $8bn) includes Telstra contributing $4bn and the Government contributing $4.7bn of taxpayers money, including the $2bn communications fund that the current Government has set up to enable future upgrades to infrastructure - Labor will use that all in one go for a broadband network. (The idea is that it returns around $400m a year in intrest and that should be used for upgrades.

The Government's plan is to open it up to the private sector, and not contribute any public funds (Apart from $900m for a seperate regional WiMAX rollout that has already started)

I think the Government has a better BB plan... Personally.

Also, they're both improving childcare subsidies... Labor increase it to 50% paid quarterly, Liberal leave it at 30% but prepaid (ie. they pay it to the chilcare centre, so you only pay the 70%).

Don't get all hung up the Labor campain announcement!

From news.com.au

KEVIN Rudd has announced a $1 billion plan to put more computers into classrooms as part of beefed-up policies on education and climate change at Labor's official federal election campaign launch, where he also presented John Howard as being past his use-by date.

..

Spelling out more of the fineprint of his "education revolution", Mr Rudd announced a plan to provide access to a computer for every child in Years nine to 12. "I want to turn every secondary school in Australia into a digital school," he has said.

One computer for each student in grade 9-12.

NEWS.com.au readers have wondered what Labor's health spokeswoman Nicola Roxon would have made of Mr Rudd being late, after her roasting of Tony Abbott's tardiness in their debate.

hahaha.

"This sort of reckless spending must stop," he has said. His promises today have been tallied at $2.3 billion but over the course of the campaign the major parties have each made more than $60 billion in promises.

Just goes to show he'll say whatever he likes as long as makes him look good.

last edited by mongie at 16:10:05 14/Nov/07

Also, I went to a high school sponsored by Toshiba.

Having laptops that you can take home or to class or whatever isn't all that because the teachers never adapted their lessons. Also, kids treated them like s***. They were constantly getting stolen, vandalised or lost. The school had them insured and they would get replaced but once that 3 year policy was up they couldn't insure them anymore and they slowly disappeared.

Don't get all hung up the Labor campain announcement!

but big kev is telling me exactly what i want to hear!

if johny would give me something to look forward to, i mite get all excited and throw him my vote

Working in the area, most schools can not afford 1:1 ratios on student machines. Where I work is not poor and we have around 1pc to around 4.5 students. Increasingly this ratio has not been enough. The cost of the PC is only the tip of the Iceberg, the costs of infrastructure and licensing and even internet are killers. Most schools have limited support teams as well.

A lot of schools, even private ones, can't afford to run a 3 year replacement cycle even on their lowered ratios. Some school do run laptop programs where 1:1 is maintained, but the students(parents) are usually responsible for this cost.

We actually identified in our strategic plan that in the not to distant future students will generally speaking own a mobile computing device, and the school would be responsible for providing infrastructure not PCs. eg. Wireless, with apps being provided via Blade, Citrix or VMWare style solutions for application deployment along with a much larger focus on open source options (part of providing equity in education).

So I can actually see a cheaper alternative to this, will be using thin clients with blades or even Citrix (or other technologies), to emulate a 1:1 ratio. Thin clients have an extended life cycle and they can actually have a ratio of many students to 1 real pc. But maintain the illusion using 1 student to 1 thin client. But to achieve this, they will need some big data warehouses and a solid nationwide broadband.

A nice dream, but imo an expensive and unachievable one.

Why does every kid need his/her own PC though? That is just a monstrous waste of cash in my eyes when they will probably sit dormant for most of the educating time.

thin clients would have saved schools bazillions also
centralised hardware, software and support

worst case a monitor/keyboard or mouse breaks and the IT support guy replaces it, problem solvered

f***ing computers for every student.

Lame! I DEFINETELY don't think primary school students should have computers, learn basic education, seriously...

Its only for Grade 9-12 CHUB, L2READ DUDER

what a stupid, stupid plan

a) what the f*** is wrong with a pen
b) its stupid
c) computers aren't teaching tools, i doubt any teacher will tell you its easy to teach with laptops in the room
d) its f***ing stupid
e) a billion dollars could go a long way to developing a decent nationwide curriculum which is a lot more effective than people knowing how to use wikipedia


less computers in the classroom imo

hey guys guess what

MONGIE CARES ABOUT HIS BROADBAND

A nice dream, but imo an expensive and unachievable one.

Why would you want 1PC/kid in the school?

Students don't need computers.

I tutor maths and english students in yr 11 -12 and they can't add/subtract without a calculator and speak using crippled MSN/noob slang.

Computers, equipped labs are ok... but TRAINING/educating people on them is sickening.

Wrong thread pave, and also, I care about the entire election, I just don't like the idea that people are preaching false information.

CHUB is right, my school has about 1 comp : 5 students and we get at max two computer lessons a week.


And you know what 90% of my classes do on computer lessons? Screw around.

Pay teachers to educate kids better, don't hope computers are going to magically help kids where an experienced human being could do the same.



QAX sucks major balls.

Mr Rudd announced a plan to provide access to a computer for every child in Years nine to 12. "I want to turn every secondary school in Australia into a digital school," he has said.

Mr Rudd announced a plan to provide access to a computer for every child in Years nine to 12.

provide access to a computer

access to

access

We had 'access' to computers 10 years ago in School...

A) whats QAX.

B) Scooter, I think you may be misinterpreting the line...? (MAY)

This would be a sickeningly decadent waste of money, assuming it were actually done.

lulz

Next he'll promise every businessman/woman a PDA. WOO

I'd rather they spent a billion dollars on health and fixed up public health.(yes i realise a lot of it isn't a federal problem).

Or, if they want to really spend it on education, get more AUSTRALIAN teachers. And i'm all for reduced pre-paid child care.

Post-Pay (IE claim back on tax) would seem like one of those things that people who didn't have accountants would gloss over very easily.

giri, i was thinking you'd prefer aircon for schools over computers

kevin has just announced that under his government every school will have a computer for each student + funds to keep them up to date

What a f***ing a****** and waste of f***ing money. Not every student at a school needs a computer 24/7...

Giving every student computers wont do anything unless the teachers start changing their traditional lessons and start using their heads for some real activities.

seems like a pretty dumb idea to me.

Being that the Teachers are not always technical, its more a case of Students teaching Teachers

the computers in schools are already dog s*** he'd just throw even more in there to not work or be abused

best off upgrading / fixing teh f***ing current ones before throwing new ones around.

Being that the Teachers are not always technical, its more a case of Students teaching Teachers

QFT. Sad but true.

Alot of the pre-service teachers now are younger and have grown up with computers and the internet (i'm one of them). If they can still do their job (behaviour management), kids prepare to be learnered.

i can see it now, all the kids chatting on msn instead of listening to the f***ing teacher.

worst f***ing policy ever, I had bugger all need for a computer at school and when I did need one, it was there.

Alot of the pre-service teachers now are younger and have grown up with computers and the internet (i'm one of them). If they can still do their job (behaviour management), kids prepare to be learnered.

Shame the teacher didn't tell you that there is no such word as "alot"... please don't teach my children that word.

On topic -> I don't know anything about politics or the education system, but this sounds like an awesome idea!!##!

can see it now, all the kids chatting on msn instead of listening to the f***ing teacher.

worst f***ing policy ever, I had bugger all need for a computer at school and when I did need one, it was there.

WTB: spidz

i for one have missed spidz rational conservatism

Shame the teacher didn't tell you that there is no such word as "alot"... please don't teach my children that word.

i laugh.

i for one have missed spidz rational conservatism

I'm right in the centre!

giri, i was thinking you'd prefer aircon for schools over computers

I know that was a random dig at me, but it's a better use of the money. Too many really hot queensland january/feb days where you just can't concerntrate due to the heat.

When I first heard this announcement I said, 'that's fkn stupid'. At first I wasn't sure why I said that Then the more I think about it the more I agree with what I said. Tis such a waste of money, it would never get implemented properly. So many hidden costs then simply putting computers in a room.

Many, many teachers would need to change the way they do lessons to use the computers, and many of them wouldn't. Those that want to would need to learn how.

Not to mention the added electricity bill for the school for stacks of computers that would probably get left on 8 hours a day waiting to be used.

Extra IT staff for the schools. You get 100's of computers in a school, you'll need ways to stop kids from playing games and all sorts of other activities. That would require competent IT staff.
Do all these computers go on the students desks? They'll need to be put somewhere, that takes up room. Most schools I went to didn't have spare rooms/tables/chairs/electricity points for stacks of computers.
There are so many other things that the money could be spent on instead, with better efficiency.

Tis sad to say, if Rudd makes decisions like these what else would do. :/

all computers are good academically speaking is printing s*** off

everything else should be conceptualised in the mind or with pen and paper

the only exceptions i can think of are IT classes and hardcore physics classes. But in my physics classroom there were about 3 computers and that was enough for the 20 kids ..we used them sparingly .. plot a graph once in a while.

whenever we got a chance to use a computer, it was basically "sweet... let's f*** around!"

yeah especially when I get service jobs on systems that are owned by the state school systems. Little f***ing grubs literally steal any component that isn't hardwired to the chassis.

If your gonna give a PC to "every student" then give them one - each
If parts go missing, it's their problem. If they f*** up the OS by installing dumb s***, then - oh wait - It's THEIR problem.

Hardware fault, then organise a good rapport with a distributor.

THIS IS MADDNESS

This isn't spartargh!

such a f***ing dumb idea

I say we put the greens in power. They can drive the schools back where they belong, in the stone age without power and other evil pollutants.

a) WTF IS WTB CHUB!

b) I don't have a problem with computers in the classroom, but we don't need 1 per child, it will just cause problems.

WTB is want to buy nub!