| |  AlphaSmart Neo
Portable Writing Laptop: Beginning One-to-One Learning in SDUSD
Elementary schools need to start purchasing portable writing laptops such as the AlphaSmart Neo to support younger student's writing proficiency and keyboarding skills. Neo's will pave the way for one-to-one as sturdy laptops that can be dropped and keep on working using only three AAA batteries (700 hours). The Neo can become the starter one-to-one tool providing students daily access to the use and care of a laptop. Through proper planning, a school could make the Neo the first laptop in a backpack that will go home and back to school with students in our district.
Let's look at the bang for the buck as AlphaSmart Neo's currently cost $179 a unit compared to a full-featured wireless laptop computer roughly costing $1300 for a MacBook or a IBM ThinkPad with 3 year warranty. If you assume that most elementary children are typically writing with a school computer a majority of the time, schools using Neo's are getting a greater dollar value per student not to mention greater accessibility in the kids hands. Many of our schools presently have anywhere from 6:1 to 10:1 computer to student ratios that often translates to a student touching a computer no more than an hour a week at school. These ratios haven't changed that much since the early 1990's long before we had laptop computers.
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