Ahh - this one - the matter of the age and specification of these computers has been raised with BECTa and they are thinking about it. It seems to me to be bad practice to encourage schools to dump perfectly useful equipment. For example... a Pentium 133 with 64MB of RAM, and a 10MHz network card is a perfectly acceptable LTSP terminal. It is my opinion that the specification should be down to functionality rather than hardware. It might be possible for Schoolforge to offer an alternative specification in this format? rgds, Richard Rothwell Head of Computing Handsworth Grammar School Chair Schoolforge UK --- "G.Harris" <gh@maidenhill.gloucs.sch.uk> wrote: > I understand it is a 1 to 5 ratio. Becta has a
minimum spec. on their site for Curriculum PCs. We had a free survey of our equipment last year as part of a Becta pilot survey. It was very detailed and we got a nice printed report out of it which I could place in front of the head / governors.
Off the top of my head:
Windows, MacOSX, Linux / Unix count; 1024x768 screen res.; Minimum 32K colours; 100Mbit ethernet; (they condemned all our remaining 10Mbit only machines and said they should not be included in count);PDAs / portables / tablets used by the children count, not staff stuff; old Acorn stuff doesn't count; any computer over 6 years old (and any server over 4 years old);
The usual stupid stuff about tracking all ICT expenditure will also be included but as usual they haven't managed to create a national accounting code for ICT related stuff which gives us a headache analysing all the departmental accounts...quote "This task should not takes more than 1 hour" or similar...ho, ho, ho.
I can give more detail if anyone wants it.
They also said that because online assessment is coming for KS3 and 4 by 2007 / 8, with trials before that, we should have a minimum 100mbit backbone - we have 1 / 2 Gigabit anyway - and a minimum of 2Mbit Broadband external connection.
Does anyone know where I can find anymore info
about the 1-4 ratio for
this autumn. Various people in my LEA are giving us different information, about what we can count, whether we have to etc etc.
thanks,
Robb Bloomfield
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