life into older computers, can run on as little as 48 MB of memory,
opens up tens of thousands of applications for you and your students for
nothing except a little time. I personally have a 5 year old laptop
with Ubuntu, while the 4 month old Dell running Vista is rarely on
because Ubuntu boots up faster, runs faster, the battery lasts longer
and I have a ton more applications available to me. Take a look - I
guarantee you'll be surprised.
The students are too precious to let them waste a year without the
needed technology.
Best of luck - and I'd be happy to offer any help.
On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 09:11 -0800, Tracie Banner wrote:
> Budget? What is that? In January, our district will be $1.3 in the hole. We
> cannot purchase ANYTHING. Our computers are so slow, need memory, and keep
> crashing. Doesn't matter because we can't buy anything!
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Taffee" <Steve_Taffee@castilleja.org>
> To: <ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
> Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 9:04 AM
> Subject: Economic Recession and Tech Budgets
>
>
> Hello everyone -
>
> I am curious to know if and how the economic recession is affecting your
> technology budgets and programs for the coming year.
>
> We are re-examining a number of our practices including email (FirstClass
> versus Google), productivity suites (MS Office versus Open Office and Google
> Docs), databases (FileMaker client versus FileMaker web access), web servers
> (hosted site versus our
> own Drupal server). These are good things to examine, anyway, and we would
> have done so. But there's no doubt that the economy has built a fire under
> us to look at these sooner rather than later.
>
> On the hardware front, we'll be purchasing more RAM to nurse computers along
> for at least a year beyond their normal retirement schedule (typically 3
> years for laptops, 4 years for desktops), and will think twice about
> CPU-sucking upgrades to
> applications and OS that we would normally roll out on an annual basis.
>
> Our administration has heard from other schools that they, too, are
> retrenching by delaying hiring, minimizing tuition increases, setting aside
> more funds for tuition assistance, and - cutting tech budgets.
>
> So the challenge for us, perhaps others as well, is to keep moving forward
> with technology initiatives, to continue to provide great professional
> development, and not lose sight of "21st century" learning and teaching.
> Indeed, as an environmentalist I
> have often thought that much of the 21st century could well be marked by
> scarcity rather than the abundance we've grown so accustomed to.
>
> So once again my question to the group: how are you coping with the current
> situation as you plan for the coming year?
>
> s
>
> -----
> Treat each piece of paper as precious and reduce waste - don't print
> electronic documents.
> -----
> Steve Taffee 650.470.7725 (office)
> Director of Technology 415.613.6684 (mobile)
> Castilleja School 650.326.8036 (fax)
> 1310 Bryant Street steve_taffee@castilleja.org
> Palo Alto, CA 94301 www.castilleja.org | taffee.edublogs.org
> Women Learning, Women Leading
> -------
>
>
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Matt Burkhardt, MSTM
President
Impari Systems, Inc.
502 Fairview Avenue
Frederick, MD 21701
mlb@imparisystems.com
www.imparisystems.com
(301) 682-7901
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