I've been sharing an idea on this topic that I've seen work successfully
at two schools. First, a school should determine how many hours during
the school day a laptop really should be used for academic work. Is it
2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours during the school day (8-3?).
A new Macbook battery can carry a charge for about 3.5 hours. It may
only be able to do that for about 18 months of use, but typically they
can run that long if the use of the laptop is managed well.
So, consider this idea. If the goal of a laptop program is quality of
use and not quantity of use, what if students didn't have AC adapters at
school? What if the challenge for students was to manage their laptop
and battery use to make one full charge last for the school day?
Of course, there would be exceptions. A student could be loaned an
adapter if the battery is out by the last period (but not every day).
In science, there may need to be adapters for hours of probe data
collection. Batteries that begin to fail will need to be replaced.
The benefit, however, is that the use of the laptops could be more
focused. Additionally, most of the electrical cable clutter in
classrooms is removed. The laptops weigh less being transferred from
home to school and back again. The laptop cases can be narrower because
there doesn't need to be an outside pocket for the adapter. Finally,
the laptops will likely last longer if their use was more focused during
the day, and their use as "big iPods" just before and after school was
reduced.
So, just an idea. I have seen it work successfully, but obviously it's
not a fit for all laptop programs.
Jim Heynderickx
Director of Technology
American School in London
Dave Candelario wrote:
> We're in the process of developing our 1:1 implementation plans.
> I'm very interested to hear from 1:1 schools that have a good solution to
> keeping student laptop batteries charged.
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