School spies on kids through student laptops

[kandrathe]

... I'm not sure that public schools should be the ones providing the laptops, but if laptops are part of the curriculum the school should provide the laptops.

Here where I work, where possible, we are moving toward zero-client devices and offering various desktop flavors (Mac, Windows, Linux) over IP. The price per unit is down under $100 retail, and in volume you can procure them for about 1/2 that. You still need a keyboard, screen, and a mouse, but they are pretty cheap and many home TV's are now VGA compatible. The lifespan of the solid state device is also much greater than a laptop, or even a desktop. Still, it's not "mobile" computing, which I think is an unneeded convenience for K-12 anyway. My TI-33 was as significant an investment when they first became available. There are many, many pluses for PC over IP.