Southwell Wins Toshiba Contract

Southwell school won the Toshiba tablet contract, which means that we are the envied recipients of 60 Toshiba tablets, worth a whopping $270.000, $4,500 each. Some very lucky children are going to get a big surprise when they return to school next year. And no it won't be my class. The tablets are going to the year six syndicate, our year 7's (the whole syndicate (150 of them)) will be using netbooks again next year. The majority of which will be the 30Gb, Classmate, Windows version. That is if they are taking the option to purchase via the school, but in reality they may bring any make/model of notebook/subPC to school plus mobile device of their desire.

Toshiba are carrying out a 2 year research project with the University of Waikato, looking at the effectiveness of the tablet in education. You bet guys for $4,500 it had better be successful! As you can imagine I'll be doing my own research $4,500 tablet v's $700 netbook. Definitely a David and Goliath battle in the making. I can just imagine my commentary now, small town, country boy slays rich, fat, old man. However I'm going to be really good and not jump to any ill informed opinions. Price, size and weight aside, conceptually tablet/touch screen technology has a lot to offer education and I'm intrigued to see how this technology fits with the world of web 2.0.

Apparently the next generation of both the EeePC and Classmate are set to come with tablet technology - so if you are keen to see how the research goes keep an eye on my good friend and Year 6, colleague's blogs - toshibatabletsin6tb and Life = Risk

Let the battle begin, hey TB.