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     Laptops vs. Desktops. What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?

     At our school we have one to one computing in almost all our programs. Most of our students have desktop computers. We only use laptops in one of our programs. Our high school students attend 3 hours a day and our adult students can attend 3 hours or all day.

     In many of our computer labs, we also hold night classes, and so that allows the availability of the rooms to be used in the evenings. Some of our classrooms are large open areas and there is a concern of laptops being left out and possibly walking away. In addition, in the one program that we do use laptops, the students are not allowed to take them home.

     Another advantage of desktops is the computing power. In some programs we use highly intensive programs for video production, computer-aided drafting, graphic communications, pre-engineering, etc. The processing power that comes with the desktop models usually allows us to get more bang for the buck than we would if we bought the same laptop.

     The program where we decided to utilize laptops was in our CISCO networking program. In that program the curriculum is web-based. Students take their computers from station to station. Although the students have practice computers to configure, etc., there was a history of memory chips disappearing or getting switched, keyboards mismatched, and general cannibalization of the student computers. Having student laptops has seemed to resolved this issue.

     We have not progressed to the point of thinking about having laptops that students can take home. We have checked out computers to students who have been home bound for sickness or other reasons. We are currently moving from purchasing our computers to leasing our computers, but this is something we may want to consider.

     Our Dental Hygiene program is different in that the students are juniors and seniors in college that attend our school but are enrolled through the OU Health Science Center. They are required to purchase their own laptop. This is very nice, but would not be practical for the other programs. Because the computers are macs, we don’t have too many issues.

     I know that our initiatives are different than most public schools, but I wonder what others have found to be successful. For the most part we are buying our teachers laptops. That allows them the flexibility they need to work on their curriculum at home or at school. We also have a 3-year rotation on all of our computers and that seems to work well for our budget.

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