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from the of-course-it-is-impossible-to-get-online-using-a-desktop dept.
US Laptop Shortage Could Derail Remote Learning:
As students and teachers prepare for a return to in-person learning for at least some of the time this fall, many of the nation's schools are facing shortages and delays for laptops and tablets needed for online learning, an Associated Press investigation revealed.
Lenovo, HP and Dell, the nation's largest computer companies, have informed school districts that they are short nearly five million laptops.
[...] Last month, at the request of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed sanctions on 11 Chinese companies, including Lenovo, AP reported. School administrators have asked the Trump administration to devise a solution because remote learning without laptops is impossible.
Lenovo has informed school districts of the supply chain delays and the trade controls set by the Commerce Department, which would cause another slowdown. Lenovo declined to respond to an inquiry from AP.
Have any Soylentils run into this?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @04:25PM (6 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday August 30 2020, @04:41PM (1 child)
You can tell there a difference between portable and transportable, can't you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @05:16PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kazzie on Sunday August 30 2020, @05:28PM (2 children)
There's a slight argument that laptops don't require as much space to set up - they're not sending desks home with the students too, are they?
Plus, if you're doing any teaching by videoconferencing, you'll need to source extra hardware and get the students to plug it in. Laptops typically have the webcam and microphone built-in.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30 2020, @09:04PM
We're using a laptop as the home schooling computer, but still have a wired big monitor, keyboard, mouse and webcam plugged into it - ignoring the bits on the 2014 Dell which probably cost $4K new - simply because the $20 keyboard/mouse and $25 webcam work better than the stuff built into the laptop. Granted, it's a bunch of wires, but they don't get in the way where we've got it installed - and that installation provides a clear "we are doing schoolwork here" area which seems to help with focus and attention, and resignation to forget about outside interests while doing schoolwork.
On the Raspberry Pi in his bedroom, our 10th grader may watch a homework video - but he's always wanting to open other tabs and do other things while the homework is playing, something about the defined schoolwork space makes a big difference - even if it's just in the middle of the family room.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @09:20PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:07PM
I think they're talking about bulk inexpensive laptop purchases for an entire school district, not individual purchases.
Our district has been providing a $150 Chromebook to every student when they enter high school. With COVID-19 they wanted to extend that to all students in all grades, but couldn't get that many additional Chromebooks on short notice.
Getting a desktop, keyboard, mouse, and monitor for $150 is also a challenge. You can certainly manage it on the used market - or at least you could in February, I imagine demand has surged since then. But I doubt they could equip the whole district that way either.
And for example, I have four kids and I work at home. Since I'm in the tech industry, I already had four desktops and three laptops in the house, so we're fine. But I imagine many families with N kids have N-1 or N-2 computers, and that makes remote learning a challenge if all of the kids are supposed to attend Zoom conferences at the same time.