Hastings
& St Leonards AEZ
Stuart Old | ICT
Technician
Through
the ICT Project, Schools without Walls, the EAZ was looking to
purchase laptops and approached various suppliers.
Rock were able to meet the required specification, within a tight
time frame, and quoted a reasonable price. It was a bonus that
Rock loaned the EAZ a demonstration model to enable them to test
the machine with in-house software before making an order.
The
EAZ works alongside East Sussex County Council and it was important
that the laptops met their minimum specification of Pentium III
1Ghz, 128Mb RAM and Windows 2000 - Rock supplied this in
the form of the Sigma Si model. To save much of the setting up
time, the EAZ supplied Rock with a hard drive image so that this
could be copied onto all new laptops before delivery - this
has saved hours of work.
During the last 12 months the EAZ have purchased 80 Rock laptops.
40 of these are travelling around the zone’s primary schools
on a half termly basis, with the goal of the laptops being used
for 90% of the school day. As pupils in years 5 and 6 use them,
the laptops have to be robust to stand up to hard Hastings and
St Leonards Education Action Zone was launched on 1st September
2000. The EAZ offers support to 17 primary schools and 5 secondary
schools and 3 special schools.
Another 12 of the laptops are currently being used in our Excellence
Challenge project. This gives families who have children in Yrs
12 and 13 the chance to borrow a laptop to help with the pupils’
studies.
The remainder are used for training sessions for EAZ and school
staff. These laptops are either be used in the ICT Suite at the
EAZ offices or are taken out on location into schools. The courses,
led by the zone’s Website Editor and ICT Trainer, include:
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, using the Internet and web page design.
The EAZ are now using Rock as their main supplier of laptop computers
and they are currently evaluating the higher specification Rock
Xeno laptop.
The EAZ have had to return a small quantity of laptops for repair,
but once contacted, Rock offer a very good collection, repair
and return policy within 10 days.
For more details on the Hastings and St Leonards Education Action
Zone please visit their website at http://www.hstleaz.net/