Innovative Financing for Primary School Laptops

Getting Laptops in front of Key Stage 1 & 2 primary students can be a huge financial challenge for schools and local authorities. However, with the Fizzbook series of education focused laptops, Solutions House is able to offer a range of financing techniques that could change the face of technology usage across teaching and learning in Primary Schools.

• Parental Purchase
• Parental or PTA Leasing
• Leasing
• Leasing with delayed initial payment
• Ordinary Purchase
• Ideal for Primary education

Parental Purchase for Primary Schools

Solutions House can offer a scheme whereby parents can purchase a Fizzbook for their child through your school, and their purchase will count to a pool of credits which will subsidise any further Fizzbook or Wireless purchases you place with Solutions House. This system can allow you to concentrate capital spending on students that require more financial help, whilst getting more of your students access to a standardised and education focused laptop.

Solutions House will provide help, text images and materials to help with promoting the Fizzbook to parents and are more than happy to provide on-site demonstrations at PTA events or Parents Evenings.

Parental or PTA Leasing

For this scheme the school, Solutions House and a leasing company join forces to make the most of community support for the school.

Contact us to find out more, call 01928 515 600 or email contact@solutionshouse.ltd.uk

The Intel Fizzbook Spin is a purpose-built netbook based on 1:1 Computing initiatives, which envisions every student having a laptop. The Fizzbook Spin was designed with the primary/ secondary education environment in mind, and is a simple, robust solution with built-in 802.11 b/g/n wireless connectivity.

The Fizzbook Spin enables young students to do research on the Internet, share their work with other students, upload their homework to their teacher, or even record a movie. Its screen can also be rotated and flipped over to become a touch-screen tablet.

How The Fizzbook Spin Transforms Education

Before netbooks, ensuring student access to online resources meant a significant infrastructure investment, either fixed desktops wired into a computer lab or a mobile cart loaded with laptops that moved from classroom to classroom, but could only support a limited number of students at one time. The Intel Fizzbook Spin changes the paradigm completely by allowing every student to leverage a suite of online education resources from their own laptop.

The factors that make the Intel Fizzbook Spin a compelling solution for primary/secondary education include:

• Tough and Cost-Effective: An ultra-compact, affordable, easy-to-carry laptop with durable, drop-proof construction, water-resistant keyboard, and a carrying handle, the Fizzbook Spin is well adapted to the rigors of institutional use. Specialized anti-theft software can be used to ensure that the Fizzbook Spin doesn’t wander off campus or get into the wrong hands.
• Flexibility: Allows classroom teachers to make presentations, guide student’s access to the Internet, deliver specific controlled content and interact individually with students and parents in giving tests or providing feedback.
• Teamwork: Facilitates collaboration with fellow students/teachers on campus, and throughout the community, facilitating the creation of group activities.
• Streamlined Administration: Enables classroom teachers to monitor attendance, prepare lessons, administer tests, control computer-induced distraction and provide feedback on students to management and parents.

The Fizzbook Spin in the Wireless Classroom

The Fizzbook Spin lacks many of the features of a sophisticated office professional’s notebook. There is limited local storage, no high performance, or multi-tasking capabilities. The Fizzbook Spin is primarily intended as a cloud device that accesses resources over a wireless network. It is not a standalone device.

The quality of the wireless network deployed to support the Fizzbook Spin is therefore crucial to its success. Not all wireless LAN (WLAN) systems are equal, and choosing the right network is essential. The whole idea of 1:1 Computing is effectively negated if every student has a laptop, but only a few are able to log in simultaneously; or once logged, on experience slow network speeds or frequent lost connections.

More and more, educational institutions are looking to an Extricom WLAN solution to make their wireless networking goals achievable.

Helping the Learning Solution Work: The Extricom Difference

It seems obvious that for wireless access to be effective in a classroom, 30 or 40 users should be able to log on at the same time and access the same online resources with reasonable performance. Traditional WLANs handle this scenario poorly, however, and can even become unstable when there are high levels of wireless traffic. This is because the system’s uncoordinated APs generate co-channel interference for each other, resulting in collisions and retransmissions, creating even more wireless traffic, leading to frustrating delays, and sometimes total system failure.

Extricom’s patented Channel Blanket architecture avoids these problems, delivering both coverage and capacity at full performance. The Wireless LAN is accessible anywhere on campus, remains stable under heavy load, and is available to every user who needs to access the system. Inside the Channel Blanket, all access points transmit on the same channel, and transmissions are centrally coordinated by the switch, rather than each individual AP. The resulting blankets of wireless coverage provide robust, resilient wireless connectivity.

An Extricom system allows APs to be placed without worrying about overlapping coverage from adjacent APs, and in densities that traditional wireless systems would not tolerate. Retransmissions are minimized, allowing the WLAN to function as efficiently as possible. This ultimately translates to the best possible throughput and performance for large numbers of users.

Extricom is the perfect choice for WLAN infrastructure that supports the Fizzbook Spin and other 1:1 Computing environments.

Features and Benefits

• Simpler Design and Maintenance: Extricom WLAN reduces the complexity of RF surveys and cell planning. All APs use the same channel in the Channel Blanket architecture, can be placed where needed for best coverage, and do not require configuration. The Extricom Wireless LAN Switch coordinates the connected APs to eliminate co-channel interference.
• Robust Connectivity: With every AP on the same channel, the Extricom switch receives multiple copies of each client transmission and uses only the best AP to transmit the reply, making the system highly resilient to RF interference.
• Multiplied Capacity: Extricom WLAN greatly enhances capacity by permitting frequency reuse at high AP densities and avoiding co-channel interference.
• Designed for 802.11n: Extricom switches and APs are 802.11n Draft 2 compliant, and the Extricom Channel Blanket Architecture is a perfect match for the unpredictable coverage patterns of 802.11n APs. This means the full power of

Rather than going into loads of detail about the full product range, here we would like to outline something about our approach to getting you a really SMART classroom.

What is the best way to delivery SMARTs integrated tools without compromising your ability to use other technology?

Choosing the SMART board to fit your physical environment and budget is the easy part, its how you work with it to deliver the curriculum that needs more thought. How much time do you invest in developing materials that make the most of the technology? Do you build an assessment strategy built around SMART response? Do you bother setting up lessons that involve visual touch response, or input by hand through a tablet? Does all of this take me down a single road technology wise?

The smartest SMART classroom we can advise at the moment is combining the SMART board with the Fizzbook Spin. This total classroom solution gives you not only SMART technology at the front of the classroom, but as the Fizzbook Spin comes with SMART Notebook SE, SMART Sync and SMART Response as standard you have a classroom with all of these features:

• All the lesson delivery features you would expect from a SMART board at the front of the classroom. However, with the latest generation board you have touch and pen input from two users at one time.
• All students with access to a fully featured mini laptop, designed for and to survive being used by children.
• A good reason to invest in making in-depth lesson and homework materials in the SMART notebook software, as the students can utilise them on their Fizzbook Spins during and after the lesson.
• The ability to build assessment right into the lesson material, receiving feedback at a whole class level and tracking individual progress.
• The ability to take the individual assessment and set personalised learning goal that students can undertake on their own Fizzbook Spins.
• Full control over all of the computers in the room, including the ability to lock or monitor screens. Making the technology all about the lesson, not the laptop.
• The ability to integrate technology across the curriculum in a way that leaves the teacher in control and makes it worth their while to invest their time and effort in adopting new technology.

To find out more about how SMART and Solutions House can benefit your organisation please ring 01928 515 600 or email contact@solutionshouse.ltd.uk