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Recommended Laptop/ Tablet for PGCE?

After seeing other threads regarding making typed notes, I am tempted to upgrade my faithful-but-very-heavy 15" laptop to something lighter or a tablet with keyboard so that I won't break my back carrying the laptop + books everyday through rush-hour London Underground!

Do you have a recommended model that can hopefully last me into NQT and beyond? My budget is £500 or under. I know some schools use iPad which has lots of apps and can take videos/photos for evidence, but not sure how compatible it is with my Office programs and creating resources.

Or would a Windows-based model be better? I am looking at Surface 3 or Lenovo Yoga which seem to have all the features of a tablet (with keyboard and camera) but run a full Win 8 so Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. would all be available.

Which one would you recommend? (Or that tutors/ mentors prefer the old paper journals/ notepads anyway?) Thanks a lot.

Reply 1

myrtille

Original post by hana&feather

Most importantly you need something with MS Office for Powerpoint, etc. It's likely that if you get any resources from colleagues they will be in MS Powerpoint, MS Word, etc. so it's a lot of hassle if the formatting changes when you open it with other software. Also, you might be given a lesson plan proforma from the university to fill in, which will probably be MS Word. I only ran free OpenOffice before my PGCE and had to buy Office because it was getting really annoying.

Even in a school which uses iPads, the computers used by staff to prepare lessons are likely to be PCs. In my school, every pupil and staff member has an iPad, but we still use PCs for preparing lessons and for SIMS etc. Student teachers on placement at my school are loaned an iPad for the duration of their placement so they can use them in class. iPads are really useless for preparing lessons on, to be honest. They're a great tool for some of the different apps you can use in class, but you're still better to prepare resources on a computer (the main teaching apps I use also have websites where you can upload your resources from a computer for pupils to access on an iPad in class).

I suggest you research a few laptops you'd be interested in, but don't buy anything just yet. You may be lucky and find that your placement school provides you with one. Personally I never took my own laptop into school - on my first placement I was provided with a school laptop, and on my second placement there were desktop PCs in a staff workroom area - I prepared all of my lessons on my laptop at home then brought them in on a memory stick.

I'm still using a small HP laptop (measures 11.5 inches across) which I've had since January 2011. It's getting a bit slow but still does everything I need it to. So if your laptop is still OK I wouldn't rush into buying anything new.

Reply 2

redmel1621

If it is mainly something portable you are after then I would probably just buy a small netbook. I tried using a tab for uni and gave up after 3 months. I hated it. My netbook was far easier to use, partly because of word/powerpoint, partly due to not having to 'attach' a keyboard.

I had a Dell Inspiron mini 10 for years and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately one of my kids threw a pint glass of juice all over it and killed it :frown:

I now have a Lenovo Thinkpad which is a lot bulkier than my Dell was.

Sorry I can't offer any recommendations, although I can say that ebay have decent deals in their clearance stores like Currys/Argos etc... I'm sure you could pick up a half decent netbook for around £200 :smile:

Reply 3

beanbrain

I'm one of those lucky(?) people who have a laptop provided by my training provider, but before I knew that, I had to buy a new laptop because my old one was severely disabled and needed replacing. Since I had a gut feeling I'd be starting teacher training this September, I researched my new laptop on the basis that I wanted something good and easy to use.

The one I've ended up with is a Compaq something or other (they have stupid codes instead of names!). It has 1 terabyte of memory space (which I was informed was the most important thing), 8GB of RAM, an OK processor unit and measures 15.6 inches. Its fairly large, therefore, but not at all heavy. After 6 months of use, it is still working exactly as it should be, but I'm being a lot more careful with this one than my old one, and defragmenting it regularly.

It has a webcam built in, and all the other bits and bobs you want from a laptop. It doesn't have a CD/DVD drive, but I figured that I could do without that. It cost me £250, and for an extra £100 I could have upgraded to a model with a better processor and a CD/DVD drive. I chose not to because I didn't think I would really need to.

The only thing it didn't come with is Microsoft Office already installed, which I'm certain my older one did. But that isn't too expensive to purchase the basic package :smile:

Reply 4

hana&feather

Thank you all it's certainly helpful. My current laptop (2yo) isn't too bad and not that heavy on its own but the laptop + books combination started to hurt. It think it's a similar model to the Compaq one obviously lower spec due to age. I brought a 4-yr Office 365 student package a couple of years ago when I started my MA so can take it to another machine. (Best investment from my NUS card.)

I'd probably go for something like the Surface or the Asus Transformer that runs a full Windows, with touchscreen so I can use a stylus to do some handwritten notes as well as typing essays. I will wait a bit then (only 6 weeks to go :eek:

) - was only tempted because of the sales, but on hindsight it may be better to wait until my money arrives from student finance just to be sure!

From your comments, while an iPad sounds nice, it just seems so unnecessary for the purpose of the course.

Recommended Laptop/ Tablet for PGCE?

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