Analyzing the use of laptops in the first month of class

This is a translation of a post originally published in Spanish on the sixth grade blog of school #37, Canadá, in Uruguay. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the XO laptop one month after its implementation at the Canadá school in rural Uruguay.

Use of Laptop:

Weaknesses:

They freeze up and it is slow to fix them
I lose my work every time they freeze up
They are very slow
The keyboards have different layouts
The battery life finishes quickly
It continuously disconnects from the internet and I lose the connection to the web page I am reading
You can only connect at school because the wi-fi antennas don't have much range
It lacks a Flash plug-in and so there are websites and activities that we can not see
We can not upload images to make slideshows.
It takes a long time to load images.
We are not able to see the videos on the Internet
We lose the desire to work
I see warnings online that say “these seem to take longer than usual,” which doesn't allow us to work continuously.
We are losing a lot of time in class because of the delay.

Strengths:

Free access to the internet
We can write, take pictures, record audio, film, paint, and edit images.
The text and images from the web can copied and pasted in some cases
Easy to carry.
We can work collaboratively.