After the end-of-year and New Year holidays, Colombian families are preparing for the next ‘season’: back to school. More than 13,700 schools, 300 universities and higher education institutions will open their doors by the end of January.
Approximately 10 million students in schools across the country and 3.7 million students in public and private universities will officially attend classes in the 2024 education calendar.
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And in this new education cycle, technology plays a fundamental role in encouraging children and young people to successfully return to school and accelerate academic performance.
As part of motivations to return to work purchasing school supplies and new technological devices Things that enable the exploration, educational multimedia and creativity that are essential in any educational process.
With the integration of technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, new skills for developing videos, documents and code for content creation, robotics and programming languages for programming, children are facing “the biggest positive transformation ever.” According to Sal Khan, CEO of Khan Academy.
The center of the technological universe for educational environments will always be the computer. The goal is to have a team that, due to its performance and capacity, delivers everything from simple tasks to multimedia design, development, editing or content creation tasks with full efficiency and speed.
In case of PC there are brands like Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Acer and Apple all offer processors or ‘brains’ from Intel brands (Core 5 and 7) as well as AMD Ryzen (5, 7 and 9), with a range of offerings for all budgets. It has artificial intelligence capabilities and works from simple tasks to extremely demanding multimedia processes.
What makes the price difference? Various features all related to the power of the equipment. In the case of Apple we have the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The former features the latest M3 chip with 8GB of RAM and between 512GB and 1TB of solid-state storage, offering up to 80% higher performance than M1-chip Macbook Pro models.
It features 14- or 16-inch displays with Liquid Retina XDR technology and up to 2.5x faster rendering speed (completing a video edit) than previous models.
If your school has STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) teaching methods based on innovation and creativity, or your daughter or son is interested in engineering, design, etc. If you are pursuing a career in these fields, Macbook Pro is a great option.
(You may be interested in: New Dell XPS: unified design, tactile glass touchpad and larger keys)
It is also important to have good internet access speed at home so that children and teenagers can work on their educational assignments online with full efficiency. Most tasks and work take place on highly demanding virtual platforms. as well as sending or sharing large files online.
The ideal is to have a fiber optic connection for two reasons: symmetry, meaning that the speed of downloading things from the Internet is the same as the speed of sending or broadcasting something on the network, and latency. This means there will be no delay between queries while browsing.
On the other hand, you can securely connect multiple devices and simultaneously use the fiber connection in your home for virtual sessions, view educational content, and more. Choose a fiber optic connection with a capacity over 300 MB.
Ergonomic mice and keyboards. To avoid fatigue and possible pain in your wrists and hands, try to make the mouse and keyboard on your home PC ergonomic and easy to operate. Logitech, Belkin, Samsung, Microsoft and others offer models.
Printer. In colleges and universities they need more and more printed things. Epson, HP, Canon are some of the brands. If you have more than one child studying, opt for the refillable ink tank.
External monitor. Extend the PC desktop and organize tasks, jobs, design, edit, etc. It is a very useful accessory to have more work space. Samsung, LG, Acer, Lenovo offer equipment.
Tablet. Another very useful piece of equipment for back to school. Ideal for reading, consuming educational content, accessing study platforms in the classroom. Also for creating content and stimulating creativity. iPad, iPad Pro and iPad Air are at the top of the series with the Apple Pencil option. Android has options from Samsung, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor, among others.
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The price of a computer is directly related to its technical specifications. Consider the following:
Laptop or desktop? For everyone’s safety, the most recommended thing is to have a desktop computer when talking about a work tool. Laptops are also very good equipment but they require more care and attention when used outside the home.
RAM and hard disk. Minimum 8 GB RAM (responsible for running multiple applications simultaneously) and hopefully 512 GB storage, preferably solid state (faster and more secure).
Processor. In the case of Windows there are options from Intel and AMD, they are all very good. The higher the reference, the more power (and higher cost). Intel Core 9 and 7 are at the top of the range, but the Intel Core 5 is a great computer for the studio. AMD Ryzen 7 is powerful, but Ryzen 3 or 5 will also work great for school and college students.
JOSÉ CARLOS GARCÍA R.
Multimedia Editor
@JoseCarlosTecno on Instagram
Source: Exame
