http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/28/stories-from-main-street-montvale-school-ditches-books-chalkboards-for-laptops/School going completely electronic.
The VGA projector that the teacher uses will consume perhaps 500 watts.
Each of the students' laptops will consume 75-100 watts each, for a total of 1500-2000 watts for a class of 20 students.
Conversely... a single sheet of 8.5x11 paper requires a mere 17watt-hours to produce. Source:
http://eetd.lbl.gov/paper/ideas/html/issues.htmAnd there's no lead solder, no mercury, no caustic laptop batteries to manufacture and then dispose of.
Cars aren't our problem.
It's the technology creep into our lives that is using all the energy. Especially the wasted technology like this:
Seven years ago, while Andrea was still in elementary school, Pascack Valley became the first high school district in New Jersey to give every student a laptop.
Elementary school? Laptops? Sheesh.
“If you were to walk around our classes, you’d see students using Google Docs to share documents, to peer edit their papers. You’d walk into a science classroom and they may be using a Wiki space so that they can their data that they’re getting from an experiment,” says Gunderson.
I understand the value of digital word-processing.
But using a computer just to use a computer to get a job done... is stoopid.