Comparing laptops

The aim of this exercise is to get students to think about how to rank similar items and to come up with ideas on how you could judge the 'best' item. Each student has to think and offer opinions about what criteria could be used to judge laptops and then argue and agree what criteria will actually be used. They need to be prepared to give and take.

To prepare for this, you will need to draw up a list of approximately 6 - 8 laptops for students to compare. You can either print off sets of details of the specification for each laptop, or print off the make and model of each laptop or the hyperlinks to them. This task will work well for any similar hardware e.g. desktop computers, mobile phones, tablets and so on.

There are lots of examples available online that show how review sites compare products. These can be used to start off the lesson, to illustrate how comparisons could be made. For example, http://internet-browser-review.toptenreviews.com/ compares different browsers. This site compares smart phones: http://www.gizmag.com/smartphone-comparison-2014-1/31787/

1) Students work in pairs. Each pair needs a piece of paper. They should come up with a list of at least twenty things they think are important when buying a new laptop for a student who is going off to university. They could use the Internet here to help them.

2) After a fixed time, you should then ask students to rank the list from the most important thing to the least important.

3) Next, bring pairs together. They should as a group discuss and agree a ranked list of 12 criteria to use to compare laptops from their two ranked lists. Again, set a time limit for this task.

4) Now hand out the specifications (or makes and models or hyperlinks) for the laptops you want them to compare. Students should produce a neat table and using the criteria they identified, compare the laptops.

5) While the students are comparing laptops, the teacher can write some questions on the board e.g. which laptop is the best laptop, what are the best three laptops and in order, what are the two best laptops and the two worst ones, and so on.

6) When all students have completed their comparisons, a class discussion can take place, which discusses the questions written on the board. Did all students agree? Why not? What criteria did all students agree were important / not important? Can the class agree a definitive list of ranked criteria from all of the lists created? Is there a 'correct' best laptop? Why / why not? Are there other ways to compare laptops? When deciding to buy a 'big ticket' item, why is it important to read a range of reviews? If this comparison was not for a student but e.g. a housewife, a 10 year old, a businessman, would that make a difference? Why? How? Was this an easy task? Why / why not?