$1,000 Multimedia Equipment Shopping Spree

I have been given the assignment of selecting multimedia equipment for a hypothetical school media department or library, and have been given a budget of $1,000. One of my goals of this assignment is to use as much of the money as possible. I have chosen to represent a small rural school district which has been experiencing funding problems as a result of the recent recession (hence only $1000 to work with). The district has only 500 K-12 students, housed in two adjacent buildings; an elementary building with classrooms for the K-5 children and a larger building which contains the middle and high school and the administration offices. This larger building also houses the school media center for all grades. Because I have limited space and funding, I will choose the most basic equipment which will serve the district’s purposes and will be adequate for all students. At Office Depot there is a 3M MPro 110 multimedia projector that retails at $229.99. http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/920565/3M-MPro110-Micro-Professional-Projector While it is low-cost, it is portable and it could be transferred among classrooms according to teachers’ needs. I am assuming that each classroom has a desktop computer to which this projector could be connected. The next item I want for my school is an all-in-one printer, which is not only a printer but also a scanner and copier. There are some inexpensive models around, and several are sold by Office Depot. The Epson Artisan 810 Color Flatbed All-In-One Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax sells for $249.99 (it’s on sale too). http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/229357/Epson-Artisan-810-Color-Flatbed-All/?cm_vc=c5303 The advantages of this model include the fact that it is a wireless printer (no need to buy extra cabling for it); it allows one to print photos directly from a digital camera using the PictBridge port. I have now spent $479.99. The next piece of equipment the school needs is a good digital camcorder. The particular unit I have chosen is a Canon DC310 DVD camcorder, on sale at Office Depot for $349.99. http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/386415/Canon-DC310-DVD-Camcorder The Canon is special in that it records on a DVD, which is convenient since you can play the disc on any other player. I also believe our school library needs a Blu-Ray DVD player. Our current player is an older model which cannot play the new disks. Best Buy sells a player manufactured by Insignia, model number NS-BDLIVE01, priced at $149.99. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9245514&type=product&id=1218067604633
The Insignia model is fairly inexpensive but plays Blu-Ray discs; Blu-Ray is becoming more popular because it is a higher definition than ordinary DVDs. The total now comes to $979.96. In order to top it off, we need DVD-R discs for the camcorder. Office Depot has a package of Memorex discs available for $14.99 (20 discs). http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/518245/Memorex-DVD-R-Recordable-LightScribe-Media/?cm_vc=c5302 The total is now $994.95.