Over the years I have worked in a number of schools and all of them have spent thousands of dollars on various types of data logging probes. As technology moves on, many of these now sit gathering dust.
Without wanting to this to sound like an unpaid advertisement, the two most useful probes that I have used are the Vernier Go-Motion and Go-Temp probes. These can be connected directly to a USB port on any Mac or Windows based computer – without the need for any other interface.
For students who use these probes to collect data at school, you can download the Logger Lite software free for use at home.