Why can\u2019t Alphasmart, Apple, Dell, Intel, or even Leapfrog, create a portable learning tool for students?\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 This does not strike me as terribly difficult.\u00a0 Surely there is a willing market of schools and students who would want such a device.\u00a0 So why did we not see the perfect device appear at Macworld yesterday?<\/p>\n
If I have not made it clear in some of my previous posts, I believe ubiquitous computing is a must in schools today.\u00a0 Anytime anywhere learning is crucial for both students and teachers to truly integrate technology into their day.\u00a0 One of the main problems with one-to-one laptop programs is the question of cost-effectiveness: does it really make financial sense to give a student a $1000+ laptop?\u00a0 Some of the fallout from doing so is often a culture of fear of not using such an expensive device.\u00a0 If the school has paid so much for a computer, the students better be using it 24\/7.<\/p>\n
It would be preferable, in my opinion, to buy a $300 device that was smaller perhaps than a full laptop and yet did all the things a student might need to do.\u00a0 While several devices have emerged very recently I am still not convinced anyone is taking this very seriously.\u00a0 Apple would have been my bet, with their history of serving education, but they seem to be getting away from that.\u00a0 Switching to Intel processors and abandoning OS9 has rendered hundreds of excellent educational software titles in our school\u2019s library completely useless.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, I happen to think that OSX and the bundled iLife suite currently offer students the best learning tools for education today, but even a basic Macbook is around $1000.\u00a0 Why not, Apple?<\/p>\n
The OLPC<\/a>, Intel\u2019s Classmate<\/a>, the Asus EEE PC<\/a> and the Everex Cloudbook<\/a> are all entering this market, though the first two are for emerging markets and the latter seem more for cheapskates than students.\u00a0 I have nothing against emerging markets nor Linux but I do not see any of these as a perfect device.\u00a0 I guess I think we need to depart from the \u201claptop\u201d idea.\u00a0 Something that is part iPhone, part tablet PC, part EEE PC, part OLPC and part Amazon Kindle<\/a>.\u00a0 Touch display, pen interaction, built-in camera, webcam and video cam, web browser, small form factor, rugged and lightweight.\u00a0 All for $300.\u00a0 Is that too much to ask?<\/p>\n Clearly, yes.<\/p>\n But someday soon.\u00a0 If not Apple, then maybe Alphasmart, or Leapfrog or some new company.\u00a0 I think perhaps the big guys are too married to the laptop form factor.<\/p>\n The Macbook Air is nice though.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t say no to one myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I awaited Steve Jobs\u2019 keynote with much anticipation. I tried to stay away from the predictions but was ken to see if Apple would come out with some sort of ultra-mobile, sub-notebook, Newton-like device. The Macbook Air is gorgeous but not what I was hoping for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[39,47,50,60],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware","tag-hardware","tag-learning","tag-mac","tag-portable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}