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Tying into discussions this week about bringing access to mobile devices to all via non-prohibitive costs, while still reaching a set of bare-minmum technical specs for actual use: India's "$35 tablet" has been a pipedream in the tech blog-o-sphere for awhile now, but it's finally available (though for a price of roughly $60). Still though, as an actual Android color touch tablet, with WiFi and cellular data capability - I'm curious to see how it's received and if it's adopted in any sort of large scale

I had heard months ago that India was creating this, but was not going to offer it commercially - rather, just for its own country. Just like the Little Professor (Prof Dede) calculator, when tablets get this affordable, educational systems can afford classroom sets of them and then use them regularly. But to Prof Dede's point - can they do everything that more expensive tablets can do? Or better yet - do they HAVE to?

I think this is what they're aiming to do - all classrooms/students across the country having this particular tablet. They won't be able to do everything today's expensive tablets can do, but I think they'll still be able too to do plenty. This $35 tablet's specs are comparable to the mobile devices we had here in the US in 2008/2009. Even back then, we were able to web browse, check email, use social networking (sharing pics and video too), watching streaming online video, and play basic 2D games. But even beyond those basic features, I think this tablet will be able to do more than we expect from something at this price point and basic hardware, for 2 reasons: 1. Wide-spread adoption of a single hardware. If this thing truly does become THE tablet for India's students, it will have such a massive userbase that software developers and designers who create educational software will have to cater to it. They will have to study this tablet and learn the ins-and-outs of its hardware in order to deliver content for it. "Underpowered" hardware is able to deliver experiences well beyond what would normally be expected from it when developers are able to optimize heavily for that particular set of components. This is why software for Apple's iPhone and iPad, and games for video game consoles (xbox, PS3, wii) are so polished. For the consoles especially, all the users have the same exact hardware, with the same features and components. Developers are able to create software that is very specialized for that hardware- opposed to spending their resources and time making sure the software works on a wide variety of hardware (like in the PC world). With this development style in mind, and with a fixed hardware model remaining widely used in the market for many years- the resultant software is very polished and goes beyond what users expect from it. This is why today's game consoles, which have been around since 2005/6, produce visuals that are still really impressive and sta

Uche, you keep posting stuff I have a problem with- OK I understand that BYOD policies may not be so great but I really believe that familes should shoulder some of the costs for hardware since degredation is such a problem. The schools can have agreements with vendors to provide certain laptops or tablets for a certain price point and they can design their systems to support these items. Parents are expected to purchase backpacks, binders, and school supplies. When parents can't provide these back-to-school supplies, schools cover it. The same should be for computers. Speaking as a middle class parent (refer to above article) I believe this is an important investment in our schools so that they can focus on hardware support and software implementation/ integration.

I still believe that a system properly designed could mitigate some of your concerns. In reality, schools can not support any device that a student brings in. They are capable of supporting a certain number and if they build relationships with the vendors to sell those devices that the school is capable of supporting then families will be aware that the school will offer the best deal on the items that are compatible. Every year the school recommends items for back to school supplies. If the laptop could replace all of the binders it might be worth it. There are many factors to consider but the biggest obstacle is that schools maintain such old equipment because of their budget woes. Even when we can purchase the latest and greatest software, the computers can't run it.

What a great debate you guys are having! One point worth considering is that typically the parents are responsible for purchasing the supplies, while the school is responsible for providing the content (textbooks, workbooks, handouts, worksheets, videos, etc). In the near future these devices may also be the primary sources of content, replacing textbooks altogether. I would hope perhaps funding for textbooks could be transferred to funding for these devices. I would also hope that the price of these devices drops significantly (is the $35 tablet in our future?). Then of course the question of who pays is less important. In my job producing educational video for publishing companies, I spend way too much time dealing with various formats and compatibility problems with browsers, so I'd love to see a future where this becomes more standardized.

A contrarian view. "Some education experts say that the push to equip classrooms with computers is unwarranted because studies do not clearly show that this leads to better test scores or other measurable gains."

First of all - the girl in the picture of this article is reading Nancy Drew - who else spent most of their childhood with their head buried in a mystery series? :-) Secondly, I cannot tell you how valuable mud was to my childhood. Had I not been at a camp every summer where I was able to play around in mud and run through the woods all day, I would not be the person I am today. I think I did most of my growing and much of my learning in informal environments such as camp. It sounds to me like this school is trying to replicate those learning experiences...in a classroom. Not saying it's the way to go...but certainly an interesting model. Thanks for sharing!

Waldorf philosophy is different approach. For example, children learn to write first before they learn to read. As a result children may learn to read as late as 8 or 9. It's based on the anthroposophy philosophy. Children's who parents value these things will do well in a school without technology. Children who are plugged in at home would have a difficult time. This is effective for private school but not public school.

Superb episode on 60 minutes on iPad Apps for autistic children

There's an emerging "app gap" in which affluent children are likely to use mobile educational games while those in low-income families are the most likely to have televisions in their bedrooms. Parents are increasingly allowing their young children to use IPads and IPhones apps for learning and entertaining.

Now this service/interface seems to offer real potential -- it's flexible, it's based on a dynamic interplay of different applications -- it's been around for a few years now -- anybody have first-hand experience with it?

Being a 2nd year part-time student, I already took David Rose's UDL course last spring. My group project for UDL was exploring VoiceThread-- understanding its current feautres and capabilities, testing it out in a real world situation with some students, and envisioning changes to fix shortcomings plus new features. Overall, we thought VoiceThread was really cool! Could allow students to communicate in different kinds of ways (text, voice, submitting video statements, drawing-- whatever someone preferred or was comfortable with) and enabled a growing transcript of student dialogue in reference to a piece of content. But there was a real learning curve- in figuring out how (as a 'teacher') to create an original VoiceThread using our media. And then students had to figure out the interface and tools available to them as they used VoiceThread to browse a stream we created and comment on it. As of last spring at least, I felt it was a bit cumbersome. Really wish it was more intuitive so both creators and viewers could jump right in and get right to communicating. Haven't gone back to using it as of late, but I hear they now have iPhone/iPad access!