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"Governments and OEM partners in many emerging markets have canceled orders for Intel-promoted Classmate PCs, or have asked to suspend shipments, according to Taiwan-based component makers." Classmate PCs = Ultra-small, ultra-cheap laptops intended for use in classrooms of developing nations.

Do any of you know 'LINE'? as of last months, 80mn users globally (36mn users in Japan) and its pace of growth is exceeding that of any other types of social media in the country (Facebook, Twitter, etc). They target 1) users who have smartphones but not PC, 2) those who are interested in communication emotions effectively through ''emoticons'. If some people are concerned about how twitter/facebook/texting would have adverse impact on children language skill, let's talk about the implication of this thing if kids learn to communicate just by selecting emoticons (whose designs and variety are great by the way) and sending that to each other. I still have LINE on my PC but seeing this rapid growth in my home country concerns me a bit. 

Edutone selects Intel's Classmate PC for K-12 education market.

information appliances and ubiquitous computing

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

Not necessarily education related but extensive research/data on current trend in pc/mobile. (was created probably for those involved in media and marketing)

Although we read and hear a lot about smartphones and tablet PC lately, the majority of the cell phone users still have simpler phones (especially in emerging countries). Even those have SMS function. So..learning activities with these SMS still an interesting topic to me.

This is an article on why the classroom PC is out and mobile learning is in, though challenges are expressed such as getting teacher's on board and properly trained on mobile devices. 

Portal is a fun, innovative 3D first-person game known for its unique physics gameplay and sense of humor. It's over 4 years old now, but still enjoyable and clever. It's been used in education as a way for students to explore physics, and also as a gameworld ripe for student content creation. The game is available as a free download for PC/Mac through 9/20.

"Apple is widely celebrated for making devices as easy to use as they are elegantly designed. What customers probably don't know is that some of these features aren't exactly new-they evolved from software Apple created to help disabled people use PCs. "

The issue of infrastructure and wireless access is mentioned, but not deeply considered in this article. What challenges do we see if this sort of thing is really going to "enable Datawind to educate every schoolchild in India through the world's cheapest functional tablet computer."?

BYOD is an interesting solution, but what is it doing to the school's limited bandwidth?

Start building your own AR experience with this download. I have not tried as I am a Mac

Dang! I have a Mac, too. Anyone in class with a PC desktop/laptop and handheld? I'd love to try it out. Let me know.

Want to know how you spend your time on your computer? Or maybe you don't.  Anyway, heard about Rescuetime.com on NPR this afternoon.