Here there is a strong movement to provide every student with a notebook
computer at an affordable price or payment plan. The advantage of this is that
unlike the iPad or a book reader, it is not a passive device - you can do work
on it it, not just soak up someone else's.That's what put me off the iPad a bit
- too passive.
The local Catholic girl's school is into iPads in a big way - perhaps they want
the gels to be passive? :-) They don't let them out to read them in sunlight.
And you can't do web research on a Kindle.
There is no 'tie' - the government here went for the cheapest possible option,
which will never be Apple. In tablets, I can see them buying up shiploads of
cheaper Android devices instead. Does Acer make one? They won't be agnostic -
they'll use the lowest cost unit available, even if it's crap and doesn't work
properly. Then they'll hire scuds of people to fix them and keep them working
because that money comes out of a different bucket. This has ever been so. I've
worked in temporary transportable classrooms with a smart board and a ceiling
mounted data/movie projector. But there's no money to fix the leaking roof, the
smart board was broken and there were only three sets of cables in the entire
school for the forty plus projectors so they were hardly used. Someone else
always had the cables.
Institutes of learning are businesses - even the government ones work on
business models these days. In a tertiary economy, Education is not an ideal or
a given right, it's an industry sector and a big money spinner. Welcome to your
future.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 22/07/2011, at 1:12 PM, Scott Gomez wrote:
> Much to agree with, there. However, I'm not advocating for NOT using
> tablets, books, readers and/or PCs as fits what needs done. Rather, I'm
> dismayed to find that institutions of learning, rather than promoting
> openness, are so willing to advocate for people effectively tieing
> themselves to a company which markets a device so closed, and for which one
> must pay, and pay, and pay.
>
> Ever try and read a tablet like the iPad in bright sunlight? Why not use a
> reader like the Nook, or the Kindle, which actually *can* be read
> effectively that way? And I could go on, but I won't, other than to say
> this: Institutions of learning should be inclusive, and operating system
> agnostic.
--
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