Hatrack River Forum: "Ender's Game"-like "desks" a reality?

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Posted by AlanMJones (Member # 11477) on :

I think we're not far from "Ender's Game"-like "desks" being a reality.

Between the more powerful cell phones and laptops becoming smaller (like the Asus Eee and the OLPC) it's only years, not decades until every school child is provided one standard.

The most powerful use of them would be to customize education to the learning styles and current skills of the user.

What do you think?

Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :

I think it could be done fairly easily with existing technology. But that you wouldn't spend a lot of money to give every student a fairly expensive piece of technology, especially given the state that a portion of simple textbooks get returned in every year.

Basically I think what we're talking about amounts to a tablet PC with a stylus interface and some kind of local, wireless network connection. Given the users, you would need to make it difficult to hack, difficult to break, waterproof, and shockproof. Perhaps an interested private educational institute could accomplish such a thing now. I suspect that having students essentially on a computer for their entire schoolday would be a contraversial point, however.

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

Haveyou ever seen Stargate Atlantis? For all intents and purposes thats what Ender has except with more ram.

Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sterling:
I suspect that having students essentially on a computer for their entire schoolday would be a contraversial point, however.

Yes, god forbid that we should train them for working life. [Big Grin]

Seriously, laptop+tubes+IM, that's a desk.

Posted by Tammy (Member # 4119) on :

Alan, quick question, Did you go to Hollister High School?

Just need to get this thought out of my head. [Smile]

Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :

Ender had one of many dumb terminals with low-end gaming modules connected to a mainframe with a low-speed/capacity connection to other mainframes.
Anybody using a slower or less sophisticated system is either off-Internet, using a phone connection, hanging on to a long obsolete machine, not into gaming, or some combination of four.

"Yes, god forbid that we should train them for working life"

Which consists of 5hours of web-browsing, blog updating, email-checking, gameplaying, and 3hours of thinking about working.

[ February 13, 2008, 10:01 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aspectre:
Ender had one of many dumb terminals with low-end gaming modules connected to a mainframe with a low-speed/capacity connection to other mainframes.
Anybody using a slower or less sophisticated system is either off-Internet, using a phone connection, hanging on to a long obsolete machine, not into gaming, or some combination of four.

"Yes, god forbid that we should train them for working life"

Which consists of 5hours of web-browsing, blog updating, email-checking, gameplaying, and 3hours of thinking about working.

Sounds like a average days work to me.

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

I think it would be wonderful if we could give all our kids tablet PCs, with their textbooks on virtual CDs. All of this technology exists now, but, of course, the price is prohibitive.

Lots of schools already experiment with having all the kids have laptops. Tablets are better for an in-school setting, though.