Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga
I think what you are asking for is very excessive for an educational device. I would make specific criticisms, but I need some context first; is this for elementary school, middle school, high school or college? Would this device be provided by the school or brought by students? If brought, would it be mandatory? If provided, would students be allowed to take it home? Questions, questions...
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It is certainly not excessive. For me this would be the future.
Each student having his/her personal Laptop/E-book for working on in school, out of school, to check out books out of a library, ...
This would range up from elementary school all the way up to university.
How the thing would get to the users, bought themselves, state funded, ... doesn't really matter (hopefully the latter) But costs for such a device drop if produced in mass quantity. If you take the average school population of the world, I think you will have a giant market, even bigger than the one currently existing for normal PC's.
This device's goal is to replace normal books. But also provide a student with a personal laptop which can do more elaborate things than only displaying books. Thus a touch e-ink (for only displaying books (low energy) and a touch LCD screen to provide more elaborate color instruction and displaying video.
Also a run time of one day should be expected, you can always recharge at night (and probably have some spare batteries at the school, just in case a kid forgets to charge it). Also the weight would not be a terrible problem. Provide a handle to carry it around, and even at 5 kilo's it would be still managable it is the only thing that kids would lug around, instead of the 15 kilos filled with numerous books heavy schoolbag. Oh yeah kids eating sandwiches and bringing an apple, would need to carry something extra, but I don't think that would be much of a problem. Once the E-Booktop is placed on the schooldesk it wouldn't need to move, so the weigth is not so much of an issue. All it needs is easy battery replacement.
Usage
E.g. Kids at the age of 6 need to learn how to write. I think with a decent touch screen that task can be taking out of the hands of a teacher and assigned towards the E-Laptop. For instance: Draw an big Bold S on the screen, the kid needs to stay with in the lines of the S, after a few tries the S becomes smaller and less bold. If the kid can follow the line more or less properly, it can certainly learn to write. The software can decide on tested parameters when the kid is become proficient and can alert the teacher (if necessary) to instruct a new letter, or the E-Laptop can take it on to itself to decide when a new letter has to be assigned. Also since each person has his/her own style of writing the computer is teaching itself to recognize what the kids is writing. What better way to provide a writing recognision profile to a computer. This could even go further and if having a digital schoolboard, the PC powering the schoolboard could recieve the profile from the E-laptop and provide decent writing recognition so everyone can read properly what the kid has written on the schoolboard, even if the kid still has troubles with decent writing, the software knows what the kid is trying to note them and is the translator to the rest of the class. What a great way to have those with less motor function to properly take part in a normal class? And I'm not even speaking about disabled persons yet.
This is only one example.
But with the appropriate software, many tasks currently performed by a teacher can make it so, that he/she looses less time when teaching kids, and can spend his/her valuable time to tutor kids who need the attention. Already much can be left in the hands of software. With the advance of speech and writing recognition and also with the text to speech function, more and more "teaching" can be provided by means of a computer, with or without (extra) instruction by a teacher.
It is certainly not my interest to replace a teacher in a class, but to individualize the learning process per kid. A redistribute the precious time of our teachers to provide meaningful instructions to those who need it. If a kid can be more of an autodidact and only requires instruction at specific difficult moments the teacher will be available when needed, and not wasting amounts of time with for instance correcting an exercise in front of the whole class, while 85% of the kids already understand it and have everything correctly filled in. Let the software handle the correction, if mistakes are made, the computer can decide based on the number of mistakes to either provide more exercises, provide a recap of a seen lesson as re-instruction, or alert the teacher to tutor this kid one-on-one or with a small group of kids facing the similar problem. Don't stall the greater part of the group while only a minority needs more tutoring.
So what I am requiring is very complex indeed. It requires interaction of hardware, software and full communication between clients, server in small groups and over the internet, ...
It is a daunting task, but with the right mindset even now we have the means to start the design and construction of such an E-Laptop and the necessary surrounding software. And if I had a choice I would like it that all the software is open source and developed for linux along the lines of EduBuntu or something. That will ensure that no one can get a firm grip on the price of the software and the devices. But of course support contracts would be the way to go. Like immediate replacement of a faulty laptop. Providing servers, hosting and diskspace for the Tutoring software, monthly/yearly updates of content, ...
Cavelion