One of the biggest tasks I've had since I started in the new school was getting the computers in the department up to speed. At the moment I have a very big mix of Mac computers. From the old colourful iMacs (Tray loading and slot loading) to the newer eMacs and I have been slowly getting them upgarded to OSX but when I saw this article it got me thinking about what the future may mean for computing. You can see a demo video of these desks here.
These desks look very similar to the Microsoft Surface that's been around for a while now.
Have the days of 20 computers in a computer lab gone now, should we be looking to get in front of the technologies.
In the 2006/07 school year there was a pilot project being launched in and around Edinburgh to give pupils handheld devices to access the web to help them with their studies.
Even laptops are getting smaller, more powerful and "Lighter than air".
I can think of some fantastic uses for the computerised desk, programming could become very interactive especially programs such as scratch which I have seen get the pupils attention in a very positive way.
My worry is that these technologies will cost so much money they will stay out of reach to state secondary schools and be a great idea lost.
To look forward, don’t beat a retreat
5 years ago
4 comments:
Have you seen Tom Barrett's post on the Entertable?
Also, Ian Stuart's school is doing interesting stuff with UMPCs.
don't worry learners will all have their own devices within next five years . Worry more that school will not have wireless access capable of supporting these devices
Well we currently have wireless in the school, not really tested it's capabilities yet but it handled the Wii updating itself so thats a start.
Will the schools need to provide their own access though, certainly with the likes of the iPhone they already have access to the internet on their own devices and at pretty high speeds to.
I'm sure I read something about 3G enabled devices changing everything. You may be right about people bringing their own connection - especially when they are denied connection to existing networks.
Post a Comment