I've been fiddling with this stuff for forever, and feel it would be a GIGANTIC benefit for a school, especially with so many tools for it ready-made and free.
What I'd love to see, and I'm VERY SERIOUSLY considering taking some sort of stab at it myself is bringing something even cheaper and more accessible to classes.
While $300 netbooks are cheap, What's amazing is this computer, which, while nobody has picked it up to mass-sell yet, could be sold at around a $100 price tag. The difference is that this machine doesn't sport a "REAL" operating system, like Windows or Mac. It runs a system called Android instead, which has two major perks. Since Android was originally done for cell phones, it can run fine on a VERY wimpy computer. Furthermore, Windows costs money, whether Dell bought it and put it on the computer you bought, or you bought it yourself. Android is free.
However, that little laptop has "real" abilities. all those cloud-computing skills, like Google Docs, Wave, you-name-it...most ALREADY work. Imagine being able to give a student a small, convienent laptop for $100, and it comes with the ability to do almost all of the modern computer tricks they and teachers need.
I mean, you'd need a few more tricks to make schools consider these a really viable option, things like "automatically block YouTube and Facebook access during class" and giving teachers and faculty the ability to easily get submitted documents and such, so new computers doesn't mean a new workload. I really want to take a stab at a good system for this, it's something that I've been thinking on all week. Hmm.
Teachers (I know we've got a lot.) What would YOU wanna see tiny computers in your classroom do? What would 'sell' you on the idea of these gizmos hanging around?
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