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Comment by ktizo | Hacker News Reader

How does having consumer level devices deployed to a school help educate people at all, regardless of things like platform fragmentation?

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I do not understand you. What should schools deploy other than consumer level devices? That’s what schools have been doing for years, they usually bought consumer level PCs. It’s just normal.

Things being normal does not mean they are a good idea. How will teaching a class of 30 be improved with the addition of 30 tablets or smartphones, apart from in the rare occasions that you are teaching how to program the things?

It's a very good question. Maybe Apples new interactive textbook initiative will help, although I'm not sure about that. But I think that if _any_ electronic device is going to make a difference and be usable in education, it will be a tablet-like device instead of a traditional laptop, simply because they are more portable, take up less space and have longer battery lives.

It’s a tool like any other, like pen and paper. Why shouldn’t students be able to use up-to-date tools?! I certainly would have loved to have been able to do just that.

It’s funny how you seem to imply that the only useful thing you can do with a computer is to learn how to program things.

It’s not going to be a revolution or a huge improvement (better teachers are the most important thing above all else), but being able to use modern tools seems kinda important to me.

(Do you have any idea how much Grapher† helped me understand math when doing my homework? I wasn’t programming, I was using a modern UI – no stupid graphing calculator that’s a pain to use – to fool around with equations. That was tremendously helpful. Having that kind of power always with you, instant on, with a battery that lasts forever, man, that’s living the dream.)

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† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapher

There is a huge difference from using these devices to help with homework and using them in the classroom though. Also, pens and paper are an extremely cheap, robust, high-resolution, non-volatile, display, computation and memory technology that are amazingly resistant to EM interference and works even in situations of extended power loss.

And given the distractions that a group of schoolkids can create using just pen and paper, I don't see how devices that are primarily designed for consuming media and gaming are really going to help much. Half of them will get broken or stolen and the other half will be hacked.

I'll bite: what non-consumer level smartphones would you suggest for schools? What OS would you suggest (given the discussion here, it obviously can't be the consumer-level iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, or any other OS that runs on a phone a consumer can buy in a consumer mobile store).

I wouldn't suggest any smartphones for schools, I'd have them removed at the door and given back at the end of the day, but that's probably because I have a lot of sympathy with Cliff Stoll's views on computers in classrooms.

I get it. Rewriting your prior post for accuracy:

How does having technology deployed to a school help educate people at all, regardless of things like platform fragmentation?

:-)

No, cos then they wouldn't be allowed to teach writing, which is quite a fundamental technology for education.

Is just that I view issuing smartphones or consumer tablets in a classroom to be about as useful and productive as issuing games consoles.

Why do you need technology to teach writing? Many of us learned writing when the only electricity in the classroom powered the lights.

Educational Luddism shouldn't favor subjects.

Writing is a technology.

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