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The Universal Learning Machine: Ideas for the Ultimate Electronic Learning Tool
March 7, 2007 | Ken MessersmithWe are speeding toward the day when students will bring an electronic learning device with them to school. The MIT $100 laptops are about to ship, and I believe it is inevitable that similar devices will soon be available for American students. This future brings up the question of what would happen if teachers were allowed to design these things. Let me start with a list of features and then see what the Spiral Notebook community thinks.
The device should be small but not too small. It is important that the display be large enough to clearly show the contents of a Web page. Something between a portable game player and a laptop in size should work. A good bright color display will be essential.
The memory, for durability and to conserve power, should be based on flash memory. Some type of wireless battery-charging system would be ideal. Solar power would be best, but we might have to settle for one of those wireless pads for charging the battery during lunch or recess. Wireless capability must be included, and a couple USB ports would add flexibility.
If we could make it durable enough, I would like to see a touch screen, which eliminates the necessity of using a separate mouse. The touch screen might be able to double as a keyboard, or we could include a fold-away keyboard that could be stowed out of the way when we are using the touch screen.
What about software? Necessities would include a browser, a word processor, and photo-editing, video-editing, and multimedia-presentation tools. I would also include a spreadsheet with graphing capabilities for math and some type of graphic-organizer building tool for abstracting and note taking. Some of these tools might be Web based, making it unnecessary to maintain them on the machine.
This device needs to be in the $100-$300 range to make it affordable for families to buy or for school districts to provide. What have I missed, or what have I included that should be modified or eliminated? Please let me know.
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e learning
i think e learning will be the future for education, you can make w website, arrange articles to be sent as daily subjects to study, with videos & live support if the students have any questions in mind
website laten maken
You're right!
I work at a school where each classroom is supposed to have 2 computers per class in the primary grades. Upper grades have about 4-6 computers. Honestly, I think everything should be equitable, but that's just not the way the world works. Primary grade kids need the foundation to help them become technologically informed just like the upper grade kids do. We have a computer lab that is way behind in everything. This device seems interesting, but of course, is it affordable is always the question when it comes to education. Pretty sad, when it comes down to us educating future, doctors, leaders, and educators of America.
Usability, technology, education, and emerging technology
By now, you probably heard of Microsoft Surface, an interactive touch table. Something like Microsoft Surface, or Philip's Entertaible, would be great for co-operative group projects in educational settings and in libraries/media centers.
Microsoft will be marketing the tables to businesses such as casinos and restaurants first, and from what I've read, they are quite expensive.
Last semester, I had to work on projects for a class in Human-Computer Interaction, as well as a Ubiquitous Computing class. I had no idea that Microsoft was working on a touchtable.
I spent good portion of the last few months working on prototypes for use on large-touch screen displays, and I didn't have access to a table. I was thinking about rigging a touch table up myself, using something like the Next Window Human Touch display and mounting it to an adjustable drafting table surface.
I'm sure readers of the Edutopia blogs will have some great ideas of how touch tables could be used for education! Think about the old story-book and flannel board activities of the past. Those might translate well to touch-table activities.
I have been teaching a
I echo the concern from
This type of machine is
This is very exciting. As a
dream digital device
I am so looking forward to
I agree with much of the