Every student may finally have a computer!

Kudos to the folks at the MIT Media Lab and the entrepreneurial John Negroptone: Their $100 "laptop" is a reality. Thier undertaking, called One Laptop Per Child or OLPC, has spent the last eighteen months or so cooking up this little bit of gadget goodness. Open-source software, low-end hardware requirements, and a "generous" smattering of loss-leader thinking all contributed to the prototype being revealed at last.

OK, Michael Dell isn't worried. We should be up front about that. This is a paperback-sized gizmo, more of a console than a true lappie, and it's sporting some attributes that will make it commercially unattractive-- low-res screen, minimal memory, almost nonexistent storage space, and really, um, "eye-catching" color scheme. But it's a computer. To be fair, it do compute, and it's been designed to act more as a wireless point on a mesh net than as a typical notebook. And its' specifications cut the risk that the units will be targeted for theft and resale in their intended third-world markets.

There's actually a neat anecdote that accompanies this little number. Seems Steve Jobs, the guy who brought you a 5% market share with a monopolist's attitude, stepped up last fall to offer his operating system, Macintosh OS X, for the program. Jobs was allegedly willing to donate-- yep, as in, "free"-- OS X. Negroponte et al. turned him down flat, citing their commitment to open-source software and mumbling something about the old Broadway standard "Showboat" under their breath. Surely the iPodfather was unaware of the potential for the OLPC program to "seed" the market with Mac devotees, who would theoretically grow up to use and buy "real" computers one day, and would naturally gravitate toward the Fisher-Price UI.

Politics and commercialism aside, OLPC may well have ripple effects in the US and other industrialized nations in the near term. Negroponte and manufacturer Quanta have reportedly discussed the possibility of making an upscale edition of the unit for sale at home, with potential mark-ups to defray the losses required to hit the $100 price-point in developing countries. It may be possible to buy a web-enabled client unit for less than the price of a Palm Tx, which could turn the 1:1 vision into a reality right here at home.

Whether or not OLPC gets off the ground to the extent of its' goals, this is a watershed moment in technology and education, not only proving that affordable technology can be had, but making the schools of the world re-think the very definition of "computing." Sure, it's powered by hand-crank, and its' screen is blurry. But it's a durn sight better than what most kids are learning with today, and it's a line in the sand for others to challenge. Children who are today concerned with subsistence and disease may well become a legitimate part of the global knowledge economy, overcoming rampant illiteracy and hypotechnia that are as prevalent as pestilence and famine in some parts of the world. The OLPC prototype isn't the end of a development process, it's a beginning, and it's very promising. Cool, huh?

How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads.
For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet published by South-Western, a Thomson company. Trusted news for educators for several decades, several miles ahead.

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How do you want it?

Recently I attended a state-wide meeting of educators and administrators, and during a small group session I was accosted by a tech admin who castigated the educational publishing indudstry for delivering our products on CD. He was convinced that our industry engenders last-generation delivery of products on plastic because we want to protect our intellectual property, and I was upbraided for "ignoring the example of the music industry's collapse" and for clinging desperately to the archaic pay-per-copy business model.

After some discussion, I think that I was able to convince this individual that our industry is, in fact, eager to deliver at least some of our content online, and that it is the vast spectrum of customer environments, rather than our relentless pursuit of filthy lucre, that forces us to deliver for the lowest common denominator.

The fact is, there are buildings and districts in the market who want us to deliver our content and software over the web. There are others who want us to deliver it to the district and let them host it on their own web servers, behind an intranet/VPN. But there are many other buildings, cities, and districts whose concerns about bandwidth, security, privacy, and accessability drive them to insist on CD-ROMs.

Educational publishers of a certain size would likely jump at the chance to eliminate inventory and unit manufacturing costs, to post and host our products-- and deliver new services-- over the Web. Many of those companies boast infrastructure that puts some ISPs to shame, and in fact, the higher ed space is rife with Web-served content. Servers, administrative systems, physical and virtual security, bandwidth, and reliability are all there, and scaling these capabilities into the School market would make a great deal of sense for many of our offerings.

Conversely, we must always consider the small rural district or impoverished urban school systems, whose requests for "online" product are in fact pleas for "electronic" content delivered on CD-ROM rather than over the Web. Some of the most technically advanced districts expect publishers to turn over the keys to their content so the district can post, host, and administer the products and services locally. Other school systems boast point-to-point fiber-optics with 1GB/100Mbps switches routing traffic through load-balancing server megafarms using autosensors to scale bandwidth on the fly based on client IP requests.

Publishers are increasingly becoming software developers, in addition to interactive engineers and instructional designers. But Business 101 tells us that we cannot effectively build a vehicle that is equally comfortable on local streets, major highways, canals, and rail lines. We have to develop our products to hit the most common delivery methodology available. Which brings us back to CDs.

Often, while technical administrators clamor for products and services that leverage Web 2.0, teachers and curriculum administrators are expressing concerns about privacy and security. Where a systems administrator would much rather see browser-based products (they're so simple to support), a teacher worries that Johnny or Maria have to use their e-mail address to access their online account. Buyers and financiers worry over per-seat or per-student subscriptions, versus a physical product with a static price point.

Until the lexicon of educational materials becomes more standardized, "online" products will continue to lack sufficient definition for publishers to hit every customer's mark. And until the various perspectives within the school systems agree on the delivery platform that best suits their students, publishers are left to identify and implement the most common, rather than the most effective, metaphor for the greatest range of customers.

Only when the educational publishing industry and the educational system at large come to a more common understanding of the risks, rewards, and realities of "online" products, we will be poised to take that evolutionary step away from plastic. But when we do reach that point, watch out-- new metaphors unlock new potential into what can be delivered. One-to-one solutions for students, personalized learning paths, data-rich administration, and integration between content, curriculum, and administrative systems will empower teachers like never before.

A thrid grade teacher will be able to see when an individual student is challenged by three-digit multiplication, or when the whole class seems to require a different tack. Alternative instructional materials will be presented to teachers and students as appropriate, and homework assignments, done at home or on the library workstations, will be automatically graded and flow performance data to the gradebook for the teacher and the parent, as well as rolling up to grade-wide reports for adminstrators. Anonymous performance data will loop back to the publishers, who will see that their textbook and homework for three-digit multiplication needs to be rewritten, and the content will be revised and available for the end-users in real time. Teacher-developed resources will be tied to curriculum and state objectives, just like the commercially-developed materials, so that a building administrator can run a report by teacher or by grade to see which objectives have been covered and which remain to be taught. Intervention and enrichment materials will be completely integrated with the rest of the curriculum materials based on individual student needs, and instructional materials and teacher prep materials will be delivered to the teacher and incorporated into lesson plans, with lessons being scheduled and incorporating individual teacher preferences, no-class days, and other schedule events.

All of this is possible. None of it is very far away. We haven't reached total integration of these various systems yet, but before the class of 2010 graduates, we'll be there. Provided our market is ready to implement these solutions, beginning with a reasonable standard of connectivity and bandwidth. Cool, huh?

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Students are media-savvy consumers

Want to know something cool? Students are so accustomed to multisensory input, most of them will absorb information no matter how it's presented to them. While this bucks the trend of pigeonholed learner types-- auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, etc.-- the simple fact is that students are way ahead of their teachers when it comes to the transparency of "technology" as a learning metaphor.

Once students reach middle school, most of them are virtually immune to the "wow" factor of using a computer (though incorporating a PSP might get them psyched). To students of the Interactive Age, content is content, and how it is delivered is largely a secondary consideration.

In a 2005 survey of college students, 87% expressed an interest in receiving audio or multimedia content for their courses, and many expressed dismay at the fact that this isn't already the norm. A full 91% of these students carry a cell phone, whereas only about one-third carry an mp3 player or PDA. But even those students who don't own an iPod or a Treo expressed a great deal of interest in being able to download media content to supplement their course materials.

Several major universities have begun to offer downloads (podcasts) of instructor lectures. Several others have conducted pilot programs using personal media devices to various ends, including recording, vocabulary reinforcement, practical language skills, and audio study aids. While Apple may want us to believe that the iPod is ubiquitous, they've not (yet) reach a plurality of market share. However, media content is in great demand.

Surprisingly (or maybe you saw this coming), 47% of students given the option would prefer to read a chapter in their textbook versus listening to an audio version. Also unexpected were the disciplines for which students felt audio content could be most helpful, with quantitative subjects like Economics and Accounting scoring high on the list.

Teaching ... delivering information and training students to apply their knowledge ... lags behind our learners when it comes to leveraging media assets. The challenge for teachers and developers of educational content is to match medium to message. Some content lends itself to a particular metaphor, allowing a particular medium to add value to the content. Too often, we provide students with media content because we can, without consideration of how the value of that content might be affected by its' delivery. We need to develop different content that is designed specifically to build on a particular medium's unique advantages, and integrate the various components of a "program" such that we're not simply rehashing the same stuff in two different platforms. If we offer audio study guides and review questions, can we eliminate these aspects of the printed text? If the textbook has quantitative practice problems, is there really any value in providing them in an audio format?

Podcasting (newly integrated into the Oxford lexicon as "Word of the Year") didn't really catch on until creators discovered how to unlock the value in an audio download. (There are still plenty of "audio blogs" that are painfully inadequate to the task.) But eventually, a completely new metaphor has emerged, which resembles talk radio more than it does "online" content.

It is time for us to establish a new metaphor for media content in education, whereby we add value to the content rather than simply repackaging it. Cool, huh?

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