eee-Learning ‘Free For All’
Copyright
Hayesfield School Technology College
Summary
What happens if you give all students in Year 7 in a school a free mini-laptop PC with open source software, for use at home?
Description
How can learning evolve if you give 160 11 year-olds (a whole year group) their own wireless mini-laptops with built-in cameras? The new Asus eeepc is under £200 and runs open source software. How would students develop the use of these machines at home if all their friends had one? How would teachers change the learning they enabled? How would it transform the learning of the ‘have nots’ of our schools? Would it take off with young people in the way that texting has?
How it might be used
The Asus eeepc has practically all the core pieces of software that a user needs and is affordable. Once students know their friends have the same hardware and software they would develop the uses in the same way that the mobile phone is ubiquitous. Once teachers know that every student could use the PCs at home and everyone had one, this would change the mindset of what a teacher could ask students to work on. In the same way that the uses of the internet are limitless, the use of this technology would be limitless. The eeepc has built-in camera and microphone. It is lightweight and can be used inside or outside. It is totally solid state so can survive children. It can be used with pen drives through USB and can directly take SD cards from other cameras. It has a proper keyboard so students would soon touch-type. There are no license issues with Microsoft as it is 100% open source. It could revolutionise the expenditure of school ICT budgets in the UK. It contains some free reference materials built in. It also contains games. It could be all a young person needs for a multitasking out-of-school educational experience. It could grow into a user group of 5 million UK students.
Contact
Ian Taylor
Deputy Headteacher
Hayesfield School Technology College
Upper Oldfield Park
Bath BA2 3LA
01225 426151
i.taylor@hayesfield.com
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September 30th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I love this idea. Learners would even be able to teach adults a thing or two!
I do believe this is the future. Open source has had problems with connectivity and simply not being able to make in roads on the market. Will more people adopt Linux OS in whatever form? I hope so. We will really see creativity begin to flourish in areas we have, as yet, not thought of. Including, dare I say it, local and national government!!
There is a problem for arts practitioners though. What if we all become practitioners and creators?