September 2008 — eLearning
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Small Device, Big Appeal
Ultrahandy, ultramobile, and ultra-low-cost, miniature PCs may one day unseat conventional laptops as the machine of choice for 1-to-1 programs.
LIGHT AND EASY HP's
Mini-Note weighs only 2.6
pounds, ideal for toting
around in backpacks.
LAST YEAR, the Fresno Unified School District undertook a pilot program to put Asus Eee PCs in the hands of students in four classrooms at each of 16 of its schools, at a ratio of one laptop for every two kids. With 7-inch screens and weighing a scant 2 pounds, the computers are small enough to fit on students' desks right alongside their textbooks and papers, yet still equipped with the power to give students access to web-based educational content without leaving their chairs.
"When we collected the laptops for refurbishing during the last week of school, all of the teachers wanted us to assure them that they would get them back in the fall," Fresno CTO Kurt Madden says. "Student engagement went way up in the [participating] classrooms."
After an in-house teacher survey confirmed the value of the miniature PCs, the district decided to expand the program for the new school year. Although it had been working for a year with major partner Hewlett-Packard on the design of the company's Mini-Note PC, as a backup plan in case the HP device was never released, and to move forward with the experiment, the district selected the Eee PC for the pilot. Then, in July, with the Mini-Note set for rollout, it announced it would acquire 7,000 of the new machines and place them in 350 to 400 of its classrooms.
Fresno's effort is one of many similar pilot programs that school districts have launched to explore the use of smaller computers-- referred to as ultramobile PCs or UMPCs, netbooks, ultraportables, ultra-low-costs, or internet devices-- in the quest to engage students through technology. Reacting to this new drift in the marketplace, a number of companies in addition to Asus and HP are introducing their own ultraportable offerings-- including
Dell, Fourier Systems, Intel, Everex, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and Acer. Could these little machines become the next engine for powering 1-to-1 programs within schools? Or are they simply a new category of products attractive to early adopters but otherwise in search of an entrenched customer base?