Designing Learning Technology

Wed, 11 Feb 2004

How fragile is technology?
I was in a discussion over on Calpundit about PDAs in the classroom, and the question came up: can we trust kids with PDAs? They'll just break them or lose them, and then what are you going to do?

Well, one good data point on this is the laptop program in Maine. You might remember it: the program that handed out an iBook to every seventh grader in the state. This news article came out last summer, after the program's first year. Here's the loss data.

Fewer than 25 out of 20,000 computers have been lost or stolen, and less than 2 percent have been broken, according to Sprague.

Only a 2% loss over a complete academic year. That's pretty impressive.

@21.31 #

Rapping about HCI
Now you can rap about HCI. Is this Garage Band's fault?

@21.22 #