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Education

Video Phil Shapiro says 20,000 Teachers Should Unite to Spread Chromebooks (Video) 101

Posted by Roblimo from the computers-for-eager-young-minds-and-fingers dept.
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Phil Shapiro often loans his Chromebook to patrons of the public library where he works. He says people he loans it to are happily suprised at how fast it is. He wrote an article earlier this month titled Teachers unite to influence computer manufacturing that was a call to action; he says that if 20,000 teachers demand a simple, low-cost Chromebook appliance -- something like a Chrome-powered Mac mini with a small SSD instead of a hard drive, and of course without the high Mac mini price -- some computer manufacturer will bite on the idea. Monitors? There are plenty of used ones available. Ditto speakers and keyboards, not that they cost much new. The bottom line is that Phil believes Chromebooks, both in their current form factor and in a simpler one, could be "the" computer for schools and students. Maybe so, not that Android tablets are expensive or hard to use. And wait! Isn't there already a Chromebox? And even a Chromebase all-in-one Chrome-based desktop? In any case, Chrome-based computers look pretty good for schools and libraries, especially if and when prices for the simplest members of the family get down to where Phil thinks they should be. (Alternate video link)

Phil Shapiro:Hi, this is Phil Shapiro. I’m holding in my hands my Chromebook laptop, this thing is so fast, it’s an Acer C720. I take it to work with me at my public library job, I loan it out to the public and I say try out this Chromebook and almost everybody I loan it to is very impressed.

Robin Miller:I’m Robin Miller for Slashdot, with us today is Phil Shapiro, who you just saw on the intro to this video, and he likes his Chromebook, he maybe thinks you should have one too. Why Phil? Why the Chromebook?

Phil Shapiro:I love that Chromebook, it’s so simple, there’s so few things that can go wrong, it boots up in about six or seven seconds, it wakes from sleep in one second, it’s so light. I explain it to people it’s like a MacBook Air at one-fifth the price.

Robin Miller:Okay. And what happens when we are in the basement?

Phil Shapiro:What happens when we are in the basement?

Robin Miller:Away from our friendly signal, when we aren’t online?

Phil Shapiro:Oh, you can use your Chromebook offline, there are ways of doing word processing, and so you can use it for word processing offline.

Robin Miller:Okay. How about for building a spreadsheet?

Phil Shapiro:Yeah, you can do all your Google docs, you can do it offline or online and then your Chromebook is going to automatically synchronize it the next time you walk in to a WiFi zone.

Robin Miller:So, it’s not really a worry that I’ve always had about being out of range of a signal when I use this Chromebook?

Phil Shapiro:No, those Chromebooks they are very functional and the more that you live in the cloud with your work, the more the Chromebook just makes so much sense, you get a lot of value for your dollar.

Robin Miller:What about iPads? Now there is a school district in Texas that’s gotten some heat about having spent millions on iPads, and their wireless stuff isn’t up to snuff, the students are breaking them like mad and in fact the State of Texas, the various school districts there are spending millions upon millions upon millions for iPads, and you have a better idea I hear?

Phil Shapiro:The iPad is not a bad educational tool, but I can tell you in the hands of kids, those kids they put things through the ringer and the Chromebook is so durable, it’s so light weight, there’s so few things that can go wrong, it’s solid state, there’s no moving hard drive inside of it. Some Chromebooks do sell with hard drives, but those were some of the earlier ones, all the current ones are solid state. And you can easily store them in a small_____ 3:12 for a whole class room, you don’t need to buy a laptop cart. Those things are so small and light, you can almost fit them in the drawer of a teacher’s desk for the whole class. Lock them up or something and let the kids take them home, please, every weekend, let the kids have unlimited use of this great tool that the school purchased, but can be used at home, because it’s so light to walk it back and forth, it weighs just a little bit more than a Kindle.

Robin Miller:You also talked, as I recall,_____ 3:46 and we’ll run this for the people. Let’s hear Phil’s thing with the teachers.

Phil Shapiro:Wouldn’t it be interesting if I could buy this laptop without a screen and without a battery and without the speakers, so that it would be a very affordable desktop and very light weight. So you see if we take off the screen and we take off the battery and if we take out the speakers, we’re going to drop the price in this thing maybe down to about $100, for a very fast, very light weight desktop kind of computer, so I could send a suggestion to Acer, the manufacturer that I’d like to buy it without the screen, without the battery and without the speakers. And they would probably ignore my request because it’s just request from a single person, but how about if I assembled 20,000 teachers who were all interested in buying this Chromebook without the screen, without the battery and without speakers. If we assemble that many people, we could ask Acer to sell it to us in that configuration. Yeah, so, I totally love the idea that if people band together, we have the power to tell computer manufacturers the exact features that we want. And they would find it really hard to ignore that because computer manufacturing is highly competitive.

So if teachers are able to band together we can get some of these Chromebooks without a screen and without a battery and price will drop and we’ll call it our own little homemade Chromebox, but the neat thing is, it’s going to be great for the computer manufacturers, they don’t have to do any new design, they have to sell us the same product with a different configuration, so they’ll use the Chromebooks in the classroom when we want with the screen and for home we could have a Chromebook with a VGA out-port and a donated monitor and the kids could have a very affordable computer for their home virus free.

Robin Miller:When you’re talking about a monitor you’re probably talking about a CRT at this point?

Phil Shapiro:That’s true, I mean, we could make the Chromebook into a ecological devise where instead of taking the CRT monitors and throwing them in a dump or trying to recycle them, we can put them to use, there’s no reason, and there’s some gorgeous CRTs out there and I can tell you when you have a family with four kids or five kids or three kids, educationally we want every kid, every student to have their own computer, sharing doesn’t work, one computer, two computers for a family, that is a recipe for stress when the homework is due the next day. We need one computer per student at home and the Chromebook is one of our best hopes of having a very modern virus free computer right in the home.

Robin Miller:Rather than pressuring Acer, ASUS or HP or whomever into making something, have you considered just doing it with the Raspberry Pie or a similar device?

Phil Shapiro:Robin, that’s a great concept and I’m all in favor of the Raspberry Pie as a tool that teachers can begin to start building their own self-designed educational technology. But the Raspberry Pi is quite a lot slower in speed. My Acer 720 Chromebook is as fast as a Core i3 laptop. It is blazing fast.

Robin Miller:I have an older – not really huge it’s same hardware pretty much, Acer Subnotebook, the main difference is, it has a hard drive and a couple of friends of mine have now switched to SSDs and have told me what you are telling me that if I stick to an SSD in there, it will be the equivalent of a blazing fast new Apple or whatever. So this is not specifically Chromebook, but yes, having a Chromebook makes things simple because there ain’t nothing there, it’s all in Google super farms and the network_____ 8:26 computer, the old one just replacing the hard drive with a SSD, I get really fast, right?

Phil Shapiro:That is true. That is true. But the very cool thing about a Chromebook, if we move to say the Chromium operating system, it’s totally free, virus free, license free and it belongs to the public, the Chromium OS belongs to the public. Chrome belongs to Google, but Chromium is more ours and we can modify it and we can use it to our own needs. And so that’s really exciting that we can just kind of cut out the financial entanglement that computer corporations tend to have when their own interest need to intersect with their pocketbook – interest need to emerge, there’s no pocketbook interest with the Chromium OS, none that I can see.

Robin Miller:You’re certainly not sounding like a good capitalist, oh-oh. We are going to have to take care of that somehow. No, I understand your point, now do you think you can get 20,000 teachers to pressure really computer manufacturers or one computer manufacturer into making this______ 9:51 Chrome or Chromium box?

Phil Shapiro:That’s a great question Robin. I’m not sure if I can assemble them, but I know that all the teachers that I talked to who use Chromebooks just love them. They just love them. I was in Arlington Public School this last week and I heard that at one high school the teachers there are clamoring. They did not have enough Chromebooks at the school and it’s meeting all of their needs and taking away their stresses, so.

Robin Miller:Let me just repeat this, not iPads but Chromebooks?

Phil Shapiro:Teachers are clamoring for the Chromebooks because it takes away their stress and it increases the amount of learning. And it’s the most physically prudent way of using public dollars, somebody is got to talk about how do we use public dollars to increase learning, there’s nothing I can see that beats the Chromebook for that.

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Phil Shapiro says 20,000 Teachers Should Unite to Spread Chromebooks (Video) More

Phil Shapiro says 20,000 Teachers Should Unite to Spread Chromebooks (Video)

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  • I am not thrilled that this is considered a good idea. In principle I suppose you _can_ learn to program on a Chromebook, but only in a very limited way. If this is the wave of the future in education, some thought needs to go into how to design a programming curriculum that can work with these devices.

    • Can you program it to automatically clear the cache?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mk1004 ( 2488060 )
      I must have missed the part in the article that said they were to be used for programming. The idea is that students use them for studying for all classes. With Chromebooks, it needs to be pretty much all web-based, but that should be doable. If they are teaching programming, they can get a few Raspberry Pi modules (kidding) or a few regular desktops with whatever OS you want to teach in.

    • I am not thrilled that this is considered a good idea. In principle I suppose you _can_ learn to program on a Chromebook, but only in a very limited way. If this is the wave of the future in education, some thought needs to go into how to design a programming curriculum that can work with these devices.

      Not only can but many folk at Google do exactly that.
      They interact with the cloud of compute servers and VMs to their hearts content.
      It is not necessary but it is possible to set a Chromebook in developer mode
      and do the rare odd bit that cannot be done in their cloud. Schools could provide
      a modest cloud server set of student resources inside a school VPN and
      have a lot of control.

      The point is that not only can you but this is solved at Google and with some
      modest education of the teachers is easy.

      • I know a few Google employes.

        They give their kids chrome books.

        They all have Macs, Linux as the primary OS, few use OSX, none use Windows.

        Anyone you know at Google using a chrome book as their primary ... isn't doing anything important.

  • this Chromepost smells Chromefunny (Score:5, Insightful)

    by globaljustin ( 574257 ) on Friday April 11, 2014 @04:42PM (#46729135) Journal

    Chrometeachers need laptops, sure but it's not the essential tool of Chromeeducation.

    For some Chromereason, I feel like TFA is taking benefits of ***USING ANY LAPTOP*** and recasting them as Chromebenefits of using one company's product

    • Yeah, I'm not so sure that the Chrome God should be anywhere near students on a regular basis. It's just another $computer would be great for learning rant.

      Nothing to see here, move along.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )

      You should use my Windows 7 laptop. It's takes several minutes to get my email open when I come in to work.

    • For some Chromereason, I feel like TFA is taking benefits of ***USING ANY LAPTOP*** and recasting them as Chromebenefits of using one company's product

      Well, just off the top of my head - if these teachers don't push their students into using Chromebooks, Google will need to find some other method of collecting data and building shadow profiles on those people.

      So, right there, you've got a significant benefit to specifically promoting Chromebooks.

  • Stay away from my school please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Friday April 11, 2014 @04:44PM (#46729145) Homepage

    Chrome laptops are consumption devices. They are not creative devices.

    Schools need computers that you can hook Arduinos up to or Raspberry Pis or install Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Ruby, Visual Studio Express, etc. on. Computers you can install Gimp or Photoshop on.

    They do not need fancy TVs.

    The iPad failed in LA, not because it was expensive, but because it was a very dumb idea.

    We need to get people involved in schools that at least have some clue about technology and what would be most useful to kids.

    And frankly, until we get that sorted out, you'd be better off buying the students $200-400 worth of notebook paper and pencils.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, books are consumption devices too, and there's room for them in schools. If all you need is a browser to gather information or prepare a report, it's not a totally dumb idea. And already my (middle school) kids use prezi to prepare powerpoint type reports online, then email the link to their teacher who puts it up on their Prometheus board (prometheanworld.com) for presenting to the class. They would be happy with a Chromebook if it ran Minecraft.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Richy_T ( 111409 )

      It is not too bad if you have a real computer you can SSH into.

      I haven't tried Google's version of VNC/RDP yet. I refuse to run the server on my main system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teckla ( 630646 )

      Chrome laptops are consumption devices. They are not creative devices.

      This is nonsense. There are a lot of web apps and Chrome apps for creating things.

      • It's a platform that restricts the available choice of software, forcing content to be rewritten for a web interface.

        Pre-existing content isn't an issue just for Chrome OS. e.g. A friend's grandchildren were forced to use an iPad for classroom use. Turns out they couldn't do a homework exercise because the educational material targeted flash.

    • Not true. In our elementary schools they are pretty much using browsers only with occasional word processing and presentations. The chromebooks are berfect for this. At this grade they are not doing any tech type stuff and if they do then they go to the labs. They are using the laptops for courseware not programming.

      • i don't think there's an age that's too young for students to start learning to program (Even if it's using symbols, versus numbers and or text) -- the concepts that they'd pick up along the way (logic, reason, problem solving) are worth way more than ipads, or any other $tech). And these concepts are not limited to just IT/tech.

        We seem to have this bias that kids are too stupid to pick up things like math or science until they're in middle school, that sounds more like an artifact of the teaching method

    • I work in a K-12 school setting. And let me be up front about it...Google is Evil Empire 2.0. I'm not a fan of signing over 1,000 students to Google so that they can harvest personal data and target ad services to them.

      But nobody, absolutely nobody does a better job at KISS than Google. With Google Apps, school districts can now setup dumb-terminal-2.0s (i.e. Chromebooks) at $250 a pop, teach almost anybody how to administer the @school.k12.xx.us user domain, and no longer depend on specialized staff for

      • > I work in a K-12 school setting. And let me be up front about it...Google is Evil Empire 2.0. I'm not a fan of signing over 1,000 students to Google so that they can harvest personal data and target ad services to them.

        You think MS is any better? You must not have been keeping up with the news. Microsoft is worse - far worse - when it comes to harvesting data from k-12 students.

      • Bill Gates Marginalises Teachers and Harvests Schools’ Data for Profit at Expense of Privacy
        http://techrights.org/2013/06/21/bill-gates-marginalising-teachers/

        Bill Gates Brings NSA-esque Surveillance to Children
        http://techrights.org/2013/12/03/indoctrinate-control-and-spy/

    • Umm, no, chromebooks are not just media consumption devices. I'm on one right now, find me another 100% Linux compatible laptop with a decent keyboard for ~$300USD. It should also be x86_64 and have a battery life of ~8-10+ hours with normal use and WiFi on.

      QuickOffice / GoogleDocs ( even offline ) damn well better be good enough for highschool papers, it's good enough for college papers unless you are juggling enough sources to need a reference manager.

    • IF there is a deal to be made where you can get the Chrubuntu experience in the classroom then I think it's viable. I remember early phasing in of laptops for classrooms in the iBook days. It was not the best solution. Even walking students through the install process and setting up that account could be good for those kids interested in CS / Creative Tech. But I agree on your point that having staff that can make a good curriculum is more important than the actual brand of parts you put in front of them.

    • Chrome laptops are consumption devices. They are not creative devices.

      Oh, I really have to disagree

      Schools need computers that you can hook Arduinos up to or Raspberry Pis or install Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Ruby, Visual Studio Express, etc. on.

      I sorta agree, but we must remember that this is the equivalent of armies always being ready to fight the last war. Computers you can install Gimp or Photoshop on.

      They do not need fancy TVs.

      You can indeed do Gimp on a Chromebook. Note that I cheated a little bit, because I dual boot my chromebook into either ChromeOS or Ubuntu. But the concept behind the Chromebook is valid for the most part. While I'm not a cloud fan, the general performance of the things for webwork is tremendous. And I can boot into either OS in about as much time as starting a program.

      We need to get people involved in schools that at least have some clue about technology and what would be most useful to kids.

      And frankly, until we get that sorted out, you'd be better off buying the students $200-400 worth of notebook paper and pencils.

      I agree wholeheartedly about the technology, certainly Pi's should be required, and hey, I still believe that slide rules are cool.

      But at

  • How is this better than competing Linux alternatives? Besides being more tightly wedded to Google services and the cloud, I mean.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      For what they seem to be talking about, even discarded hardware running some discontinued version of Windows would be a better idea than a locked down web terminal.

      This sounds like some completely clueless idiot latching onto the latest fad or something he heard about in the news.

      • Giving previously discarded windows machines to students? There's no way a school's sysadmin would be able to support anything that's not homogeneous.

        These things are a good option because the hardware is decent and dirt cheap. The school district can also install any OS they want to on them, not just ChromeOS. If you can find where to get an x86 processor (that's Haswell no-less), 2GB ram, and 32GB SSD on a laptop for cheaper than $200, I would agree with you. I haven't been able to find anything that

      • For what they seem to be talking about, even discarded hardware running some discontinued version of Windows would be a better idea than a locked down web terminal

        You must have a newsletter - you know so much about chrome books..

        No discarded Windows machines aren't nearly better.

        Options: ChrUbuntu. I'm running it this very moment on my cheap Chromebook

        Option 2: programs written specifically for ChromeOs

        Unless you have some technical reason that I don't know about that precludes any kind of programming app to be written for a Chromebook, And if you do, I challenge you to educate us, it can be done.

  • "Phil Shapiro says 20,000 Teachers Should Unite to Spread Chromosomes (Video)"

    I was wondering whether the video showed the actual spreading of the chromosomes....

  • Nooooo. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2014 @04:47PM (#46729175)

    Why do people think that relying on a corporation's cloud for all of their computer use is a good idea?
    I'm fine with the idea of demanding low-cost computers, but why must it be Google's spyware'd up version of Linux? Why not some other solution?

  • Does the Chromebook use OpenSSL?

    Might want to harden those things significantly.

    But I think that schools should change the way they roll out computers -- have appropriately powered computers for creative work, and have a whack of these for consumptive work/staff tools/etc. Makes a lot more sense than a homogeneous network of anything.

  • > especially if and when prices for the simplest members of the family get down to where Phil thinks they should be.

    Has anyone tried to get Chrome running on the Raspberry Pi?

    • For Chromium OS, a guy called Hexxeh had some builds, but he seemed disappointed by the performance, so the port is on an indefinite hiatus. For the Chromium browser, I saw posts that indicated that it could be built for and run on the Pi. I haven't tried it, and I didn't try to find binaries. For Chrome itself (browser and OS), Google doesn't seem to have produced appropriate binaries.

    • Yes, its been working for as long as I can remember. Well, Chromium, but it works, I presume thats close enough for you.

      Its slow as balls because Broadcom is a bunch of pricks who just recently released the specs for A DIFFERENT chip thats much like the one in the Raspberry Pi, so hardware acceleration for graphics was pretty much non-existent. Maybe sometime in 2016 we'll see an accelerated graphics stack and chrome won't suck on it, but you'll be able to buy an iPhone 5s off contract for less than the r

      • The RaspberryPi is a pretty much never something you should actually choose. Its certainly not a $35 general purpose computer

        Running great as my £25:
        - Webserver
        - Ftp server
        - Bittorrent server

        Also runs great as a external device controller. You know, robotics and real world implementation that school kids can learn stuff from?

        You don't want to use a Raspberry Pi, its crappy hardware with a broken USB stack, shitty graphics stack due to Broadcom not making a driver or release the specs.

        Broadcom released specs and driver source this year http://blog.broadcom.com/chip-... [broadcom.com]

        Yes there are better devices out there, yes the Pi is now "slow", but its also old in a fast paced ARM race.
        But the Pi is designed for exploration and learning. Which is does not only as a device, but as a foundation an

        • You should read my whole post before you reply. Broadcom released the specs to a chip LIKE the one in the RPi, NOT the ACTUAL Pi.

          The Pi was NEVER fast, it was ALWAYS crap and it just has a big following.

          And just because you can run a few servers that do basically nothing ... doesn't make it impressive. I can't say I've got a bit torrent client, but I can run FTP and Web servers, including SSL, on $5 micro controllers that will be more than happy to serve my personal requirements ... and thats not impressi

  • I like it but it's not possible to get full functionality without signing your soul away to Google.

    I'm sure it won't be long before they're require google plus to login either. You already need a gmail account.

    • I have a chromebook also, and I have no idea what you are posting about.

      Please explain how using a chromebook causes anybody to "signing your soul away to Google."

      And while you're at it, please explain how MS never pulls any vendor-lock-in scams, or anything like that.

  • You mean like the ASUS Chromebox?

    http://promos.asus.com/us/chro... [asus.com]

  • Would need tougher hardware (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm a tech for a library system in California that piloted a Chromebook rollout at several of our large branches. Staff was fed up with the things shortly after testing began. These things just aren't made to take the wear and tear the average library patron gives them. It got so bad we had over half of our initial 40 machines in for repair at once. When we got them back (from Samsung, in this case) and asked branches to take them back, they actively refused; it was more work than they wanted to put in.

  • So thin clients are new again? (Score:3)

    by scorp1us ( 235526 ) on Friday April 11, 2014 @05:14PM (#46729395) Journal

    I was having this discussion about my boss's Chromebox. Which I was laughing at for being a thin client. "it'll revolutionize the world"" he said. "We've had citrix for years." I said. All this dies is give you a thin client where the server is any internet accessible site.

  • Given the fact money is unevenly distrubuted through the school systems, thanks to local property taxes, some teachers must buy basic supplies for their own students. Laptops will not fix the funding problems. We need a more stable source of revenue than local bond and property taxes. Once these schools get something more akin to a real amount of money to spend on educating their charges can we then even contemplate giving them laptops or chromebooks or whatever. Let's deal with the underlying problems

  • I thought I turned off ads? These product evangelists annoy me.

  • Phil has no idea what he's talking about. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Friday April 11, 2014 @08:35PM (#46730783)

    Phil is possibly a moron on top of it.

    A chromebook is just a computer, and not really any cheaper than an equivalent Windows machine (slightly, but not much).

    A decent chrome book that 'isn't slow' will costs you $250 AT LEAST ... and right next to it on the shelf is the Windows $250 laptop that ... works exactly the same if you run everything in a browser like Chrome.

    Oh, and the windows machine doesn't start off with you giving everything you have to Google.

    Again I state, Phil has no idea what he's talking about.

    • IMO: chomebooks blow windows laptops right out of the water, in many respects.

      Every time I start my windows laptop, I want to groan: wait . . . wait . . . wait, while windows makes long series of updates. When I want to shut down it's the same thing. Even when windows is booted, it's not *really* booted - the computer is unusable because of so much crap going on in the background.

      Plus I don't like being a victim of msft's non-stop format scams, and so many other vendor lock-in scams.

      Then there is the anti-v

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by reikae ( 80981 )

        Every time I start my windows laptop, I want to groan: wait . . . wait . . . wait, while windows makes long series of updates. When I want to shut down it's the same thing.

        So you only use the computer on the second Tuesday of each month? :-)

    • Re:Phil has no idea what he's talking about. (Score:4, Informative)

      by edremy ( 36408 ) on Friday April 11, 2014 @11:17PM (#46731561) Journal
      $250 for a decent Chromebook? How about $200 for the Acer 720p? Find me a Windows laptop with specs anywhere near it for $200- and it better include a SSD because the 10 second boot on a Chromebook is pretty essential. I can't even find a new Windows laptop on Amazon for $200, and the few used ones have Atom processors, 10" screens and Windows 7 Basic.

      Yes, it's not a great development device. But it boots in seconds, needs no antivirus (or even maintenance), has a 8-10 hour battery life, a 13" screen and a decent keyboard and trackpad. Stick Linux on it if you want to hack away

    • A decent chrome book that 'isn't slow' will costs you $250 AT LEAST ... and right next to it on the shelf is the Windows $250 laptop that ... works exactly the same if you run everything in a browser like Chrome.

      Google was running a deal last year where a school could get a chromebook for $100 a piece if you were at a school. My boyfriend was able to get an entire classroom set of chromebooks for $2000 raised through donors choose.

      Spec and hardware wise they aren't the greatest things, but they're great for having everyone in the classroom do a quick online-based activity or other work without having to fight for the computer lab.

  • It is far better to get a laptop with local software and storage. Laptops are mobile devices. If you are mobile, you may not always have a net connection. Therefore local program/storage is far more productive then some cloud crap. Why not a nice netbook with a light GNU/Linux flavor like Puppy? Heck, even Slackware can run on modest environs. Go L/K/Ubuntu if you have to. You will have a far more useful device with a lot more tools at your disposal. Rasberry Pi can run GNU/Linux, and it is wayyyy cheaper.

  • "something like a Chrome-powered Mac mini with a small SSD instead of a hard drive, and of course without the high Mac mini price"

    So basically nothing like a Mac mini...

  • We already load up teachers with tech they have no idea how to use.

    Teachers are not engineers or programmers.

    Look, the landscape of teaching is shifting enough already. We're seriously going to drive these folks crazy if we continue to change major parts of their job on a yearly basis. The least we could do is give them a little time to catch up with the regulatory changes in teaching before starting on another technology refresh.

  • "After a year of planning, Penn Manor High School [pennmanor.net] has officially launched a 1:1 computing program. Laptops are in the hands of approximately 1700 students! Here are a few fast facts and notes about the unique program ..

    The laptops are running Linux, specifically Ubuntu 13.10, along with several dozen free and open source programs. Our program is believed to be the largest open source 1:1 implementation in Pennsylvania. By using open source software exclusively, we estimate an initial cost savings of at l

  • Sorry to say, from the slurring of the interviewer in the video, which suggested clogged arteries throughout your body. Check out health ideas here for unclogging them through nutritional changes:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra... [drfuhrman.com]
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar... [diseaseproof.com]
    "Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounted for 32.3% of deaths in the United States in 2010, but you can protect yourself. A significant number of research studies have documented that heart disease is easily and almost completely preventable (and rever

  • As TFA suggests a ChromeBook without a keyboard or monitor, something like a mac mini, I suggest a Raspberry Pi. You could get a trivial case and the power supply and still be in for under $50. Give each kid their own SD card paritioned into an unmodifiable boot partition, a modifiable 'system' parition for software, and a section for their work, and have all the benefits he's talking about, but even better. The kid plugs in their own SD card and gets to work. Could still back up to cloud, forgoing the

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