Comments on: Schoolwide Deployment of palmOne Handhelds
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RE: Good news
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Daniel Hibbitts
Ann Arbor Palm OS Developers Group
Ann Arbor Palm OS Users Group
http://www.annarborpug.org/
MAClike attack?
They should do more like this, much more, and they might find a niche market very much like Apple has. Hey, it couldn't hurt!
www.compu2go.com
~ultramobile computing & tech for people on the Move~
RE: Good news
P1 needs to make a PDA specifically for schools, with the right price, hardware, and software makeup. ($200, wifi, no BT or IR or graphiti for that matter, usb driver for KBs, optional $50 folding KB, WP, printing software, calculators, etc...)
RE: Good news
http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/community/forum/index.php?topic=6.0
The Handheld Learning Forum
RE: Good news
Dana already has one. the alphaSmart
RE: Good news
Even with the much, much lower TCO, at that price people are naturally going to look at full laptops.
Dell Inspiron 1000 for K-12: 2.2Ghz, 30G HD, 14.1" screen, CD/DVD, all for $549 right now.
A $400 Palm isn't going to beat that. A $200 Palm can, but only if it's easy plug and play for the things schools want to do.
RE: Good news
I agree to some point, but I think that, at least in the US, you will not see a school oriented handheld that has WiFi in it. Not on the pre-university level at any rate. The lure of the internet during class is too great for most school age kids.
Of course, if we were truly educating them and challenging their minds to an acceptable degree, they wouldn't have time to surf, as they would need to actually learn something.
_________________
Sean
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
RE: Good news
Both IR and BT have one big problem, that's already been run into with schools using PDAs. They make it easy to cheat. (Especially in math & science classes, where the PDA is replacing a calculator.) The other problem is IR is only 1-to-1, while BT allows 8 (?) connections. That's not good enough for a class of 25 students.
However you must have some kind of wireless, otherwise printing, downloading assignments & schedules, etc. become a nightmare. So therefore wifi. (Also many schools already have wifi, but very few are set up for IR/BT.)
RE: Good news
>
>Dell Inspiron 1000 for K-12: 2.2Ghz, 30G HD, 14.1" screen, >CD/DVD, all for $549 right now.
>
>A $400 Palm isn't going to beat that. A $200 Palm can, but only >if it's easy plug and play for the things schools want to do.
The problem is not a $400 PalmOS device vs. a $549 laptop. TCO means T(otal) C(ost) (of) O(peration). You have to figure in the ongoing support of the platform and software. The Zire-72 comes with Documets to Go in the box and for $299 retail costs less than Microsoft Office. Don't get me wrong, I use a WinTel laptop but I run an antivirus and 2 different packages to help protect me from adware. But even with those efforts and proper habits I ***KNOW*** that I am not 100% safe from viruses, trojans and exploits.
So what does this mean in an educational environment? You need support people to take care of such things (install, repair, upgrades, replacement, general user support and recovery) along with software and processes. IS/IT people are expensive and unlike many positions in the educational system, IT folks have a fairly high turnover rate (compared to teachers who often will work for 20-30 years in a single school syste, how many IT/IS folks are going to stay at a single place for 20 years?). I've worked at several companies and there was usually between 30-to-1 to 50-to-1 IS support tech to end user ratio. Even quadrupling that saying that a single IS tech person is going to support 200 laptops is going to add a very large cost to the laptop TCO. There is also the issue of banned content appearing on the laptop be it software or data (images, MP3's, video, etc.). Some may point out that laptops can be "locked down" but do realize that passwords can be easily cracked. G4TechTV even ran a segment recently (http://tinyurl.com/59agt) on just how to do it.
You can do a lot more with a laptop than you can with a PalmOS device but you pay a very high price for that ability. With the school budgets being what they are today schools just can't afford the total cost of laptops.
And I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that PalmOne does have an educational push, you can visit
(http://www.palmone.com/us/education/).
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Daniel Hibbitts
Ann Arbor Palm OS Developers Group
Ann Arbor Palm OS Users Group
http://www.annarborpug.org/
RE: Good news
(Most of one side of my family is heavily involved in K-12 education. My mother was the head of a special ed. dept., and was responsible for many equipment purchases.)
I can say, in general, that TCO usually takes no part what-so-ever in the purchase decision. The school typically gets an equipment grant, needs to spend all of it, and any support is done from an entirely different fund. So product cost tends to be much more important for schools than it is to businesses, because that tells how many they can buy.
Then you're facing even a harder problem. Schools know that PCs can do the job. They don't know that Palms can. P1 has to actually show them that they can, instead of just reporting about the oddball school that worked hard to make Palms do what they want.
Problems with viruses, spyware, and banned content do cost $$$. However school administrators don't consider them in purchases. That's a support problem, not an administration problem...
If you want to replace PCs (and TI calcs) in most schools, you're going to need a drop dead easy, drop-in solution. If they have to roll their own solution (like now), then nearly all won't even consider Palms.
However this just points out again that P1 really doesn't have a clue about marketing PDAs. Vertical markets have always been the future for these devices. To grab these markets, you need to have as simple and easy to drop in solutions as possible. P1 has always seemed to think that they could just throw the devices out, and then customer's would find a use for them.
RE: Good news
1) Kids move from class to class every 40-60 minutes - imagine the RSI problems!
2) Laptops using bloated operating systems like XP or Mac take 10 mins to startup & shut down
3) Battery life on laptops is less than 2 hours - how are you going to deal with 30 kids in a class all needing a charge?
4) The desktop metaphor is dead and we're moving to a mobile one (unless we're training children to work in call centres), the desktop computer is a hub and using a handheld means that we are taking the tools to the job.
5) Computer usage is a cross curriculum activity and yet most children only get access to a computer for less than 10% of their week - imagine if you had to wait in line to use a PC!
6) Handhelds aren't perfect yet but with good relevant software and better support for built in Wi-fi that doesn't zap the battery then it's on!
The Handheld Learning Forum
RE: Good news
I do however imagine significant technical issues if the education sector adopted a laptop or tablet pc policy.
Whether educators like it or not, kids are already using this technology - rather than keeping it out of schools we need to embrace it.
RE: Good news
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Daniel Hibbitts
Ann Arbor Palm OS Developers Group
Ann Arbor Palm OS Users Group
http://www.annarborpug.org/
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