Also, did you see the performance demo? 10s was significantly faster than 10 Pro.
Not sure about the $999 for the cheapest model however. Does it include an Office 365 subscription?
Except that giving kids unfettered access to their computers allows them to flourish. See: BBC Micro, Raspberry Pi, Apple ][, the list goes on.
I agree that great things can happen when kids can truly explore their computer and take away the 'magic', but just handing all kids a laptop and having them go wild is not the way to do it. I don't what is, to be fair.
If they brick it, they have to work out how to fix it.
As one of the kids who was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro, I had zero support. No-one else in my family even knew how to turn it on. No teacher at my school could support me because none of them knew how it worked either. If I broke it, I had to fix it. And no Stack Overflow, so no code to copy-paste. I had to go back to first principles every time and work out what went wrong and how I could make it go right.
Best education you can give anyone.
But they still won't know or care how their computer works, or how to program.
If I - as a teacher - can do an immediate 'restore to neutral state' with core educational files and programs retained then by all means open them up.
Otherwise, I have to be curmudgeon and say that the existence of the computer in the classroom is to more effectively complete educational tasks. If having an open system gets in the way of that then the system should not be open.
What is this weird obsession that we have with making children do everything the hard way? I understand that we want them to apply critical thinking and for them to grow into self-sufficiency, but why do we suggest these archaic hazing rituals?
We've made strides in many areas of technology. We have the power to troubleshoot a non-working laptop, unsuccessfully diagnose, and then re-image it to a saved state in less than a school day. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences, but I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.
> we teach them basic math
Keyword here is teach. We do not give them a math book and tell them to figure out what 8 * 7 means. We break down the concept of multiplication into its constituent parts. In that same vein, we should enable the child to learn how to troubleshoot the system.
Like I said: I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.
Well, life is an archaic hazing ritual.
We had laptops at my high school 10 years ago, some of us learned how they worked inside and out, most did not.
When the curriculum depends on having a functional laptop, teachers wont want to wait around for kids to figure out how to fix their laptops. 90+% will go go the tech. Little Johnny who's already struggling with math class will not be helped by having a non-functional laptop. Not everyone needs to know how computers work.
EDIT: Probably you are like me and many people on here who found the HS curriculum easy and boring and stimulated yourself by hacking around with computers instead. This is not everyone's experience of HS, some kids legitimately struggle.
Still, that BBC Basic manual and copies of Micro User were mighty helpful - the manual was excellent! I am sure you agree.
...and a minute fraction will play on the football field or perform in the school theater.
They'll just use the browser for porn, no need to install third-party software.
Games are now a rich part of our culture. They can tell great stories, and are not "better" or "worse" then a book per se. If you enjoy them in moderation, and go outside enough, games are a great thing. And LAN parties were a great pastime.
Malware, hacking tools, warez were one gateway for me into serious programming. I downloaded Visual Basic or Visual Studio and proceeded to write a trojan, to make friends' CD tray open and close on LAN parties.
And porn? Grown ups and parents don't like to hear it, but as a teen I of course enjoyed that there was porn on the internet. It didn't hurt me, and I've had healthy, normal relationships in my life.
Without games, there wouldn't have been any point to dig deeper than word processing.
Unless you actively try to stimulate the smarter kids and give them something to sink their teeth into, it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between kids who are bored and miserable because the material is below their level and kids who just don't give a shit about learning. In both cases, they'll be goofing off, not paying attention, and possibly disrupting class, but one group can flourish under the right conditions, and the other group is a lost cause.
Learning to avoid malware is an important skill for kids to learn. Shielding those kids will just create a bunch of adults that get infected.
I am genuinely curious - ideas?
The target market is students, not schools. They want kids to get a windows computer instead of a mac before they head off to college