CIO reports that more than 25 low-cost laptops based on Intel’s Atom microprocessor are due on the market by mid-2008. As I’ve lamented before, I see the majority of laptops on the market today too expensive & too fragile to put into the hands of middle school & high school students without major planning & support. With the release of durable, low-low cost alternatives like the Asus Eee PC & the OLPC XO-1, I’ve seen signs of that changing. Now the trickle appears to be turning into a steady flow. With a range of options costing less than US $300, 2008 & 2009 may be the years when 1:1 computing in primary & secondary education becomes mainstream.
I agree that these devices are changing deployment models. We are piloting a small deployment of four ASUS EeePC machines in a 4th grade classroom. The teacher has the standard one computer in her room, and has managed to add an older notebook computer and a projector.
We originally discussed putting four older desktops into her classroom, but we would have had to add more electrical capacity. The low power consumption of the EeePCs means we can charge them when not used on a single circuit, then bring them out into the classroom when they need to be used.
They connect to our public wireless network, but are not allowed to log in to our Novell network. This is a change from previous policy, which required users to log in. Instead, we are encouraging students to bring USB drives, or just use Google Docs to compose, share, and edit documents from multiple locations.
They keyboard is a good size match for students, not adults. We’ll see how it works.