Asus eeePC for Education
Having listened to much of the noise being generated about the Asus eeePC I finally gave in and bought one. Like many others I have to say that I am impressed. I needed a small gadget that I could take on the road, has a proper keyboard and a good display. The Asus seems to fit the bill perfectly.
It has been very interesting reading comments in both the education press and blogs about the Asus. There seems to be a strong will among many for the ultimate, inexpensive, child-friendly portable gadget to come along. A super-gadget that will act as the front-end to the new mobile, 24/7 learning experience of the future. The eeePC does seem to be the closest thing we have at the moment. It certainly ticks a few boxes:
- it is cheap;
- it is very networkable in a range of media types (proper web-browser, web-cam, sound…);
- it has a good keyboard ;
- it has a good display the promise of higher resolutions coming along.
The eeePC also has a number of other qualities that make it attractive to many pushing this agenda forward. It runs using open-source software (Linux, Open-office) although a Windows XP version is coming soon. The inclusion of open source is great as it helps to keep the costs down and, generally, adheres to standard file formats and protocols.
The other thing of interest is the default installation. It is very geared up to what some have called the Google Operating System. I.e it has links straight through to Google docs, mail etc. Again, this aspect has attracted much comment as it can be cited as evidence that the world is moving away from large local software installations and more towards one of centralised services running on remote servers.
These two trends (open source/ standards and distributed services) are key aspects of what many ICT in education crystal-ball gazers have been saying is the way to go for sometime. It is therefore of great relief to see a device that embodies these trends and I am sure that this is responsible for much of the good-will being generated towards the eeePC.
However, the eeePC is just a small PC. There is nothing particularly special about it with regard to connectivity– in the hardware or software. (Incidentally, I installed Ubuntu on mine instead of the default OS and it works great.) But, the eeePC has been put together in a very easy to use way that just works out of the box. This is of much more value to most end-users than the fact it is open-source or has links to ‘Google bits and bobs’ from the desktop. I image that the inclusion of Open Office is also of much more value as I think we still have a way to go before people are producing all their written output on something like Google Docs.
Having said that, it’s a great device and it could be an important element of the learning platform initiative. I also hope that it’s success stimulates the market in this area. The more choice we have over affordable, well configured, non-propriety tools, the better it is for all.