While I wopuld love to see changes in education, with two seven year olds who have not yet learned to read and literally start to yawn within two minutes of sitting down with a book I needed a device they could use on their own but I could keep track of their progress.

This looks like the solution for me. Especially since they and their parent is very destructive. Bicycles last about two weeks, footballs, and scooters don’t usually make it through a weekend without someone sticking an ice pick in them.

So I am going to pick up two of these and see if they will last. And if they can help the children learn.

Cathy

My original point stands; it’s not a PC. Marketing it as one is deceptive and wrong. But as a learning device it looks like it has potential. And I love the idea of building a custom device for specific educational applications. However, I’m just not sure the cost justifies the benefit.

I was about to write a post of my own about the Teachermate. Unfortunately our blog is temporarily down for “repairs”.

In any case: I started doing some more research on it, and came across your 2 entries. I thought your first one made a lot of sense. I think you should stick to your guns about the device regardless of what the Executive Director fed you.

I have a background in education, psychology & design and I can tell you quite confidently that innovation in education will come with new tools and systemic changes in how we teach & measure learning. What we don’t need are new tools that support outdated teaching methods and assessment practices.

Because its mission statement is noble I’m sure they’ll secure funding to stay in business, but I can’t see them making any significant amount of money on this product that belongs in 1998.

Glad I found your blog! I’ll keep reading!

Good work. Yours is the only post I’ve seen about this thingie that shows any thought or research deeper than the press release.

I’ve got to admit I’m _real_ skeptical about this thing though.

1) if they’ve been developing and making this wonderful sw for 15 years where is it?

2) as you say, the website is truly awful. It certainly doesn’t give me confidence as to a real org behind it.

3) How are teachers going to control rather fragile devices that are about the size of a pack of cards with your typical urban k-2s?

4) ‘Teachermate’? shows how kid-centric the idea is.

5) Closed, real closed.

6) what can the kids see on the screen? Third grade (they say that for next year) reading curriculum on a 2.5″, no rez specified screen?

I could go on, but time and patience have their limits.

What do you think of the Eee PC from ASUS? $400 for 1GB of RAM and 8GB Flash storage. Three USB 2.0 ports, built in WiFi, internal web cam and speakers and 7″ diagonal screen. It runs a version of Linux, but I have also seen people that have taken them and loaded a stripped down version of WinXP on them. Been looking at having a small portable lab set up with them to do PD or trainings with a class. For $5,000 I could have a lab of 12 computers.

KB