Alan Kay wrote on Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:43:14 -0700 (PDT) > The reason I told Steve a few years ago to make the iPhone screen at least 5" > by 8" > is that the small screens on phones are *really really bad* for good use in > education > (especially for children). This is amazingly not at all understood by a vast > number of > "educators".
While I agree 100%, my experience with teacher is that they look around their classroom and see their children looking down at their phone screens instead of at the blackboard. So they think that it would be a good idea to take what is happening anyway and convert it into an educational experience. On the other hand, around 2002 several schools in New York were trying to bring early Palm Pilot PDAs into the classroom as an alternative to computers. When I made they same argument you used above I was told that the children loved it, so I was wrong. I think that the children would also have loved if you gave each one their own frog, or almost anything else that was different. It is very important to test any ideas on the target audience (I saw several children struggle with touch pads, for example, and wouldn't have designed one into a machine meant for them) but it is also important to be careful when interpreting the results. -- Jecel _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
