Guest Host - Edtech Talk Brainstorm (ETBS)

Last night I twittered out a statement that I essentially have been thinking about for quite some time over the past couple of years. In my twitter post I said, "I'd like to see schools showcase wonderful learning artifacts of students in the same way that school athletic departments do." This is in no way a knock against the fine community building activities that school atheltic departments have been doing...it was more a statement of, "Why can't we showcast academics and non-athlectics like that?"

Doug Symington, the regular host of the standing Thursday night Edtechtalk.com show titled, "Edtech Talk Brainstorm," sent me a message asking if I'd like to guest host the Brainstorm and discuss that point a little further. I sent Doug a message saying I'd be happy to fill in. So I did. And the recording of this 60 minutes+ ETBS is posted below. We meandered quite a bit as often happens on the brainstorm and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Thanks to Doug for joining remotely via cell phone to help get things started and thanks to Peggy George for joining me during the last half of the show. In the webcast we talked Gator Radio, the Kindle, student posting of learning artifacts, all things twitter, cheap time shifting technologies in schools, etc. Thanks to everyone who listened live...I will try to strip out a pure mp3 and get that posted over at the ETBS page at Edtechtalk.com soon.


Click here to listen to the audio in a ustream flash player. Again, I'll strip out the mp3 audio and repost when I get some time.

One Laptop Per School...Introducing the MacBook Air

I was pretty fired up about MacWorld last week and the possibility of Apple introducing a laptop computer that is student targeted, light weight, possesses excellent battery life, and is rugged and affordable...something less expensive than the MacBook and possibly with a solid state flash drive. I've long been a fan of apple computer, their OS, and of course their glitzy hardware. What they unveiled at MacWorld was light weight and mobile alright, but also came with an $1800 dollar price tag! The only thing more ridiculous than this price tag for the entry level MacBook Air was the price tag for the MacBook Air with a 64 GB solid state hard drive and a ever so slightly faster processor - $3100! Is Apple Computer crazy? Are they out of touch? Who is going to buy a 13" laptop for this price? It looks to me like Apple is on the same path of Microsoft with its proprietary nature, overwhelming growth, and overall unresponsiveness to the needs of the average consumer - this is hard for me to say as I write this from my MacBook Pro.

With a device like this we aren't coming anywhere near one laptop per child possibilities for our kids. As I was talking about this with Doug Symington yesterday via skype, he referred to the Mac Book Air as "The One Laptop Per School!" With prices ranging from $1800-$3100, Doug is right on!