walled gardens

It has been a long time since the last entry here, and that’s probably just because it has largely been business as usual, ie the usual mixture of success, frustration and things being just about ok. So what has that mixture of experience taught us? Well, at the risk of being unsurprising, that, to be useful, a classroom device needs to be …..

….. fast. It needs to boot up immediately. No hesitations. Just press the button, and we’re up and running. So we’re into SSD territory there, then.

….. robust. It will be knocked about a bit, let’s be honest. And if it can’t put up with a bit of rough and tumble, it’s not going to do well in a school environment.

….. reliable. It just needs to work. And carry on working, no questions asked. And no IT support, even legendary übertechnicians, having to pop by most lessons.

….. long lasting. That means a more than decent battery life between charges. So no need for chargers plugged in in the classroom, with wires stretched across that gap that Mr C will inevitably try to squeeze through, ripping the plug from the socket.

….. simple. To do most of the things you actually want to do in a lesson or for homework, you don’t actually need many, indeed any, bells and whistles. Most activity will be done online.

….. integrated. And this is the key one. The more experience we get under our belts, and the more I reflect on it, the more I come to believe that the device must be integrated into a structure, into an ecosystem. We’re talking Google, iCloud or Amazon here. Possibly Office 365. It pains me to say so, as I hate the way these big outfits try to tie you into their particular brand of straitjacket, to lure you into their own little walled garden, but I suspect that this may have to be the price we pay to get the simplicity and dependability that an educational context demands.

Grudgingly, therefore, I feel I am going to have to look at the various merits of Chrome books, iPads and the like. Sigh.