Journal 8

Bouterse, Brian (2009).Choosing the perfect tools for one-to-one. Learning & Leading with Technology, August 2009, 14-17.

Choosing the Perfect Tools for One-to-One

This article discusses how to choose what type of device classrooms, schools, or districts should choose based on their responses to six critical areas including purpose, operating system, robustness, applications, content, and peripheral equipment. Personally I didn’t even realize that there were so many options to begin with. I simply thought school rooms bought PCS or Macs. I did however have access to tablets in a physics class and since it was an experimental run (semester long) I can only how many applications they could have beyond what I experienced.

How can a student use a laptop with less than a gig of install space?

As we also learned in class, there are websites that offer free storage online. There are also educational applications that are web-based and don’t need to be physically installed onto the computer for students and teachers to utilize them.

Why are other platforms less popular?

The article states that familiarity is what has been causing the Windows and Mac platforms to dominate classrooms for the past few decades. Since teachers are going to be more familiar with these platforms, as are those in charge of maintenance, it makes sense and costs less money to obtain these platforms than to send faculty to seminars or meetings in order to learn how to use newer platforms.