Ricardo's Blog

To really understand what Intel-powered Classmate PCs are you have to hang around kids using them.  Once you see them many of the doubts about them simply vanish into thin air. 

I was fortunate to be able to visit with Craig R. Barret and the team an elementary school in Costa Rica in which the Classmate PCs have been in use for a few weeks.  In the school you can see both models of education, the traditional media lab with desktop PCs and the new 1:1 experience with Classmate PCs.  I have been to media labs many times before and that was not a surprise to me.  But going into a classroom full of kids and Classmate PCs was a completely different experience.  You simply see the kids engage using the laptops as if the device were given to them years ago.

The laptop of course looks great on the kids hands.  The smaller keyboard and screen are actually very adequate to K-12 students. The kids at the classroom we visited were using all sorts of applications on their Classmates, running software to build a presentation, educational software with Spanish and Natural sciences excercises, consulting websites via their built-in WiFi interface... hey you could also see several Google screens for the kids that were doing some research.  In this particular school kids were in grupos were they could work and learn together.  A group was inside the classroom and another way in the garden in a science class looking at insects through an electronic microscope.

But see for yourself.  Look at how engaged they are.  If you are interested in reproducing one or more of the pictures on your blog, simply give credit and link to this blog post, as per the Creative Commons license that applies to this blog.

Here are some pictures, but you can find the full collection here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carreon/sets/72157600032121331/ .