Hardware is the most obvious part of the equation, and it's amazing to see that part nearing solved.
The less obvious, but no less important part, however, is software. What will these things run? Twitter apps, tip calculators, weather widgets, and Angry Birds Rio aren't going to help kids learn to read, build an understanding of the world around them, and ultimately create value in society. I'm sure you can come up with a handful of "educational" apps from the Android Marketplace, but for these to really be valuable in schools, they're going to need professionally-developed, curriculum-integrated software, and teachers are going to need to be trained in using it to its potential.
Having a $50/$35/$10 tablet sets the stage for great things, but that's all it does. It enables real advances in education, but it won't make those advances by itself.
"Twitter apps, tip calculators, weather widgets, and Angry Birds Rio aren't going to help kids learn to read"
Straw man alert. It should be incredibly obvious that the tablets will have etexts, note taking, html lessons and quizzes, flash cards, etc. In short all the things kids do to learn 100 or 50 or 20 years ago but with the efficiency of a converged device.
>What will these things run? Twitter apps, tip calculators, weather widgets, and Angry Birds Rio [...]
Why focus on apps? What they will run is a web browser. Being able to connect to the HTML/Web platform is more important than the OS.
Of course a single hardware device does not solve all of the issues in education. While a browser is not educational software in itself, any internet connected device with a browser has great potential to do the things you list. If nothing else, they can connect to Wikipedia in 100 languages.
A major problem with education in rural India is the lack of (qualified) regular teachers. So, _if_ we could provide decent internet access, it will open them up to good resources on the internet, like Khan Academy.
Though, it is only natural for us to be skeptic, it may well be worth a try.
If you think that education happens at school you're sorrily mistaken. My 4 year old is reading Grade 1 books and doing multiplication, my 7 year old equally advanced for her age, and my 7 year old nephew is learning algebra.
Why? Because at every opportunity I facilitate their learning. When they ask a question, I help them to find the answer themselves as much as possible. They learn geography, geology and biology when we go on road trips, when they ask why they look like me and their mom, they learn about DNA. Sure, they don't understand DNA fully but they have a concept of it upon which they can build and ask further questions.
Cheap tablets with connectivity allow us to create a much better system for education, one guided by experimentation and refinement. Imagine having learners watch videos and then when they have a question they get individual attention. You can have project style learning where learners choose projects to work on and then learn the skills and knowledge necessary to complete such a project.
Tablets allow us to move education into the field where anyone can learn the things they need to know to complete the project. This is a GIANT leap forward in education.
The less obvious, but no less important part, however, is software. What will these things run? Twitter apps, tip calculators, weather widgets, and Angry Birds Rio aren't going to help kids learn to read, build an understanding of the world around them, and ultimately create value in society. I'm sure you can come up with a handful of "educational" apps from the Android Marketplace, but for these to really be valuable in schools, they're going to need professionally-developed, curriculum-integrated software, and teachers are going to need to be trained in using it to its potential.
Having a $50/$35/$10 tablet sets the stage for great things, but that's all it does. It enables real advances in education, but it won't make those advances by itself.