In the course of my normal news research for this blog, I stumbled across this article. Apparently, there's a £30 million universal internet access plan in the works for school children.
Excerpt 1:
The mobile companies set the tone with major announcements to provide mobile devices and platforms for learners. Finnish mobile manufacturer Nokia has teamed up with Sanako, a compatriot education software house, to provide N810 internet tablets to the schools market.This quote is priceless:
"Handhelds have had a position in education for years," he said. "But restrictions such as costs, technical and input issues have held them back. The N810 can solve this because it's got a large screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, plus stylus and fingernail input and the same browsing experience as you have on your laptop or desktop."Just last week, I was in conversations with a couple developer friends about how difficult it is to get the N810. Unless purchased from Amazon, it seems all distributors (and even the Nokia developer device program) are hard to get. I joke that Amazon is bribing wholesalers to get a bigger share. Seeing the above news, however, makes it all easier to swallow. I hope all those missing N810 tablets are headed to students who could not afford computers.
Congratulations, Nokia, on making a big move to send the tablets to the education sector. Bravo!
4 comments:
Agreed, it's nice of Nokia to give some tablets to students. Still, you might think they would make developers a high priority as well. They told the developer discount applicants that the codes would work as soon as the N810 became available. There's no shortage of units; most stores (including Nokia's own) have them in stock. I have a developer discount code for the US store, and it STILL doesn't work. I'm also a college student.
Portable computing for pre college / university kids. Wow. Aside from the 1% that will turn into hot shot Linux developers, I can see A.D.D. diagnoses and Ritalin sales skyrocketing. (Anyone in the UK might wanna invest in the parent drug companies.)
My class in college was the first to partake in the 'mobile computing initiative' - - we got to lease laptops at ripoff prices - - and I saw a number of people in their early 20s unable to resist ICQ during class and they dropped out. (Not to be a pessimist - - well... okay maybe just a bit.) :)
now nokia need to create a dock with vga6tv out, and usb ports for stuff like keyboard, mouse and usb sticks..
where are the smart people
i work my butt off to show off what we can do with it gaming and very few people have jumped-in to do stuff in the past year. i can name two, zerionseven and pipeline.
why don't you generate some traffic to pupnik.de for me and maybe we can get some talented youngster to pick up one of my game projects and make it good...
call it 'the vast untapped potential'
http://pupnik.de/Gemrb_Screen1_1280.jpg
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