A few of the academic educational technology research groups in the U.S. have been shifting their focus to Palms from desktop or even WinCE devices. Their argument is interesting: It's about access of two kinds. - ACCESS BY STUDENTS: Many people believe that we're never going to see much impact of computers at the level of 10 kids per computer (at best!) that we have today. Palms are cheap enough that one can outfit a whole class with them using current budgets. - ACCESS TO STUDENTS: What's more, students react to them differently than desktop computers. My former Ph.D. advisor, Elliot Soloway, says that kids in urban school districts don't even talk about the Palms like computers -- instead, it's more like a Walkman or an MP3 player. It's a media device that happens to have more interactivity to it.
I'm making an argument that a cheap, handheld device is a grand idea, but the Palm is too cheap -- we simply don't want to give up all the forms of media that we have even if we step up to an iPaq or WinCE class device.
I have some questions for y'all about this: TECHNICALLY: - I've been claiming that all forms of Squeak media (e.g., 3-D, Alice, MPEG, Flash, text-to-speech) run on WinCE and iPaq devices, but I realized that I haven't actually seen those all run on a handheld device. Can anyone verify that these Squeak media run on the handheld devices? - Is it still the case that Squeak can't be ported to Palms?
EDUCATIONALLY: - This group cares about these kinds of issues. What do you think? I'm arguing that more diverse media is worth an decrement in accessibility that's found in the Palm. Do you buy that? Or is it just a matter of time before the Palm's cost-performance ratio shifts and we can get the media we want without surrendering the Palm's cost, ubiquity, and accessibility?
Thanks for advice and comments, Mark -------------------------- Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies. Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/ (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
Mark,
Interesting preposition. Personally, I believe these arguments are correct in the grand scheme of things though not necessarily in their concrete interpretations. What we see today is a development towards better communication abilities which hide the fact that there's a "computer" underneith. I think very few of the people using mobile phones for example, realize that they're talking about a device that has almost as much computing power as a Palm (or any other hand-held computer). The next generation of these communication devices (to which I count Palm as well) will have even better displays, more communication bandwidth, faster processors, more memory etc. etc. etc. If you just look at UTMS or any other "always on" technology you will understand that what we're talking about an entire new generation of communication devices.
However, these devices cannot realistically stand on their own. Without the builtin high-bandwidth communication facilities they're nothing but a "poor man's desktop computer" (which is exactly the problem with hand-helds in general; the price is dominated by the constant struggle of trying to be "almost" a personal computer and the need to be less expensive). Thus, these devices need to be always on, they need something to be connected to. Which in turn means that a level of "10 kids per computer" might be absolutely acceptable if that computer happens to be the server their communication devices connect to.
With respect to your argument about that these devices are (and will be) too cheap ... I don't know. Given enough bandwidth (and we're talking *lots* of bandwidth in the next generation here) it might very well be feasable to stream all of that stuff directly into your mobile device. In fact, given the economics of UMTS (where you'll pay mostly for the bandwidth you use and not for the time you're connected) the network providers will not only love you for this idea - they're also desparately looking for applications that create enough bandwidth to make economic sense (I've recently spoken to a friend of mine who's in that business and he basically said that UMTS will only make economic sense if we start playing Doom through streaming the 3D world as MPEG movie ;-)
[Re: Technical Questions] All of Squeak - and I mean *all* of it - does run on hand-held devices like the iPaq. It's not necessarily very fast but it runs. With respect to Palm, according to some recent press-release they're going to use StrongArm in the next generation - this should solve almost all of the problems we had porting Squeak to it (these problems primarily relate to the way Palm used to handle memory). Also, I would never say that Squeak "can't" be ported to any of these devices - it's all just ASMOP (or perhaps in this case a somewhat larger ;-)
[Re: Educational Questions] Actually that's a technical one too ;-) (at least the part about the shift of cost/performance ratio). And no, I don't think that this shift will ever reach a balance where we're truly satisfy with the results. True, things improve but the ratio of improvement doesn't seem to increase at a significant higher rate than in the world of desktop computers (Laptops being seemingly the only exception here - they managed to come up to par with desktop computers but at a price...) While the performance of an iPaq is probably in the range of the PC I used five years back it's simply not satisfying my today needs. And I think that's going to be true for the next years unless we look at these devices in a different way (see above).
Cheers, - Andreas
-----Original Message----- From: owner-squeakland@squeakland.org [mailto:owner-squeakland@squeakland.org]On Behalf Of Mark Guzdial Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2001 1:59 PM To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org; squeakland@squeakland.org Subject: Access vs. Media
A few of the academic educational technology research groups in the U.S. have been shifting their focus to Palms from desktop or even WinCE devices. Their argument is interesting: It's about access of two kinds.
- ACCESS BY STUDENTS: Many people believe that we're never going to
see much impact of computers at the level of 10 kids per computer (at best!) that we have today. Palms are cheap enough that one can outfit a whole class with them using current budgets.
- ACCESS TO STUDENTS: What's more, students react to them differently
than desktop computers. My former Ph.D. advisor, Elliot Soloway, says that kids in urban school districts don't even talk about the Palms like computers -- instead, it's more like a Walkman or an MP3 player. It's a media device that happens to have more interactivity to it.
I'm making an argument that a cheap, handheld device is a grand idea, but the Palm is too cheap -- we simply don't want to give up all the forms of media that we have even if we step up to an iPaq or WinCE class device.
I have some questions for y'all about this: TECHNICALLY:
- I've been claiming that all forms of Squeak media (e.g., 3-D,
Alice, MPEG, Flash, text-to-speech) run on WinCE and iPaq devices, but I realized that I haven't actually seen those all run on a handheld device. Can anyone verify that these Squeak media run on the handheld devices?
- Is it still the case that Squeak can't be ported to Palms?
EDUCATIONALLY:
- This group cares about these kinds of issues. What do you think?
I'm arguing that more diverse media is worth an decrement in accessibility that's found in the Palm. Do you buy that? Or is it just a matter of time before the Palm's cost-performance ratio shifts and we can get the media we want without surrendering the Palm's cost, ubiquity, and accessibility?
Thanks for advice and comments, Mark
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies. Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/ (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
[Re: Educational Questions] Actually that's a technical one too ;-) (at least the part about the shift of cost/performance ratio). And no, I don't think that this shift will ever reach a balance where we're truly satisfy with the results. True, things improve but the ratio of improvement doesn't seem to increase at a significant higher rate than in the world of desktop computers (Laptops being seemingly the only exception here - they managed to come up to par with desktop computers but at a price...) While the performance of an iPaq is probably in the range of the PC I used five years back it's simply not satisfying my today needs. And I think that's going to be true for the next years unless we look at these devices in a different way (see above).
That's the technical answer I expected, and that's what leads back to this question. Access vs. media is one way of describing the handhelds vs. desktop choice. Handhelds will ALWAYS give you better access, and desktops will ALWAYS give you better performance, it seems. So, how do you choose for what kinds of applications -- and it's a particularly relevant point when considering applications for kids.
Mark
-------------------------- Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies. Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/ (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
Or http://www.linuxda.com/store/infopda.html, for a really cheap Linux-native Palm-compatible device. But wouldn't it be nice to have a Squeak VM that 'talks' directly to Palm-compatible hardware? If this is what Andreas &Co. were working on I certainly hope the next generation can be made to work, because these things really DO have the advantages Mark mentioned.
Gary Fisher
----- Original Message ----- From: squeak@sysa.barnett.sk To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 3:21 PM Subject: Re: Access vs. Media
On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 04:59:17PM -0400, Mark Guzdial wrote:
A few of the academic educational technology research groups in the U.S. have been shifting their focus to Palms from desktop or even WinCE devices. Their argument is interesting: It's about access of two kinds.
- ACCESS BY STUDENTS: Many people believe that we're never going to
see much impact of computers at the level of 10 kids per computer (at best!) that we have today. Palms are cheap enough that one can outfit a whole class with them using current budgets.
- ACCESS TO STUDENTS: What's more, students react to them differently
than desktop computers. My former Ph.D. advisor, Elliot Soloway, says that kids in urban school districts don't even talk about the Palms like computers -- instead, it's more like a Walkman or an MP3 player. It's a media device that happens to have more interactivity to it.
:) Well this is certain to get some responses. My PalmIIIc is more like an application runner...not so much an interactive computer, but just something that launches apps.
I'm making an argument that a cheap, handheld device is a grand idea, but the Palm is too cheap -- we simply don't want to give up all the forms of media that we have even if we step up to an iPaq or WinCE class device.
I have some questions for y'all about this: TECHNICALLY:
- I've been claiming that all forms of Squeak media (e.g., 3-D,
Alice, MPEG, Flash, text-to-speech) run on WinCE and iPaq devices, but I realized that I haven't actually seen those all run on a handheld device. Can anyone verify that these Squeak media run on the handheld devices?
Well, I think it all depends on the CPU. Anything that hits the floating point unit is bound to cause problems on, say, the StrongARM based devices. I've tried Speaker and the basic demos like the little 'synth' keyboard... the keyboard works okay, but Speaker is badly broken up (due to the lack of floating point, perhaps).
This of course is under Linux on the iPaq, but I'm pretty certain it holds true for WinCE.
Incidentally, a linux-native mp3 player was ported to the iPaq...the reason it works is that they converted the whole player to use integer math. If this could be done to the MP3 Plugin for Squeak I imagine it would work as well...of course I've got no idea how they did it. :) I'm still waiting for someone to integer-ize a Vorbis player...
- Is it still the case that Squeak can't be ported to Palms?
EDUCATIONALLY:
- This group cares about these kinds of issues. What do you think?
I'm arguing that more diverse media is worth an decrement in accessibility that's found in the Palm. Do you buy that? Or is it just a matter of time before the Palm's cost-performance ratio shifts and we can get the media we want without surrendering the Palm's cost, ubiquity, and accessibility?
Well, I'm no expert in Palm, but as the 8-ball says, "the future is uncertain". They've been toying with a StrongARM design for ages, but the latest press release I've heard still says "in design"--probably meaning, vapour. I'd love to see an updated Palm device with greater resources, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm personally quite amazed that the 'next' Palm/Handspring device is going to have all the goodies -plus- built in GPRS phone, and STILL uses the Dragonball and PalmOS! If that isn't code and hardware reuse, I don't know what is! :) (and I probably don't, but that's another story)
I mean I love my Palm, but I wouldn't want to program the thing. I certainly wouldn't subject your students to PalmOS programming. :)
I guess you need to ask: are your students going to be running pre-canned applications, or are they going to want/need a more interactive environment that is more configurable? Personally, I find it quite entertaining to actually program in a Workspace in Squeak on my iPaq. And certainly Genie will offer students freedom to come up with their own glyph sets, instead of being locked into Graffiti. I'd say that the iPaq running Squeak is the way to go. :)
Incidentally, the price of iPaqs has been dropping about $200 (CDN) around these parts. Apparantly the imminent release of the new iPaq model is driving down prices of the older devices...they are now comparable in price to the colour Palms!
Thanks for advice and comments, Mark
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies. Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/ (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
Mark,
I've long been a fan of using handhelds in classrooms. The experiments done by the Concord Consortium (if I'm remembering that name right) and the recent ACM article by Elliot Soloway have convinced me that this area has a lot of promise.
I agree that the current Palm and Visor's are not powerful enough to run Squeak acceptably well. I've used Squeak on a 33 MHz 68K machine, and it's just too slow to do interesting multimedia work. It doesn't even run Morphic well.
I've done quite a bit of work with more powerful PDA's, including several of the Sharp Zaurus models, the Compaq Itsy, and the iPaq, and you can do some interesting things with these machines. The key to reasonable performance seems to be a RISC processor of over 100 MHz.
Yet even on the 206 MHz iPaq, there are some surprising performance "gotcha's". The SA1100 chip they use has fairly small caches, and there is no second-level cache as there is on a desktop or laptop. The result is that, while tiny benchmarks run at at perhaps 1/3 the speed of a 500 MHz G4 Powerbook, real programs run at 1/10 the speed of the G4 or less. Furthermore, there is no floating point hardware, so floating point code such as 3D graphics is likely to be MUCH slower than that. There is no 3D graphics accelerator, either. Finally, if you need access to a lot of media (sound and graphics), you'll need to use an external storage card of some sort, and *all* of these cards are much slower than the hard disk in your laptop. That goes for the IBM microdrive, as well as for Compact Flash, MM, and SD cards. The need for external storage would also increase the per-student cost of the device. Finally, there is the issue of screen size. A 320x240 screen is just too small for programming, in Squeak or any other language. Programming is hard enough even when you have enough screen real estate...
Do all of these performance problems mean handhelds are not a promising platform for educational applications? Not at all! The very portability of handhelds makes it possible to take them places you wouldn't want to take a laptop, such as out to a nearby stream to measure water temperature gradients or onto a swing to measure acceleration. And their small size makes them appealing to younger kids--say third and fourth grade. (Although, in my experience, ANY kind of computer is appealing to kids!) Still, to do a good job on this platform would require a lot of careful thought about the UI and packaging to make the best use of the screen real estate and other limited resources. That very challenge makes handhelds more interesting and exciting to researchers like you and Elliot (and me!), because there are new discoveries to be made.
On the other hand, if you want to use all the educational Squeak tools that you've already got, such as the Audio Explorer, you might find it better to go with low-cost laptops. For example, Alan has been giving all his Squeak demos, including some very impressive 3D demos, using an Apple iBook. This machine is really only double the cost of an iPaq with accessories, and it has an 1024x768 screen, graphic accelerator, large and fast disk, and all the performance you'd expect from a desktop computer. Plus it has Ethernet (for sharing) and USB and Firewire for importing/exporting media from cameras and video recorders.
One argument for handheld's is that they are cheap enough for every student to have one. This was certainly true several years ago, when the average laptop cost $3000 versus the $300 for a Palm Pilot. But in the last several years, laptops have dropped in price by a factor of two while high-end palm computers such as the iPaq cost at least double the $300 for a Palm Pilot. So now the difference in price is only a factor of 2.5 or less. (School systems can get iBooks for well under the list price.) I think this trend is like to continue a bit longer, because handhelds are still growing in functionality and are using the latest (and most expensive) technologies, wherease laptops are not changing in functionality and use more mature technologies that are getting cheaper.
In conclusion, I'd say that handhelds ARE interesting, but NOT as a cheaper, smaller Squeak machine. If you decide to explore educational applications of handhelds, be prepared to re-build most of your exisiting tools and UI's. Handhelds should be approached as a new and different thing, not just as an incremental evolution of the laptop.
-- John
P.S. I should add that Squeak is a fabulous vehicle for handheld development. I do all serious programming on my laptop, then slap the image file on a Compact Flash card and pop it into the iPaq and things usually just work, modulo performance differences.
At 4:59 PM -0400 10/7/01, Mark Guzdial wrote:
A few of the academic educational technology research groups in the U.S. have been shifting their focus to Palms from desktop or even WinCE devices. Their argument is interesting: It's about access of two kinds.
- ACCESS BY STUDENTS: Many people believe that we're never going to
see much impact of computers at the level of 10 kids per computer (at best!) that we have today. Palms are cheap enough that one can outfit a whole class with them using current budgets.
- ACCESS TO STUDENTS: What's more, students react to them differently
than desktop computers. My former Ph.D. advisor, Elliot Soloway, says that kids in urban school districts don't even talk about the Palms like computers -- instead, it's more like a Walkman or an MP3 player. It's a media device that happens to have more interactivity to it.
I'm making an argument that a cheap, handheld device is a grand idea, but the Palm is too cheap -- we simply don't want to give up all the forms of media that we have even if we step up to an iPaq or WinCE class device.
I have some questions for y'all about this: TECHNICALLY:
- I've been claiming that all forms of Squeak media (e.g., 3-D,
Alice, MPEG, Flash, text-to-speech) run on WinCE and iPaq devices, but I realized that I haven't actually seen those all run on a handheld device. Can anyone verify that these Squeak media run on the handheld devices?
- Is it still the case that Squeak can't be ported to Palms?
EDUCATIONALLY:
- This group cares about these kinds of issues. What do you think?
I'm arguing that more diverse media is worth an decrement in accessibility that's found in the Palm. Do you buy that? Or is it just a matter of time before the Palm's cost-performance ratio shifts and we can get the media we want without surrendering the Palm's cost, ubiquity, and accessibility?
Thanks for advice and comments, Mark
For what it's worth... I just noticed another virtual display utility for WinCE, at www.nyditot.com. This one affords a virtual display of arbitrary size up to 9999x9999 (!), in any of all four possible orientations, with a quick way of viewing any arbitrary section at the native screen resolution, and smooth scrolling.
Now I've got more screen real estate on a handheld than I usually use on any other machine (although I guess it's virtual estate, or perhaps surreal estate. :)
-C
p.s.
Of course...
- This should probably be built-in to all windowing systems, especially handheld ones. - Squeak could do this, and probably should. - Lots of other systems have done this (e.g., Self's Kansas, various virtual desktop thingies in Unix). This one feels a lot easier to navigate to me, largely because it's operated directly with the fingers and a stylus.
-- Craig Latta composer and computer scientist craig.latta@netjam.org www.netjam.org crl@watson.ibm.com Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
I agree.
Cheers,
Alan
-----
At 12:44 PM -0800 11/1/01, Craig Latta wrote:
For what it's worth... I just noticed another virtual display utility for WinCE, at www.nyditot.com. This one affords a virtual display of arbitrary size up to 9999x9999 (!), in any of all four possible orientations, with a quick way of viewing any arbitrary section at the native screen resolution, and smooth scrolling.
Now I've got more screen real estate on a handheld than I usually use on any other machine (although I guess it's virtual estate, or perhaps surreal estate. :)
-C
p.s.
Of course...
- This should probably be built-in to all windowing systems, especially
handheld ones.
- Squeak could do this, and probably should.
- Lots of other systems have done this (e.g., Self's Kansas, various
virtual desktop thingies in Unix). This one feels a lot easier to navigate to me, largely because it's operated directly with the fingers and a stylus.
-- Craig Latta composer and computer scientist craig.latta@netjam.org www.netjam.org crl@watson.ibm.com Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
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