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 at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html