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