Do you remember the scene from "Cast Away" when Tom Hanks's character is frantically trying to create fire? Exhausted and desperate, he gamely scrapes two pieces of wood together, enduring blisters and cuts, hoping for a lone spark.
We've found our spark. Maybe.
Enter the Asus EEE Micro Notebook. From what I understand, this is a Linux-based machine, stripped down for Internet utility. Since our school is looking to move to the Web 2.0 world, this machine sounded promising to Jesse Spevack, one of our Team Leaders. He brought it to my attention a couple of weeks ago. We ordered one model, to "play" with.
It arrived on Friday. Our tech team gathered around in Jesse's room at the end of the day. Dan Ackerman (technology AP) keyed in the wireless codes and we were online.
In the palm of our hand, we held a $300 sparkplug with a 5-inch wide keyboard. Seeing the Internet on the scaled down monitor, holding the small-yet-sturdy machine in my hands, I felt like we were about to ignite our school. Maybe we'd found an affordable option to get us the 1-to-1 environment we needed to realize our School 2.0 vision.
We sent Jesse off for the weekend with the assignment to test the EEE. I'm hoping that it makes for a viable classroom tool. If so, we'll pilot with a couple of class sets, get teachers developing 2.0 classrooms and push our technology model.
Time will tell, but this Linux laptop might light our way.
1 comment:
I have been reading reviews of the EEE PC on digg. I'm eager to hear what you think of it.
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