I’ve been thinking about some improvements that I’d like to make during next year’s iteration of my online computer science classes. I’ve come up with a few ideas around course delivery that I think might help some of the students in the course (and also be full of geeky fun). Right now, the idea that I’m finding most interesting is the use of netbooks to deliver the course.
cc licensed flickr photo by -eko-In delivering the course, we’ve run into a few hurdles. None of these are insurmountable but I think that bypassing them might help out some of our students. Some of these hurdles are:
- bandwidth at rural schools (and homes). I’m pretty lucky to work in a place that has the bandwidth we have here. I would like to increase the amount of audio and video content in the course but students at schools with relatively low bandwidth might find the experience is not conducive to learning. Some of the students don’t have any internet access at home, or dial up access only.
- installation and configuration of programs. Our IT staff have been very supportive of the courses and done an excellent job getting programs installed promptly when requested. I don’t, however, have that kind of support available when students are working at home. I want them to be able to work at home but if they have intall or config problems I won’t be able to do too much to help them.
- availability of computers/internet access at home. As noted, some students don’t have internet access at home. Some don’t have a computer at home or may not have a computer of sufficient power to do the work I need them to.
I see netbooks as a way around some of the constraints. We use Python for Computer Science 20 and BlueJ (an IDE for Java that is designed for learning programming). It would be trivial to get a netbook, install all the needed programs and copy all the course content over on to it. To make life even easier, once one machine has had all the necessary installation and configuration, a drive image could be made then copied onto other netbooks. The netbooks could be signed out to all students who are taking the course to be returned (or purchased) at the end of the course. We have a number of students from other schools who are taking the course. The home school for these students could put a deposit for each netbook. When a student completes the course the school could return the netbook to us, sell the netbook to the student or purchase.
Doing that, home internet access and school bandwidth become negligible. Some access would still be required to submit assignments, but not much bandwidth would be required. All the netbooks would be configured exactly as needed for the course. We could even get rid of some of the programs that aren’t needed but just take up space (but not the games – gotta keep all the games). Home availability would be a non-issue since every student would be given a computer to take home. One concern I would have with this kind of delivery system is that we would end up excluding students who don’t have financial resources from home or on their own. I hope that schools would find a way to make this available to any student who was interested.
Here are some of the specifications I’ve been thinking about:
- What brand of netbook? I’m not sure if there are any that stand above the others for the program’s needs.
- Size of screen. This would have an effect not only on usability by students, but also on the resolution of video produced for the course. Luckily, it wouldn’t be too difficult to go back to the original videos and export them at a lower resolution.
- operating system? Yeah, this one is pretty much a no-brainer. The school division is dogmatically Windows based, and there are small pockets of Macintosh iconoclasts like me. Despite that, I don’t think there is any better way for someone to learn about computers and computer software than having access to a machine running Linux. I’d want this whether I was teaching in a face to face classroom or online. Mac OS offers a similar opportunity to learn, but the licensing cost for the OS makes it difficult to justify going that route (as much as I’d like to teach computer science on a Hackintosh). I don’t think anything could convince me to use a Windows OS given my choice, although that is what is happening now just to be sure of a standard platform.
- RAM? I’m thinking 1 GB should do the trick – that should run JVM painlessly, but we don’t need to build this into a multimedia creation machine.
- Storage. Not much required, which makes me think that a moderatly sized solid state drive (16 GB seems about right) would do the trick, and make the computer more durable. This is a good feature to have for computers being carried around in high school students’ book bags.
Your commentary and criticism are encouraged.
I like the idea. We have talked at our school about the netbooks as well. I have noticed that the primary use of our laptops is very easily “computable”. I argued that spending the money we are spending on a laptop for the little it is being used for is a waste when there is a better alternative.
How do you think these would hold up in a regular setting?
I like the idea. We have talked at our school about the netbooks as well. I have noticed that the primary use of our laptops is very easily “computable”. I argued that spending the money we are spending on a laptop for the little it is being used for is a waste when there is a better alternative.
How do you think these would hold up in a regular setting?
I’ve bought 3 netbooks and my favorite so far is the EeePC 1000. I run GNU/Linux on it (Easy Peasy 1.0 – a variant of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix) and it is very stable. It has two SSD drives. An 8G which hosts the system and a 32G drive for more storage. I’m very happy with it as I find the screen and keyboard size adequate.
I do expect however, netbooks to get radically better over the next few years. I’m also curious to see what effect the ARM processor with GNU/Linux will have on the market. I’d really like to see netbooks get a lot cheaper. Decent ones are still well over $350 US.
I’ve bought 3 netbooks and my favorite so far is the EeePC 1000. I run GNU/Linux on it (Easy Peasy 1.0 – a variant of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix) and it is very stable. It has two SSD drives. An 8G which hosts the system and a 32G drive for more storage. I’m very happy with it as I find the screen and keyboard size adequate.
I do expect however, netbooks to get radically better over the next few years. I’m also curious to see what effect the ARM processor with GNU/Linux will have on the market. I’d really like to see netbooks get a lot cheaper. Decent ones are still well over $350 US.
Thanks for taking time to leave some responses. Your input is helping me a lot.
@eldon A year ago in the technology committee meetings, we had a discussion about the number and type of computers that we wanted. The conscensus at the time, which I supported, was that we wanted multimedia production computers even if it meant fewer of them. I don’t think that has been the main use of the machines we purchased (although it could be argued that perhaps they would be used for media production if Macs had been purchased). While I think that there is a niche that is fulfilled with media production machines (especially if those machines are Macs), it would be a more effective use of our budget to look at the netbook style of machine. Maybe that should be our priority this budget cycle then in a year we can see which way we would like to expand our capabilities.
As for durability, I think that although there are issues with the lifespan of solid state drives it would make most sense to go that way to end up with a more rugged machine. I borrowed an EEE PC with SSD from the school division last year and dropped it about 2 feet to test it’s durability. It ran just fine. An SSD based machine is a much more practical solution for laptops in the school than regular HDD machines.
@Peter Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s helpful to find out some of the configurations that have proven successful for others. I concur about the improvements we’ll see in netbooks over the next 2 or 3 years, especially if Apple brings out a netbook-type device. Other manufacturers would feel the pressure to drop prices to compete. My ideal scenario for a netbook based course delivery system would be to pilot the project with 4 or 5 students next year targeting students with little or no internet access at home to see how well this works for them. If it proves effective, start using the netbooks as the standard delivery system starting in the 2010 – 2011 school year. I anticipate that the quality of machine would improve and the price would drop during that time.
Thanks for taking time to leave some responses. Your input is helping me a lot.
@eldon A year ago in the technology committee meetings, we had a discussion about the number and type of computers that we wanted. The conscensus at the time, which I supported, was that we wanted multimedia production computers even if it meant fewer of them. I don’t think that has been the main use of the machines we purchased (although it could be argued that perhaps they would be used for media production if Macs had been purchased). While I think that there is a niche that is fulfilled with media production machines (especially if those machines are Macs), it would be a more effective use of our budget to look at the netbook style of machine. Maybe that should be our priority this budget cycle then in a year we can see which way we would like to expand our capabilities.
As for durability, I think that although there are issues with the lifespan of solid state drives it would make most sense to go that way to end up with a more rugged machine. I borrowed an EEE PC with SSD from the school division last year and dropped it about 2 feet to test it’s durability. It ran just fine. An SSD based machine is a much more practical solution for laptops in the school than regular HDD machines.
@Peter Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s helpful to find out some of the configurations that have proven successful for others. I concur about the improvements we’ll see in netbooks over the next 2 or 3 years, especially if Apple brings out a netbook-type device. Other manufacturers would feel the pressure to drop prices to compete. My ideal scenario for a netbook based course delivery system would be to pilot the project with 4 or 5 students next year targeting students with little or no internet access at home to see how well this works for them. If it proves effective, start using the netbooks as the standard delivery system starting in the 2010 – 2011 school year. I anticipate that the quality of machine would improve and the price would drop during that time.