{"id":905,"date":"2011-05-06T10:02:07","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T14:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/?p=905"},"modified":"2011-05-11T18:24:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T22:24:45","slug":"technology-for-the-masses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/2011\/05\/06\/technology-for-the-masses","title":{"rendered":"Technology For The Masses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Conrad Wolfram (of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wolfram|Alpha<\/a>) made a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/lang\/eng\/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html\" target=\"_blank\">great TED speech<\/a> about how kids should be taught math. Definitely worth a watch if you have 17 spare minutes.<\/p>\n<p>If we are to start teaching kids to perform math using a computer, like the real world does math, then there needs to be an affordable way to bring computers to students. On this front, I&#8217;m extremely impressed by a man named\u00a0David Braben. You may know him as the creator of the <em>Rollercoaster Tycoon<\/em> series. In his latest project he&#8217;s created a $25 computer. Yes, <em>twenty five dollars<\/em>. From <a title=\"Game developer David Braben creates a USB stick PC for $25\" href=\"http:\/\/www.geek.com\/articles\/games\/game-developer-david-braben-creates-a-usb-stick-pc-for-25-2011055\/\" target=\"_blank\">Geek.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Braben has developed a tiny USB stick PC that has a HDMI port in one end and a USB port on the other. You plug it into a HDMI socket and then connect a keyboard via the USB port giving you a fully functioning machine running a version of Linux.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The goal being to literally <em>give<\/em> students a computer. One that could be used for classes, one that could easily be built upon, one that may inspire the next ground-breaking computer scientist.<\/p>\n<p>With school budgets constantly stretched to the limit, this is a much better option than <a title=\"Math That Moves: Schools Embrace the iPad\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/05\/education\/05tablets.html\" target=\"_blank\">giving kids iPads<\/a>. Plus, Braben&#8217;s computer is much more open to innovation and development by the motivated student. Open source software and exposed hardware encourages students to literally build upon the device. The iPad, while a great learning tool for numerous topics, fails at inspiring budding computer scientists due to its closed structure. You can&#8217;t get into the iPad and change things. You can&#8217;t see how it works. You can&#8217;t even change the battery.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, David Braben, for your $25 computer. We&#8217;re definitely making steps in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Braben created a $25 dollar computer. Let&#8217;s get it into school and inspire some kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[75],"tags":[544,541,543,542],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p123kB-eB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}