Kid-optimized tablet computers will go to more than 10,000 schoolchildren and teachers in Arkansas, California, Hawaii, New York, Utah and Washington, D.C.

From an AP story out of Little Rock, Arkansas:

Free Pad computers developed by a Norwegian company are being distributed to Independence County’s nearly 7,000 public school teachers and students through a pilot program to put technology in rural schools.

The computers will replace textbooks and library books used by kindergarten through 12th graders in the county’s eight school districts…

Bruce Lincoln of Columbia University’s Institute for Learning Technology said the program represents a changing attitude about how to meld technology and public education. Lincoln said he believes the issue is as important to the nation’s future as homeland security.

“It’s sharing a knowledge base with people. This has been happening in some places for a long time but not in places like Independence County,” he said.

The New York university plans to study the Arkansas project and help with its implementation. The three-year project will cost about $14 million and will be funded through corporate, private and nonprofit sponsorships, said Sandy Morgan, founder of Kidztel, the New Hampshire company coordinating the project

From the start, back in the early 1990s, the TeleRead proposal has advocated the tablet form-factor for K-12, and it’s quite a kick to see both technology and life catching up. Especially I like the idea of educators and publishers collaborating to present textbook-style information in new ways. TeleRead favors real books being online for schoolchildren–including the classics that would be spoiled by hyperlinks (except for basic navigation, such as from the table of contents to individual chapters). But that’s a different issue from the presentation of textbookish material.

Too, I would totally agree with Sandi Morgan–she actually spells her nickname with an “i,” not the “y” in the AP article–that machines will be especially useful for children with learning disabilities. Amos Bokros would be appreciative. The story says of Ms. Morgan:

The Center Barnstead, N.H., mother of four, said she started her electronic textbook company after noticing that her son, who had a learning disability, was drawn to the computer.

“When he was on the computer or playing a video game, he was able to focus and stay on task,” she said. “We have a generation of nonreaders and I became convinced that schools would be the place where the electronic book market would break.”

Above all, it’s good to see the program aimed at the schools and children needing it the most. In a related vein, see TeleRead Update 19, E-Books in Urban Education Useful Lessons from the South Side of Chicago. Of course, although the hardware is slowly beginning to get around, the content issue will remain. How to bridge the gap between rich and poor areas? That’s what so much of TeleRead is about–reducing the “savage inequalities” of our schools and, yes, libraries. While the article talks about replacing library books, not just textbooks, I doubt that local communities like many of those in Arkansas can afford to do the job right without assistance from elsewhere. Just who’ll pay for it all? TeleRead territory. Even under TeleRead, not everything could be online for free. But the situation would be vastly better than today.

TeleRead would not just help schools and libraries address tricky copyright issues in the usual ways. While treating content providers fairly, it would also allow children and other library users to accumulate books to store permanently.

What’s more, via good design and purchasing arrangements, it could drive down the cost of hardware (now $450 per unit in KidzTel’s case) so the children could keep the same machines permanently rather than have to turn them in at the end of the school year. As it is, let’s hope that the children can at least hold on to little cards housing all of the books and notes they accumulate, or that school servers can provide long-term storage organized around each child. I won’t get my hopes up right now if some rumors on the Net are correct (if nothing else, think about the cost of the cards up to the task). But maybe that will change in the future.

Note: The AP piece appeared in USA Today May 15, but the excerpt is still very much worth reproducing. A more recent article has just appeared in the Christian Science Monitor: Slate and chalk go wireless in the backwoods of Arkansas.

Details for purists: The FreePad machines are Linux based and are not Tablet PCs. Still, the form factor is definitely that of a tablet machine, small t. Another detail. The photo is from the FreePad site and may or may not show the exact model that Kidztel is distributing.

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