$40 computer looking for users

Now, this is interesting:  

Marvell Technology Group is counting on an army of computer engineers and hackers to answer that question. It has created a “plug computer.” It’s a tiny plastic box that you plug into an electric outlet. There’s no display. But there is an Ethernet jack to connect to a home network and a U.S.B. socket for attaching a hard drive, camera or other device. Inside is a 1.2 gigahertz Marvell chip, called an application processor, running a version of the Linux operating system.

All this can be yours for $99 today and probably for under $40 in two years.

One obvious--to me--application is to bundle this mighty trinket with a handful of USB drives replete with targeted learning resources, ranging from Web pages to simulations to the inescapable test-prep packages. Instant content server!

For countries such as Barbados or Trinidad and Tobago, which are trying hard to wring value out of high-priced but not-that-functional investments in computers in schools, this simple add-on could deliver a big increase in utility. Curriculum packages might address middle-school science, high-school biology, chemistry and physics. In Barbados, where laptops on carts get moved into and out of classrooms as needed, a portable plug-in server would integrate nicely.

Innovation and ICT in schools

"As I've mentioned elsewhere, focus on innovation at the macro-economic level, even in countries with underperforming economies, is almost exclusively on the confluence of university-focused knowledge networks and private-sector companies. However, as Arnoldo Ventura, senior science & technology advisor to the PM of Jamaica puts it: 

We need to adjust science, technology and engineering courses, making them more interdisciplinary, hands-on and inclusive of collective learning.  

Mr Ventura is of course describing changes that fit many Caribbean countries' goals as expressed in education policy--for primary and secondary schools--perfectly. But these goals are rarely if ever addressed by education programs, per se, and then with limited success. Instead, schools are test-driven, learning is rote-based. The best and the brightest, at least as identified by Caribbean education systems, have never been rewarded for creativity or for collaboration. 

There is a strong need, especially in economies in the Caribbean and other regions where countries are poised to catch up with the OECD, to integrate the building blocks of innovation into education. 

Tim Kelly at infoDev argues that technology has a critical role to play in the introduction of innovation practices in schools: 

"In order to instil these talents in students, the teachers must first capture their attention and their imagination. It is much easier to do that with technology than with textbooks or with chalk and talk."

In general, I'm in agreement, for the following reasons: The motivational impact of ICT in schools turns out to be, a) among the first impacts ever demonstrated; b) _still_ cropping up in studies today, despite the increased presence of computers outside of school; c) one of the few impacts that is as strong, or stronger, in developing-country schools.  It IS easier to engage the imagination with computers, precisely because IMHO students _imagine_ the use of computers to do impossible things--write to a kid across the world, find out about China or the USA, make a web page that tells about your own life. No one in the real world does those things with chalk and slate.

For students in those poor countries, ICT is both an icon of and an engine of innovation. It motivates and it enables.

Netbooks confront a nano-niche market

There's a lot of milling around right now about the big slow-down in netbook sales. It's not looking good, especially if ALL you make is netbooks. But there is I think a more widely applicable and much more interesting phenomenon to be observed...

Lessee, where to begin? First, what's a netbook (from PC Magazine, where a number of other old friends first got their start in publishing)?:

A subnotebook computer in the $200 to $400 U.S. dollar range. The term was coined by Intel in 2008 for use with its Atom microprocessor; however, it is widely used to refer to small portables, no matter which hardware is used. Netbooks took off in Europe, but have also been popular elsewhere.

 

"Elsewhere" is of course what the netbook makers are banking on, as the EU isn't the biggest or most dynamic market. Critically, the One Laptop Per Child Children's Machine XO (AKA the laptop formerly known as the "$100 computer") is frequently classed as a netbook, and it's marketed only (well, almost only) in developing countries, theoretically to kids in schools, which constitute a big, big potential market. Other netbook manufacturers are similarly looking for sales in countries that are outside the OECD, as well as in OECD member states.

What's the main buzz, industry-wide? Basically, netbook sales have slumped badly, and opinionators are now trying to frame the causes of this slump.

But there are many facets to this diamond-hard problem that remain to be cracked. In the geek-focused segment of Public Radio International, the resident PRI opinionators hypothesized that netbooks, well, just aren't that good. (I summarize their points, because a transcript is unavailable):

• They're too small, so the keyboards are nasty
• They're don't have enough storage, so you can't play with your photos and tunes
• They're too small, so the screens are nasty
• They're slow, especially if they run Windows
• They're bigger and more powerful than your phone, but not by much
• They're smaller and more portable than your laptop, but not by much

The guys at FutureTense (and they do seem a bit tense) point to the real, emergent, and interesting problem, which is that the hardware spectrum is getting as crowded as the wireless spectrum: Given the proliferation of useful, Web-enabled, high-performance computing devices, NO product is going to face an undiscovered topography of potential users panting with excitement for its unique features. 

(Just ask Apple. As early as January 2008 analysts [another word for opinionators] were asking if the iPod Touch was cannibalizing [their word, not mine] iPhone sales. And Apple, with the Touch, the iPhone, and a strong-selling line of notebook computers, has repeatedly said it's not about to launch a netbook.) 

The FutureTense guys go on to suggest other long-term problems in the netbook market: 

• At $300, a netbook price is too close to the lowest-priced laptops (e.g., Toshiba Satellite L305D for US $399)
• The same guys that buy netbooks also probably by iPhones and laptops, and use both of those items more
• Netbook manufacturers are absorbing 30 percent returns on sales

The last bit is the most important: users buy, they try, and then they box the netbook up and send it back.

And the pile-up of evidence suggesting that netbooks are, uh, a 'transitional" platform keeps getting higher:  In this case, from Wi-FiPlanet.com, which posits in a headline that "Stronger Economy May Weaken Netbook Sales":

"People are not buying netbooks because they are truly desirable platforms, but rather because as low-cost PCs, they offer a good mix of features at an acceptable price point," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at iSuppli.

That really does it. If you're a netbook manufacturer, you can watch your sales tank in Q1 of 2009 with a degree of equanimity, it's the worst economic crisis of your lifetime. But here you've got analysts saying, Look out, Netbook Guy, when the economy picks up NO ONE is going to be forced to buy your tiny-screened, monkey-keyboarded, slow pig of a memory-challenged laptop. No one.

But wait, there's more!  (Oh no, you cry, feebly. More?)

Atanu Dey, brilliant, ICT-focused economic analyst of the Indian market, throws out the idea that the inexpensive, learning-dedicated OLPC device is completely inappropriate for the 100 million or so schoolchildren in India because, well, there are so many of those kids. Getting an OLPC machine in the hands of every child would cost--even if it's really cheap--way too much for a system that still can't figure out how to pay teachers appropriately and get an effective day's work out of them once they're paid. (See, if you're interested in backstory about inefficiencies in Indian schools, the work of James Tooley.) 

What does that mean? It means that even when poised to enter one of the biggest micro-niche markets in the world (Indian schoolkids), a learning-dedicated netbook is still the wrong choice. 

Bummer.

Local food as contested ground

How important is the potential conflict between increased attention in America to locally produced food and efforts to shift small-hold farmers from subsistence-based to export-based practices? 

Courtesy of Emeka Okafor at Africa Unchained:

From Lindiwe Majele Sibanda in the Guardian:

Farming First calls on world leaders to take action by developing a locally sustainable value chain for global agriculture. It emphasizes the need for knowledge networks and policies centred on helping subsistence farmers to become small-scale entrepreneurs, and it proposes six interlinked imperatives forsustainable agriculture: safeguarding natural resources, sharing knowledge, building local access, protecting harvests, enabling access to markets and prioritising research imperatives. 

 

 

Meanwhile, on farms in America, there's now the option of producing "local food" for processing by Frito-Lay: 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, five potato farmers rang the bell of theNew York Stock Exchange, kicking off a marketing campaign that is trying to position the nation’s best-selling brand of potato chips as local food. Five different ads will highlight farmers who grow some of the two billion pounds of starchy chipping potatoes the Frito-Lay company uses each year. One is Steve Singleton, who tends 800 acres in Hastings, Fla.

“We grow potatoes in Florida, and Lays makes potato chips in Florida,” he says in the ad. “It’s a pretty good fit.”

The crux of the potential conflict, of course, is that the market or at least the marketers are expanding the paying public's concept of the local to include mass-processed food--which can be grown throughout a wide locality, about the size of, say, a region. But which can't be grown just anywhere.  No more Mexican tomatoes, no more Chilean grapes. 

(Fortunately, at least from Farming First's production, more reasoned arguments against more reasonably defined local food are starting to be made.)

Innovation and education, part the first

From the Wikipedia entry on Innovation:  "Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, technology, sociology, and engineering."

Why isn't innovation an important topic in education?

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A few more thoughts on innovation, brought to you (with questionable authority) by Wikipedia: 

A convenient definition of innovation from an organizational perspective is given by Luecke and Katz (2003), who wrote:

"Innovation . . . is generally understood as the successful introduction of a new thing or method . . . Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.

 

 

Innovation typically involves creativity, but is not identical to it: innovation involves acting on the creative ideas to make some specific and tangible difference in the domain in which the innovation occurs. For example, Amabile et al. (1996) propose:

"All innovation begins with creative ideas . . . We define innovation as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization. In this view, creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the first is necessary but not sufficient condition for the second".

For innovation to occur, something more than the generation of a creative idea or insight is required: the insight must be put into action to make a genuine difference, resulting for example in new or altered business processes within the organization, or changes in the products and services provided.

A further characterization of innovation is as an organizational or management process. For example, Davila et al. (2006), write:

"Innovation, like many business functions, is a management process that requires specific tools, rules, and discipline."

From this point of view the emphasis is moved from the introduction of specific novel and useful ideas to the general organizational processes and procedures for generating, considering, and acting on such insights leading to significant organizational improvements in terms of improved or new business products, services, or internal processes.

Through these varieties of viewpoints, creativity is typically seen as the basis for innovation, and innovation as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization (c.f. Amabile et al. 1996 p.1155). From this point of view, creativity may be displayed by individuals, but innovation occurs in the organizational context only.