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Costa Rica Kids Receive Intel
Classmate PCs
Ricardo's Blog
Ricardo Carreón, General Manager
of Intel for Latin America,
describes a pilot test of
Classmate PC (”laptop for kids
in emerging markets”) that he
attended in Costa Rica with
Intel CEO Craig R. Barret.
To really understand what
Intel-powered Classmate PCs are
you have to hang around kids
using them. Once you see them
many of the doubts about them
simply vanish into thin air.
I was fortunate to be able to
visit with Craig R. Barret and
the team an elementary school in
Costa Rica in which the
Classmate PCs have been in use
for a few weeks.
In the school you can see both
models of education, the
traditional media lab with
desktop PCs and the new 1:1
experience with Classmate PCs. I
have been to media labs many
times before and that was not a
surprise to me. But going into a
classroom full of kids and
Classmate PCs was a completely
different experience. You simply
see the kids engage using the
laptops as if the device were
given to them years ago.
The laptop of course looks great
on the kids hands. The smaller
keyboard and screen are actually
very adequate to K-12 students.
The kids at the classroom we
visited were using all sorts of
applications on their
Classmates, running software to
build a presentation,
educational software with
Spanish and Natural sciences
exercises, consulting websites
via their built-in WiFi
interface... hey you could also
see several Google screens for
the kids that were doing some
research. In this particular
school kids were in grupos were
they could work and learn
together. A group was inside the
classroom and another way in the
garden in a science class
looking at insects through an
electronic microscope.
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