Student 2.0 in France
This is really clever—giving students software to work on papers, email, and do research, all on a usb thumbdrive that they can plug-in anywhere and use on (presumably) a Windows PC.
French students to get open-source software on USB key – Yahoo! News:
The sticks will give the students, aged 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend’s house or in an Internet café—but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday.
Using thumbdrives has long been a nice way to use the “portable” versions of popular applications. It is interesting to think of the possibility of having a “zero-configuration” (not zeroconf ;)) Linux or FreeBSD distribution on a thumbdrive so that students could actually boot off these devices into a desktop environment.
Though in all honesty with all of the useful web-based applications, if you’re wired enough to be online all the time, desktop applications are not required. Sure they’re not as feature-rich as OpenOffice or Word, but when I was 16 it was sufficient to have a couple of typefaces and formatting options.
I can’t believe I just said “When I was their age,” and if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go beat my head against a wall now.