Learning Machines

A basic, lightweight laptop, with 100 Gigabytes hard drive space, no internet connection, a USB drive that only exports documents, and 100mb ram, and 512MHz processor. Also very low graphics video card and no sound card. And built into the hardware is a Microsoft Office Equivalent, and licenses to an entire district's libraries, and all the district's textbooks. Also built into the hardware, are five encyclopedias, like Encarta, Britannica, etc. and five dictionaries, accessible from the Office Software in right click. And also a PDF reader and Printer, that reads the school's books, with the Encyclopedias and Dictionaries linked to the right click for highlighted words. Also, built into the hardware are programs like Starry Night Pro, Project Gutenberg, and MyMathLabs, and none of the materials are locked for the students. And also a library of basic animated and subtitled lectures, on things like how to simplify square roots, or identify direct and indirect objects. And the most advanced graphing calculators. They have access to all the licenses, as that's their privilege for going to school. So, a student could learn Calculus and practice it, on their own time, or do geometric proofs, or read Shakespeare, or read other class's textbooks. And they would only need one device for doing so.

The reason for this, is it wouldn't be susceptible to malware, and even if the students jailbroke it, there'd be no real reason to. It couldn't do a whole lot, in the way of running programs. It'd basically be a learning instrument, that couldn't be misused during class. And the computers couldn't download anything, which is a huge feature of it. It'd come preloaded with that year's materials, and the districts would buy a Learning Machine every year, and distribute them to the kids. Maybe the students would hand in their old one, and recycle it for a new one. And if they couldn't recycle it, the district would pay a fee. And if they graduated, they received it as a gift from the district.

This would limit distractions during class, and allow more room for class time, and less time for play. And it'd be so boring, there'd be no reason for anyone to steal it.