I was so excited today to discover a real-world current example of disruption! I get a daily email from Trendcentral which describes, as the name implies, popular trends. Today's email was about Netbooks, the computers used in the $100 every child a laptop project. The newsletter talks about how these computers are growing in popularity world-wide. Last year they accounted for 7% of the laptop market. Next year they are expected to get 12%. Apple and other big names are starting to experiment with their versions of this computer as well, so soon these cheap, small, not-so-powerful computers might be all over.
This fits the disruptive model because these computers were originally marketed to non-consumers: third world school children. They don't have a lot of memory and can't do all the fancy stuff my school-issued laptop can, but they can connect to the internet. In this day when more and more can be done and stored online (i.e. Delicious)and flash drives are cheap, do we all really need big, powerful laptops or even desktops? These delvelopments in technology also help this Netbook computer fit the model of disruption.
What makes me excited about this is that there now exists the real possibility that every student could have daily access to a computer--possibly even own one himself. If this happens, then online learning might actually have a shot at reality in the not-so-distant future.
Here is a link to the Trend Central article: http://www.trendcentral.com/WebApps/App/Global/Home.aspx
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There are so many things that could be done on the computer that we do on paper and I just keep thinking if everyone had a computer that they could access on a daily basis, we could make the change. Until then I often just skip trying to get computer time and stick with the paper stuff. Just think of all the paper we could save! As it is I am trying to use less and less and work up to having my students turn more things in electronically. I hope the day comes soon. Our department is trying to lobby for the school to use capital outlay funds for a mobile lab at the high school. I still think we would be fighting over the use of this too.
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