Comments on: Google Android penetrates 11 US schools

By: normal1515

normal1515 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:46:24 +0000

Yeah it’s a gimmick. But remember – android is a free and open source OS. Students could mess around with these and learn a lot about how smartphones work. Besides, what isn’t a gimmick these days? Coke machines in the student lounge. College book stores overcharging for required texts. Id rather see it all stop and keep corporations out of education, but honestly, at least some good can come out of this. Maybe this will slow the spread of iphones, which are more of a threat to online freedom (locked in to one provider, outrageous app store censorship, closed source development, ect).

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:56:30 +0000

@ matzahboy

“Itâs basically like google giving them a grant.”

Google never ‘gives’ anything.

But it’s an idea with promise. Google should give each school a decent a grant, rather more than the equivalent cost of the phones. The schools can then buy any kind of unit they want from any maker, do the research, and then make the results freely and openly available.

Cheers!

By: KidsnKartels

KidsnKartels — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:09:37 +0000

The target age to sell these things to are the age of these students.

This is a marketing and selling campaign in a guise.

After the exposure to this, and having students do this crap as a “course”, do you think word will spread in the uni/college with the thousands of other ripe-4-the-picking students? Do you think this will influence their buying power? Do you think this will influence weather they buy an iphone or google phone?

This is utter bs in the guise of education.

May as well contact Coke and have them sponsor their marketing courses with the main focus on Coke while they sell both coke and pepi in the school Caf.

This topic should be filed in “Kids & Kartels”. Not under advertising.

By: matzahboy

matzahboy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:39:46 +0000

Why are people saying “marketing gimmick”? The students are getting free phones and a good opportunity to make their mark in the rising application market. Sure… this helps google. But it also helps the university and students. It’s basically like google giving them a grant.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:47:38 +0000

What a gimmic.
*shakes head*

By: deadboyblues

deadboyblues — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:02:56 +0000

those schools were chosen because wealthy kids attend those schools. everyone knows poor kids cant operate cellphones let alone know how to program computers. :0)
im gonna go with marketing scam with this one. why else drop the names of fa$ebook and mytwat in the announcement of the class.
seems like the powers that be that control are thoughts,food,money,and basic freedoms, want as many americans as possible to be enslaved to these social networking sites. they are nothing but mind numbing,dumbing down,advertising schemes that harvest personal data of the user over time.

By: lando calrissian

lando calrissian — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:01:50 +0000

I dont feel this is a marketing gimmick. The secondary school I attended received some kind of donation or deal from Dell (one could argue that was marketing gimmick) but it helped the students in more ways then I can explain in this little comment. Projectors for every 6 classrooms, scanners, computers in every classroom. Thats just one example. Another would be things like lego mindstorms robots they weren’t donated per say however they were part of a computer science course at the same school.

I would like to assume this was really something to benefit education. One would think if it wasn’t a gimmick they would have at least donated to a less fortunate school than Harvard University but I’ll admit to not looking into what the other schools qualities qualities. Meh.