LG X110 Netbook, laptops, and ESI

Before I left for Morocco, I looked into getting a netbook. The small screens were a little off-putting, but what really killed the deal was the small keyboards that I kept seeing. I got a Sony Viao laptop on sale instead.

While in France over spring break this year, I bought a little LG netbook. I don't exactly think of computers when I think of LG, but I took the plunge mostly because I needed something practical. The price was right ($400) and the size/weight of it is unbeatable. It fits in my purse, but it has a full sized keyboard and a 10 inch screen. I'm blogging on it now from a hotel room in Casablanca, connected to the Internet via my LG modem.

Netbooks are showing up all over the place in Morocco now -- as are pay-as-you-go modems that connect to cell towers. I only noticed the netbooks when I returned in April, and the modems have onlyn been competitively priced since the beginning of 2009. Change is afoot.

My students don't seem to have a set-up like mine quite yet... In fact, ESI students rarely brought laptops to school, hardly ever took notes on them in class if they did have them, and didn't seem to be addicted like American students are.

However, there were definitely lots of students with laptops in the common areas of ESI between classes and during lunch. Perhaps the wifi near the library is a kind of siren song? Maybe by next year it will be accepted for students to start bringing them to class. The whole environment reminds me of classes in the United States about 10 years ago. It just wasn't cool to lug around a laptop (besides, what if it broke?) but today, it's impossible to be in a classroom setting without one.

Maybe netbooks/modems like mine will make it easier for ESI student to take the plunge and have unlimited Internet access at school. I've offered to leave my wireless router with the tech guys so that they can have a stronger wifi signal for next year -- it's the same as the router they've already got installed. For the students' sake, I hope they take me up on it.