Google has announced a new open-source platform called Android for mobile phones. Program developers are eligible for a piece of $10 million for developing novel and useful mobile phone programs.
You can watch Google’s demo of Android here. It kind of starts out slow, so skip to the last 3 minutes if you just don’t have the time to invest 6 minutes to watch the whole video clip.
How does this relate to math & technology? Well, surely someone (Maple, Mathematica, Texas Instruments, Casio) has got to realize by now that what we really need is graphing calculator SOFTWARE for students that runs on a mobile smart phone.
Students carry less and less with them to class. Rarely a day goes by when several students have not even brought paper & pencil to class with them. The 2006 ECAR survey showed that the majority of students (70.3%) don’t bother to carry their laptops with them to class (even when it is required for class).
So doesn’t it make sense that their smart phone should be able to double as a graphing calculator? And bonus… the calculator would then use color instead of black & white.
Here’s another thought… Design Science (MathType) could use Android to develop a way to finally get mathematics into emails and onto smartphones.
Unfortunately, I’m not really a programmer, or obviously I’d develop these ideas myself and take my slice of Google’s pie.
