PSPs in Education

I attended an interesting talk in FELS (the Faculty of Education and Language Studies) today about the use of the PSP (PlayStation Portable) in education. The talk was given by Mike and Chris from ConnectED.
(If you haven't come across the PSP before, it's worth exploring. It's not just a handheld game console. It's also a versatile media player which can connect to the internet through any wireless network.)

Often one of the first things people complain about when they see a PSP is the lack of a keyboard, but Chris made an interesting point that no handheld device is really suitable for high volumes of text entry, so in a way this is an advantage as it encourages you to move away from text-based learning content.

Some interesting points about PSP:

• More than 2 million PSPs are owned by 8-18 year olds in the UK (that's 20% of school children).
• From September 2007 it will be capable of video conferencing.
• The PSP supports file upload and download. This can be managed from a PC with media manager.
• It links into the PlayStation3
  

• 2 million + are owned by 8-18 year olds