Tech makes student/teacher collaboration more work-like

Wilkinson said students, on the other hand, tend to intutitvely understand how to use devices like the Classmate PC. "They just pick it up and they play with it, they're not firghtened by it," he said.

Children aren't just at ease with such technology, but excited to use it, he said adding the "empowering" feeling children feel with new tech is much different from jaded adults. "The people who work in the industry, and the people who have been using computers in their various form factors for some time, I think they take it for granted," he claimed.

Having child-friendly devices like the Classmate PC is key, he explained, as students react more positively to something designed with them in mind.

According to Intel's research, such devices need to fit into rucksacks, weigh no more than "two average sized text books" and be ruggedised enough to survive a fall from a desk.

But it's more than just that. Tech specs need to be adjusted for children too. "If you or I use a tablet PC, we use a stylus, and we are very unlikely to rest our hands on the screen, whereas a nine-year-old child is still learning to write they will rest the palm of their hand on the touch screen while they're using the stylus," he said, so the Classmate was designed to ignore that as an input and focus on the stylus.

Just as any adult prefers a device that fits their own aesthetic, young students like to be able to personalise their computetrs. "This is a personal device," he said, explaining that the first prototype of the Classmate had a detachable casing.

"One of the reasons for that was believe it or not, kids still like to write the name of their favourite band on their pencil case... they regard these devices as theirs," Wilkinson said. "And they want to scribble on them, write the name, or their favourite band on it, the name of their boyfriend or girlfriend."

While it may sound silly to an adult, such bits and pieces are important to children. "It sounds like a really simple thing, but unless you design it in, you end up with 30 kids using a tablet type device and it all getting messy, and the teacher fighting with the technology, and the technology not helping them."