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As someone who has worked with young students, high school teachers, university students, and university faculty getting Pi's into the classroom (e.g. http://clean.energyscience.ca/..., http://rpi.science.uoit.ca/ I can say that the micro:bit may be a better starting point for really young kids and their tech phobic teachers than the Pi. From what I can tell, the micro:bit isn't really a computer (unlike the RaspberryPi), but rather a peripheral that enables some physical computing.

There are some ugly sides to the Pi for the uninitiated. I'm not saying one is better than the other (I really like the Pi), but I do think the micro:bit could be a welcome addition to the ecosystem.

I'm disappointed that BBC isn't making them available to the general community from the get go (or even before release to schools). We have a way better chance and troubleshooting (and populating stackoverflow) issues than they do. Despite the fact that this is intended to be plug-and-play, things never are (especially when they involve locked-down machines like those present at most schools).

In any case, I'm looking forward to getting one of these things!

I'm afraid you're too late. Some students at the University of Ontario: Institute of Technology did this last year.
The news release can be found here.

university of IT in oshawa, on, canada: http://www.uoit.ca/ "ontario's only laptop-based university"

they just opened in last couple of years. don't think it's been around enough to figure out if 'laptops for all' is the best idea. maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

of note: its an INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY university. does this mean they respect technology more ? everybody's a geek so support requirements are lower ? they get special financial support from the gov for 'driving innovation in education' so they can subsidize laptops ?

anyway, worth watching to see if they keep it up, or switch to desktops, expand to my neighborhood or shut down completely.

The one thing that forcing all the students to get laptops did was create the biggest filesharing server of all of Canada.

I enrolled in this brand new university, read first class. Everyone in the same year and program have the same laptops and software. Why can't we just site licence everything (or at least the cheap things) so most people have identical computers, I don't know.

This creates enormous problems everywhere. Logistics is a huge problem and they have only gotten worse over the three years we have operated. Just a huge mess and waste of resources.

I feel the costs are prohibitively high for repair and tech support. I believe that there should be only two kinds of failures fixed at IT, software and hardware. A software problem is automatically fixed with a re-imaging of the drive. Hardware failures are covered under warrenty so just give the student a new machine with a new hard-drive. Most of the tech people are tied up teaching fools how to run ad-aware because their computer "runs slow".

Some things that get me as a slashdot reader is that wireless software for linux is not supported and probably never will be. Firefox is not supported fully on our web-integrated side. Windows users have bug fixes and anti-virus updates pushed on them. Also, you can't change your workgroup as a windows user or you will not be able to sign back onto the school network.

I don't know if these problems are fixable. But if you want to hear all the great things about the system talk to my administration. UOIT is a small university just outside Canada's largest city.

Makes me wonder what my school, University of Ontario Institure for Technology, will be doing considering they use ThinkPads exclusively

Makes me wonder what my school, University of Ontario Institure for Technology, will be doing considering they use ThinkPads exclusively