>What will these things run? Twitter apps, tip calculators, weather widgets, and Angry Birds Rio [...] Why focus on apps? What they will run is a web browser.

>What will these things run? Twitter apps, tip calculators, weather widgets, and Angry Birds Rio [...] Why focus on apps? What they will run is a web browser. Being able to connect to the HTML/Web platform is more important than the OS. Of course a single hardware device does not solve all of the issues in education. While a browser is not educational software in itself, any internet connected device with a browser has great potential to do the things you list. If nothing else, they can connect to Wikipedia in 100 languages.