I have high hopes for pico projectors in the school environment. Many educators have used our site resources to learn about these devices. They have likely been curious about the $350 street price which would pique anyone's curiosity in any device claiming to be a projector. But there are disparaging voices dismissing the place of pico projectors in the K-12 educational setting.

Granted, pico projectors (the really small ones that fit in your palm) are not bright enough to display information to a class of 40 awash in ambient light. For that, you’d need to double the price and take a peek at the top education projectors and understand that there is no pico projector in existence that can hold a performance candle to even the least of these.

What pico projectors can do among other things is support a curriculum that promotes small group learning. I can imagine a middle school math peer group of five visual learners and a parent volunteer downloading an instructional clip and displaying it on the back of a spiral notebook. What about a language study group accessing Web resources in order to hear a native speaker’s pronunciation? Surely I’m not the only one almost giddy over the prospect of developing daily classroom opportunities for collaboration and confidence building--or am I?