http://www.amplify.com/tablet Notorious Tabloid News Magnate, billionaire elder conservative Rupert Murdoch of Australia, who has had to deal with scandals in Britain in the last two years over his now-defunct News Corporation wire-tapping cell phone of "The Royals" and of celebrities, has had an "educational division" operating in recent years as well. That division publicly announced in the USA earlier this week ending Friday March 8, 2013, their new "Amplify Tablet" intended for the educational market. The Amplify Tablet, an Android OS-powered tablet computer, is supposedly better than any other tablet now on the market apparently because it allows students and teachers to remain in near constant contact online with each other. A PC Magazine (pcmag.com) article of March 6, 2013, said in part the following: "The tablet allows teachers to keep up with students' work [in real-time], block any or all apps that may provide distractions, and build lesson plans with a mix of pre-loaded content and other Web resources to be published for students. Also, the Quick Poll feature tracks understanding in real time, with the option of sending materials to those pupils who need additional help." On face-value this is nothing new or remarkable or special. Any software person or researcher interested in distance learning has thought of and may have built at least small lab research projects or local school system working examples, pilot projects, which do the same. So there may be more to "what is really new and innovative" on the Amplify tablet and/or this could be "hype" (hyperbole) from Murdoch and an attempt to corner the Education Market starting in the US at least in the US press. Some negative news reports say Murdoch's tablet is a "trojan horse" that in more subtle ways or in marketing and distribution ways is designed to undermine and privatize education more thoroughly and irrevocably, as those are some of Murdoch's social-political goals. E.g. the suspicion is the tablet is another way to privatize education and turn more of it over to "charter schools" in the USA. If that is so, how that might happen remains to be discovered and reported. Another skeptical education expert suggests it clearly is a way to continue to enlarge the number of students a single instructor must teach, rather like the yet-to-be-seen results of MOOCs, massive online open courses, being deployed this Spring and for the next several years via Coursera.com using the recorded instruction, instructors and materials for undergraduate classes normally presented at several major US Universities. See also the NPR.org "Morning Edition" news story of March 8 for more details and skeptical commentary about the Amplify Tablet announced March 8, 2013 (13.03.08).