I have a Vera Lite. It can be entirely functional without a connection to the internet. I have door locks and a thermostat which talk on the Z-Wave protocol. When one of the doors is locked using the button on the outside the Vera changes to an "Away" preset.

I predict that there will be yet another programming language claiming to replace C and we will still be mostly using C in 2026.

How about a 24" family tablet?
Nabi Big Tab

A My Little Pony reference? Makes me wonder how many Slashdoters are Bronies.

The most extreme example I have seen is mathematics. There are several ways to learn to multiply two two-digit numbers together. Each student has to master and be tested on each way instead of just the one way that works best for them.
Look at Multiplication algorithm
Students would be required to learn and would be tested on several of these methods.

My wife has worked as a teacher and has a related degree. Out oldest daughter went to a private preschool when she was three and quickly became bored with what they were teaching. We learned that the same curriculum would be covered in their four year old class so we decided to start homeschooling at that point. She is currently seven years old and is working on curriculum that is beyond what her nine year old friends are working on in public school. She has more friends than I did when I was her age and they are of a wider age range. She has played soccer, takes dance classes, attends church, and and we meet monthly with a homeschool meetup group.

We also have a four year old daughter who is working on similar curriculum to six year olds in public school.

We homeschool primarily for academc reasons as we have seen the horror that is "common core" and the waste of time that is "no child left behind". We have taught Astronomy, Robotics, Weather, and Bird Studies so far so we aren't just teaching the basics.

We live in Texas which has some of the most homeschool friendly laws on the books. Homeschooling falls under the same statutes as Private Schools. There is no attendance reporting, no mandatory testing, no approved curriculums.
The requirements for homeschooling in Texas are as follows:
        The instruction must be bona fide (i.e., not a sham).
        The curriculum must be in visual form (e.g., books, workbooks, video monitor).
        The curriculum must include the five basic subjects of reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, and good citizenship.

The State of Texas assumes that if you care enough about your kids to want to teach them yourself that the state will just get out of the way. The Texas Homeschool Coalition holds conventions every year were we take seminars and shop for curriculum.

I have a veralite. the community at forum.micasaverdce.com is why I chose the veralite. The manufacturer doesn't communicate very well but the community more than makes up for it. the device native talks z-wave but with plugins can talk to many wifi and ethernet devices including most ip cameras and with hardware addons can talk insteon, x10, infrared, and some other rf protocols.

One of the reasons you would need a realtime os is Active Noise Control.

I am currently working in Santiago and did feel last nights shaking. It is not the first I have felt in the last year but it is definately the strongest. I haven't heard of any problems in Santiago but Valpariso is much closer and a portion of the city was recently damaged in a large fire so this might complicate the recovery efforts there.

Take a look at Polycom's RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite. It is supposed to be an interface between their dedicated video conference boxes and Skype, Google Talk Video, etc. I haven't used it myself.

Build a monolith covered withthe stuff. Sounds about how it is described in the books.