it bothers me that he writes android off so easily, while lauding linux.
6 apps he should consider trying out:
SuperUser (comes with basically all root enabling packages.)
Terminal Emulator (gives access to android's adb shell directly on the phone)
Linux Deploy (what it says on the tin. very useful in getting what is esentially a chroot linux going with the phone's builtin kernel)
VNC viewer (linux deploy drops a linux that runs a vnc server. This lets you poke at the gui hosted by that vnc server from the android sandbox.)
ConnectBot (a nice ssh client, which again can connect to the linux deploy running instance of userspace linux inside its chroot, using ssh.)
BusyBox (the swiss army knife of embedded platforms. REALLY opens up what terminal emulator can do.)
With those 6 apps on my phone, the mittens are off. I can run fucking apache web server FROM MY POCKET. I can use regular expressions and bash scripts to chew through his list of WPA2 passwords in minutes, without having to find a PC. I can even run wifi password cracking tools right there in his classroom, without him even knowing. I can directly connect to an SMB or NFS share and start editing or moving files around. I can change filesystem permissions. I CAN EVEN PRINT to a network printer. The phone in my hands is now what it actually is, a general purpose computing device in a tiny formfactor.
Then again, I know how to use a computer.