Hi Douglas,
I saw a demo of one of the developers boards at a meeting I was at in October and I have to say that it was very impressive. I’m not sure if I’ll get a developers board but I do know that the Raspberry Pi foundation are working with a number of Computing At School working members on software, educational materials and configuration of a learning version of the Pi which will have a case and be a bit more robust. I think they are planning on releasing the retail version in March of next year.
I think the raspberry pi would be particularly useful for teaching topics such as computer systems, embedded systems and networking in a much more engaging way. The board has GPIO pins on it which allow someone to connect and control actuators and sensors with it.