I am left thinking that it is some sort of an open secret that all bloggers have to post something about the iPad. I am not immune to this secret ‘law’ so, here is my perspective about the iPad in education.
The iPad certainly looks cool, it looks like it should be a prop on one of the too numerous Star Trek franchises. It will certainly be handy thing to have in one’s house. Just think one over-large iPod Touch which will allow you to read books and magazines, watch movies, surf the web, and deal with e-mail. It certainly looks like it will be an upgrade to any interior decoration scheme…
I have heard many people on almost all of the other blogs on the internet allude3 to the ‘fact’ that the next iteration of the software…or the next generation of hardware will allow this ‘revolutionary’ new toy/tool to:
· Include a camera
· Include a card reader (for transfer of data, and dealing with most digital cameras)
· Have a huge impact on the application store (i.e. there will be many, many iPad centric applications out there soon… really!)
· Include some sort of a microphone, and a face mounted webcam to allow for video chatting
· Include a USB (3.0?) post to allow for more peripherals
· Increase battery life… beyond whatever the advertising fluff says about it
· And most importantly, to make it a worthwhile tool to create content…it needs a real keyboard…no matter how uncouth it would look to the Star Trek lovers and apple fanboys.
I imagine that you can see that some of these points could be meant as criticisms of this new tool as an aide to classrooms everywhere. I would readily admit that this 1.5 pound package is certainly a better thing to have to carry than all of the 10+ pound textbooks which fill book bags in high schools and colleges everywhere. This generation of students may be overweight, but they are being taught how to be amateur power lifters with regard to the sizes of modern textbooks!
The jury is out as to whether the backlit color display is better for reading books than the electronic ink displays on the Amazon Kindles or the Barnes & Noble Nook… So, as far as I am concerned the iPad may have some potential, but almost all of it is either unrealized to hypothetical.
Most of the really positive reviews I have skimmed through as to the utility if the iPad in education seem to be talking about the iPad as a concept. I would probably agree with that, but this is only confusing to those who are interested in this specific piece of technology…not what it could be in several years.
Of course, there are some subtler advantages to the iPad. I see in many middle and high schools carts filled with Macbooks (about 1K$ or more each). A stripped down iPad is ½ the price! They both could access the ‘cloud’ just as easily and when the latest version of HTML is in general use (HTML 5.0), the lack of flash media coverage may allow for practical web-viewing for students.
So, as a conclusion to this seemingly obligatory blog post, I don’t see the need to spend money on this for at least a couple years.
