The much-hyped Apple iPad was announced today by the professorial, Steve Jobs. While it will be scrutinized on every level well before its release to well after, I would like to say this: education will e changed forever. Having a multi-touch table will enable the creation of interactive textbooks like never before. Don’t imagine the iPad as a teacher killer. Think of it as a textbook killer.
Who really wants to lug 3 science texts around campus? Which is better, reading about your astronomy assignment, attending lecture and then seeing the stars at night through a telescope one at a time or having an interactive text which would allow you to do it all and use the lecture and lab as a clarification session, rather than a learning one?
Imagine reading a Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette, deciding that you are tired of reading, hit a key and have it performed at your fingertips — the way it was intended. Then when you are not quite sure what is happening (after all you are a ninth grader in high school) you can touch another button and a summary of the section is presented to you by scholars of the subject.
Interested in art? Take a visual tour of the Musee D’Orsay with your classmates in an interactive classroom.
Education developers have never had the tools as they do here. They have never been able to bridge hyperlinking texts and education. It has been used increasingly, but never with the success that could be imagined. The iPad and the SDK tools that Apple has provided has changed all of this.
Textbooks will become an electronic medium, with differentiated instruction, levels of difficulty, remediation, expert analysis through video and podcasts (down-loadable to your iPhone of course) and interactive chapters and markers.
All we have to do is build it.
Ben
Is there a difference between apple iPad 3g \ iPad Wifi?