years at Lab top school and as a developer of software for 20+ I have been
developing CD Rom based history software since 1988 and for the last almost
2 years while teaching part time have developing 20 Ipone apps- and just did
the first in history 480 documents in American history released yesterday
for the iphone-
After that long introduction- I believe that Ipad will bring about the
revolution that we have been talking about for oh so many years. In 1990
when I sat down to write my first American History Cd's I believed they
would replace text books. Over the years I went through the adoption
process had them actually adopted by a number of states but it never
resulted in any real sales- why- there was not the penetration rate of
equipment nor the willingness of local administrators to take the risk and
move away from the text book-
I think the Ipad will provide a tipping point- It is relatively
inexpensive- much more mobile then a lap top- and will become ubiquitous.. I
also think that something else is slowly happening that I do not think
anyone is paying enough attention to. If 15 years ago many school
administrators were afraid of replacing text books with computers- mostly
because of parents who looked at the computers as toys- Now 15 years later
we have a generations of parents who have themselves grown up with the
computer and will be comfortable with the iPad replacing the textbook.
I would not worry about some of the technical limitations of the machine-
next years will be better- every design process has its tradeoffs and slowly
they are overcome- As to those who are concerned that the product will be
only for viewing and not creating- if you saw excerpts from the
presentation, one of the software packages that was shown was a drawing
program- All of the people and companies developing for the Iphone
including us can now easily turn our attention to making I-Pad versions of
our program ( they all run unchanged but in a small window) as is. Apple
has provided the tools and the direction how to do it and will not require
that much work, so expect to see many many creation tools.
The only concern i have as a developer is that it will be difficult to get
the sort of prices one would want- when so many things are 99 cents- We have
taken a chance and priced ours a $2.99. ( We get as much as $18 for some
professional apps) so that may be a hinderance- but we will see.
All in all I see a bright future for the tablet in education and I see it
replacing the laptop in many school in coming years.
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Bigenho, Chris <bigenhoc@greenhill.org>wrote:
> I have documented my thoughts about the new iPad at
> http://bigenhoc.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/ipad-brilliant-marketing%E2%80%A6huge-miss/
>
> What are yout thoughts?
>
> Chris Bigenho
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874]
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--
Marc Schulman
Multimedia Historian
http://www.historycentral.com
[ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874 ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
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