I'm reluctant to wade into this, as it seems to me that it is too easy to
drop one's biases into the discussion, and too hard to see into the future
of a device that no one has "touched" yet <pun intended!>. And some great
minds (Joel, Fred, etc.) are already in the fray. Still, as regards
educational uses, I think the iPad misses the mark - at least in the current
incarnation.
First: I take education to mean learning, not school. It's an obvious
point, but we who have lived and breathed schools for nearly all of our
lives can miss this at times.
So, I look at my own learning, as well as that of my students. When I
really learn, I almost always create. And I almost always create using the
tools of communication. I create notes, diagrams, essays, listserv
messages, emails, and, on occasion more multimedia creations (less than our
students, I suspect). I should say that I'm a big fan of exploration, which
perhaps doesn't seem like creation, but in fact my richest exploration
experiences always have the flavor of creating something - a simulation.
And I don't mean creating a finished product - I mean capturing my thinking
in a "document" (for lack of a better, broader, word) external to my own
mind.
These learning experiences might happen in a classroom, in a coffee shop, at
a meeting, on a park bench.
So, my question is this: is the iPad designed to facilitate creation? Or is
it better suited to observation? I'm afraid it is the latter. Joel wants
Flash, which makes sense, and will almost certainly come in a later
incarnation (heck, it's just software!). The desire I projected onto my
hopes for the iPad, though, is for a tablet I can write on. My dream is a
book reader that let's me annotate. A smooth and intuitive (i.e.,
Apple-like) version of OneNote that lets me capture and organize and
sometimes convert to searchable text the ideas that run through my mind in a
meeting, the diagrams that help me think about things. A math-working
device that captures my equations (and maybe helps me with the symbol
manipulation). In short, a creation device.
If this dream were fulfilled in the iPad, maybe it would "revolutionize
education" or at least make a dent. As it stands, though, I just don't see
how a large-format iPod Touch is going to do this. It seems to me little
more capable than a Touch, and much less portable, taking away the
game-changing aspect of having a device at the ready anywhere in exchange
for ... smooth larger video?
I've used tablets, and they are bulky, the software seems clunky, the
screens are poorly reflective so that they don't serve well as book readers
and, even so, some schools find them transformative. My hope was that the
iPad would change all this.
Ah, well, still seeking change I can believe in <grin>.
---Tim
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Backon, Joel <jbackon@choate.edu> wrote:
> Chris,
>
> I have to admit I found the blog provided by Fred to be a breath of fresh
> air. Imagine that I was once a techno-geek, who read equipment specs before
> product applications. As I read your blog, I tried to imagine that post
> being a conversation with Steve Jobs, and how he would respond. First of
> all, he would say this is Version 1 of the iPad, and thus it is only a first
> step at addressing a new platform for the "consumer" marketplace. Second, he
> would point out you repeatedly use the word "computer" to describe this new
> device. I think Steve would say it is not a computer; it is an iPad. He has
> already gone on record saying that Netbooks are "crap" so we know what he
> thinks about that segment of the market. As we read in the MacWorld post,
> there is a certain elegance to a device that can do one thing at a time very
> well. Since none of us has an iPad yet, it is premature to conclude that it
> does anything very well, but I suspect that the display of images and video
> will be outstanding. I do have some criticisms of the iPad, the greatest one
> being a technical issue, but driven by an educational issue. The iPad
> browser does not support Flash, the source of much of our rich web content.
> As I have been intrigued by the Concord Consortium's Deeply Digital Text
> project, I had thought the iPad would be the ideal tool for an eTextbook
> reader that supported embedded rich media within the text. Alas, that will
> not be a possibility unless some changes are made in future versions of the
> iPad. Bottom line: I think the iPad does what it was designed to do, and I
> think consumers will be waiting on long lines at Apple Stores when this
> thing appears in March. I'm just disappointed that it is not better suited
> for the educational applications of the future, at least in its first
> incarnation.
>
> Joel
>
>
> --
> Joel Backon
> Director of Academic Technology / History
> Choate Rosemary Hall
> 333 Christian St.
> Wallingford, CT 06492
> 203-697-2514
>
> On Jan 30, 2010, at 2:30 PM, Bigenho, Chris 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
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>
> [ 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,
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>
[ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874 ]
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