Why the iPad Should be used in Classrooms

Posted on by mkaufman

As I’ve written in previous posts, the iPad is having tremendous success being used in school classrooms – from kindergarten classes to university classrooms. The iPad has spawned what I’ve called the ‘tablet wars’ with a wave of tablets introduced at CES in January is just the tip of the iceberg.

Lower price points will make tablets even more appealing to schools over time. For close to a year, Apple went virtually unchallenged in the tablet market. Increased competition should drive down prices. With dozens to hundreds of offerings, many based on Google’s open source Android OS, we can expect to see prices falling quickly just as they have for laptops, smartphones and HDTV sets. If you look at the right time you can even find Apple’s original iPad for as little as $349 (if you get the timing right and don’t mind a refurbished model).

It’s worth noting that the iPad has surpassed even the most optimistic of projections to define a brand new product category and become the best-selling gadget of all time, and Forrester analysts project that in 2011, tablet sales will more than double.

How close are we today to tablets displacing computers on campuses? As I’ve mentioned I don’t believe the tablet should replace computers for certain things – but there is certainly a place for the tablet in every student’s learning experience. Tablets are definitely ready for the classroom. In his Mashable article of May 16, 2011, Vineet Madan makes an argument for colleges and universities to consider as he lays out 6 reasons why he believes the tablet is ready for the classroom.

In that article, he cites positive reports from recent iPad pilot programs at schools across the country and notes that some colleges have even begun distributing tablets to all of their students.

Here are the top reasons Vaneet says the tablet is ready for the college classroom (and I would argue that these reasons are applicable to younger age classrooms as well).

1. Tablets Are the Best Way to Show Textbooks

 

ipad edu image

Tablets are capable of offering enhanced ebooks featuring images, video and audio. These elements are impossible to include in print or in a standard ebook. Read about music? No thanks, I’ll follow my auto-advancing sheet music as the audio plays. See a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. as I read his “I Have a Dream” speech? I guess that’s fine, but with one tap of my finger, I’m watching it. The result is a more integrated learning experience, which is more engaging for students. This isn’t the future — this is today.

By allowing students to highlight text, take notes in the margin and access a dictionary directly within the book itself, tablets are matching (and in some cases, surpassing) everything that a traditional book — print or digital — can offer.

2. Classrooms Are Ready for Tablets

Though tablets are a recent phenomenon, many students in high school and college have been using smartphones for years, and are already well-acquainted with touchscreen technology. Because they’ve become so accustomed to using these devices, students are increasingly expecting to use them in the classroom setting. When classrooms don’t implement what has now become “everyday” technology, we’re doing students a disservice.

Additionally, students — and consumers in general — are becoming more comfortable using tablets for advanced tasks. According to a new Nielsen survey, 35% of tablet owners said they used their desktop computers less often or not at all now, and 32% of laptop users said the same. Most tellingly, more than 75% of tablet owners said they used their tablet for tasks they once used their desktop or laptop for. While tablets can’t totally match laptops in terms of functionally (yet), they can get today’s students most of the way there.

3. Tablets Fit Students’ Lifestyles

The appeal of tablets to a college student is obvious: They’re thin, lightweight, and spring to life without delay, making them much easier to take to (and use in) class than a laptop or netbook. Longer battery life means that students don’t have to worry about carrying a charger with them. Forgot what the professor said at the end of class about the mid-term? Launch Tegrity, tap the lecture and replay it in just seconds. That’s faster than texting a half-dozen classmates and waiting for what might be an inaccurate response.

4. Tablets Have the Software to Be Competitive

Some of the most innovative software around is being developed specifically for tablets. In addition to the thousands of exciting educational apps available, tablets are fully compatible with online teaching and learning platforms, such as Blackboard, which are becoming the norm at colleges and universities. In fact, tablets’ current shortcoming — limited multitasking — could be their greatest asset in education, as it forces students to focus on one task at a time.

5. Tablets Integrate With Education IT Trends

Cloud-based solutions have become ever more popular with colleges and universities, which are looking to deliver synchronized experiences that are device agnostic. Tablets align well with this trend, given their portability and options for constant connectivity. With tablets and cloud-based systems, students can work anywhere on campus and make sure that their work is saved in a central location and accessible from all of their devices. They also don’t have to pay for computing power that they no longer need.

6. Tablets Are Becoming More Available

One of the primary reasons that tablets have been slow to penetrate the higher education market was their limited availability. Apple’s supply chain issues and the difficulty that some Android tablet manufacturers have faced in getting their products to market have made it difficult for schools to get serious about adopting. As these issues are resolved over the coming year, expect to see more and more tablets popping up on campuses.

This post taken from an article by Vineet Madan, Vice President of McGraw-Hill Higher Education eLabs. His post is entitled, 6 Reasons Tablets Are Ready for the Classroom and was published on Mashable, May 16, 2011. He wrote the article on a tablet with a touchscreen keyboard.

One Year of iPad in Schools

Posted on by mkaufman

Now that a year has past since Apple introduced the iPad it’s no longer ‘new’ to talk about the fact that more and more schools are using iPads. Every week I see more articles mentioning this – in fact, not only are they being used in schools but people are finding very creative uses for them.

Here are a few from this week:

  • A company (Safe School Security) has made an iPad application for bus drivers to use to take attendance on the bus. The application has the bus route management system programmed in to it so the location and time of when a child entered the bus can be logged.
  • This article (from last week) in the Omaha World Herald discusses how schools in Nebraska and Iowa are using the iPad for learners of all ages – http://www.omaha.com/article/20110330/NEWS01/703309893
  • This article talks about a charter school in Colorado that has found a way to get iPads for all students – http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/27384567/detail.html
  • This Florida school district has received a $1million gift. They are planning on using the money to provide every student an iPad in August when they return to school. The donor said the gift was intended to change the high school and the community.
  • The University of Southern California (USC) has announced the release of an iOS application for use in the college of education. It will be used by new teachers in training. “This new app gives our MAT@USC students the ability to do their learning from almost anywhere, while preserving the quality of the learning environment our faculty and administration have worked so hard to create,” said USC Rossier Dean Karen Symms Gallagher.  “This is a big step forward for the program, our school, and teacher education.“
  • This is a bit more than a week old, but a Minnesota School Board has approved more than $1.1million to buy 1450 iPad 2s (and a bunch of other stuff) for an initiative they call Project REAL.
  • Another article a bit older than a week is about a high school in Massachusetts that is planning on providing students. Students and teachers at Burlington High School next fall will be helping to break new ground in Massachusetts on incorporating technology in the classroom. The school will be distributing Apple iPad 2s to students for use at school and at home. The district plans to acquire the computer tablets in a three-year lease-purchase with Apple, and then provide them to be used for free to all students who choose to participate.
  • The Waiting for Superman folks have released an iPad application that ‘teaches’ why education is important and brings light to some of the issues facing schools.

And just for fun here is a video I think is worth watching.

This is about man that is implementing iPads in a school in Scotland – Fraser Speirs. Here is his application for Apple’s Distinguished Educator.

and the video on this page talks about paperless classrooms and the use of the iPad.

Do iPads in School Change Behavior?

Posted on by mkaufman

iPad goes to college

I was just reading an article about some studies being conducted at Wharton Business School to see if the iPad changes behavior in the learning environment. I imagine the study will find that it does – but we’ll wait until the research is reported.

Combine that research with a recently published study by Reed College that concludes the iPad can meet the demands of a higher ed curriculum, and it’s likely we will see more iPads showing up on college campuses in the near future.

From the Reed College report:

After extensive student interviews throughout the Fall 2010 semester, “The bottom line feeling was that the Amazon Kindle DX was not adequate for use in a higher education curricular setting,” Chief Technology Officer Martin Ringle tells Fast Company. “The bottom line for the iPad was exactly the opposite.”

The most impressive iPad feature was also the simplest: a smooth scrolling touchscreen. “The quick response time of the touch screen was highly praised and seemed to be extremely beneficial in class discussions because it allowed students to navigate rapidly between texts to reach specific passages,” notes the report.

Add the smooth scrolling touch screen to the growing list of positives for the iPad (the battery life, the apps, the size and weight, etc.).

Several business schools have been testing iPads for use with students – and now Wharton is also going to be adding a small iPad test for their EMBA program.

On the business school front, IMD (The International Institute for Management Development) broke ground by giving all 400 participants in its Orchestrating Winning Performance executive programme (spelling intentional as this ‘program’ is based in Europe) iPads back in April 2010 just after the iPad was released. The intent for using iPads in the Orchestrating Winning Performance program was to run a completely paperless program. No text books, no handouts, no printed reports or case studies.

Many other programs are initially attracted to the iPad for its form factor and for the ability to reduce the need to carry around heavy text books. But now, these same programs are looking beyond just delivering course materials to see how the iPad might influence the learning environment in other ways – like team based learning, the culture, communications, etc.

At Iese Business School in Barcelona, which is running an iPad pilot with 60 EMBA participants from April, assistant professor Evgeny Kaganer says the device will enable participants to remain in touch when they are back at work between modules. “For the full-time MBA students this is less important because they are on campus and they see each other all the time.” Prof Kaganer points out that the pilot has to be more than just a means of distributing course texts.

“We want to run a research study, observing how people interact. How does this [tablet device] affect team-based learning, social culture, collaboration. The critical thing is that it should go beyond delivering course materials.”

At Wharton, as in some of these other programs, administrators want to see if the use of the iPad is really the next stage in the evolution of teaching.

On the other end of the spectrum we can see a marked impact on behavior when using the iPad with autistic and other learning disabled youth. The article referenced below tells an amazingly touching story about a young boy that has ended up using the iPad for vocalizing his thoughts during class – as the particular type of autism he has was impacting his vocal chords. Until using the iPad to articulate what he was learning and what he knew, no one in his environment had any idea what he was picking up and what he wasn’t.

Imagine the joy of being able to express one’s self and being able to be in mainstream learning environments – all enabled by the iPad.

On a less than optimistic note, it’s also important that we not forget there are still many things that can be done to improve the iPad in a learning environment. There are weaknesses that have been discovered/experienced in using the iPad in business schools. From another article it says:

The virtual keyboard is a pain for composing anything beyond short notes. The nonexistent file system makes finding important documents difficult and sharing across applications nearly impossible. Finally, managing a large number of readings in PDF format becomes a major time-suck. Syncing PDFs via iTunes was found to be “needlessly complicated,” emailing marked-up versions back to oneself was “prohibitively time-consuming,” and even the cloud-based storage, Dropbox, “failed to work seamlessly with PDF reading/annotating applications.”

Sources:

Reed College Report

Business Schools testing iPads

iPads used for Autism

iPads to Pay for Themselves

Posted on by mkaufman

In an article I read recently it said a private Tennessee school will require all students grades 4 through 12 to use iPads next year. They believe the program will pay for itself within three years. The school is a private school and will give students and their families an option for how they would like to participate in the program.

One of the primary motivators for the school to use iPads is to transition to digital textbooks. They believe digital textbooks are easier to use, lighter to carry, and cheaper for families. The other interest in getting digital text books that they are more interactive and can be updated to contain more current information. The school believes digital textbooks are more engaging than paper.

The school is still working out issues such as the initial cost for the 1,000 iPads it plans to purchase as well as getting teachers to plan the transition away from paper textbooks.

“There are a handful of teachers who are still struggling with the idea of electronic books. It’s certainly a personal preference,” the school’s technology director said. “Even people who prefer a (conventional) book see the advantages of an electronic version.”

Students will have the option of buying their own iPad or leasing the iPad from the school on a three year lease (at which time they will own it). From the school’s perspective the cost of an iPad can be compared to the cost of several text books. An example text book for advanced psychology sells for $130 and weighs 10 pounds. The online version is updated regularly and costs $50.

“We fully expect, not immediately, but over time, the savings they have will make it a wash at least as far as cost,” the school said.

One of the advantages of going to a device like the iPad is there is almost no learning curve for students. Today’s students are “digital natives,” and teachers can learn from them, their 62-year-old superintendent noted.

“I think the future will be where the actual wall is a computer,” he said.

Many school districts will continue to play the conservative wait and see card. But for this one school they are committed to moving ahead with the iPad and getting students using them as soon as possible.

Turning Point for News Media

Posted on by mkaufman

Happy New Year!

I hope you have had a great holiday time and the new year has started off well.

Over the holidays I made a short video about what I believe is a fundamental turning point in the way media – and particularly news media will be consumed.

Wave One

Initially people accessed news either through one of five means – newspapers, magazines, radio, television or word of mouth. I would call this the analog means of accessing news. It’s analog and it’s also somewhat serial – meaning you access one ‘story’ at a time and there isn’t really a good way to get a big picture of all the stories and/or to pick and choose what you want to know about. The ‘news’ was pushed or fed to people by the publisher.

Wave Two

The first major transition for these news sources and for consumers accessing news stories took place with the introduction and proliferation of the internet. Instead of always getting news in the traditional five ways much of the same content was digitized and made available through a web browser. Most of this was free although some news outlets were able to charge for access to certain content in certain forms.

Wave Three

The next major transition – and what I believe is a major paradigm change – is taking place with introduction the iPhone, the iPad, and the subsequent introduction of apps that run on these devices. Most recently Apple introduced the App Store for Macintosh and Google introduced the App Store for Chrome – both of which now are redefining the way that applications are accessed, updated, and used.

Now, almost all of the traditional media houses are creating dedicated applications – apps – that can be run on either a computer screen, a tablet screen, or a phone screen. These apps are optimized for the specific content being made available in some combination of video, audio, and text formats.

There are also applications like FlipBoard being developed that translate ‘content’ from Facebook and Twitter and turn that content into a magazine format – allowing the user to ‘flip’ through the content and go deeper only on the stories that are interesting to them. Peter Yared of Venture Beat calls this the ‘ipadification of the web’ and something he feels is actually good for the internet and internet based content. I agree with him.

The point has come now where people will not surf the web for web pages and they won’t be changing channels on a TV or on a radio. They will be accessing ‘channels’ via specifically designed and build applications. Want to access specific content? There’s an app for that!