As promised in my previous post, I have spent some time thinking about the place of iPads in the classroom and have come up with a list of ten things I believe needs to happen to ensure the widespread adoptions of these devices.
In order to become a significant player in education, the iPad needs…
- to be extensible, adding several USB ports would be a start. Printing anyone? Ethernet would be great for fallback when the wireless is down, but I don’t expect that.
- to support multiple accounts on the same device.
- to provide for the same sort of enterprise level management as other computers. This means being able to create and deploy master disk images, posture assessment before joining networks, remote management and updates… Why should we have to give up the things we waited so long for Apple to develop for us on the Macintosh line?
- to have a robust collection of electronic textbooks that meet state standards available for it.
- or perhaps more precisely the iTunes Store, to accept open source software applications such as Open Office, Audacity, and other staples of education.
- antivirus software. OK, so few viruses exist for Macs and fewer (if any) for the iPhone OS. How long do you think that will last?
- a built-in VPN client if the iPad is to be used by administrators and faculty to access secure records from off-campus.
- a user-changeable battery. To expect schools to pony-up for sending dozens of units in at the same time for a battery swap is crazy.
- A child-tested and ruggedized version. Reports from other sites indicate that a drop test indicates that the iPad may not be as shock resistant as its smaller sibling iPhone. Oopsie!
- as every other critics has said - a camera. A video camera. As good as a Flip.
There you have it. iPad. I love you, for home use. Wait and see for school…
to answer your concerns
1. Print via WiFi ( comming in November 2010)
2. Go to settings and store, sign out and the next person can sign in.
3. if the school owns iPad then they can manage it.
4. Some books are free and some are not. See #3
5. Nobody is stopping you from developing software, or hiring a developer to create what you say you need.
6. Virus protection is not needed at this moment in time and the vendors of virus protection software can and will if needed in the future.
7. Look in the iTunes store, there are many VPN applications to chose from, some may be free.
8. I agree with you on this, but if the battery can be removed; how many students will remove it and lose it or damage it.(think replacement cost).See #9
9. This is not a toy and children need to learn that it is not a toy. make parents responsible by signing an agreement.
10. A camera will probably come on the next generation iPad.
Good luck
Thanks so much for your comments. As luck would have it, I was just at a meeting with about thirty other educational technologists, teachers, administrators, et al. where the topic of conversation was the iPad in education. Included in the group were a couple of Apple reps.
The group demonstrated a lot of interest in mobiel devices in general, and iPads in particular, but remain skeptical of the iPad as a 100% solution.
One of my take-aways is that the iPad, as a device meant to be used by an individual and not several users, will require a shift in thinking for schools who are used to labs and laptop carts wherein the device can be used by multiple students during the day.
You make excellent points, and over time I think more and more people will move from simple pilot projects using iPads in the classroom to larger scale adoption. This is an exciting time to be in schools.
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