When the iPad came out, a lot of K-12 technology leaders were intrigued, but decided that their use was limited in schools. With a different operating system and no physical keyboard, they didn’t look or act like PCs. One Bay Area school is running a very interesting experiment, enabling real desktop applications like Microsoft Word on school iPads- I hope to write about this later this Fall. Aside from these high-tech workarounds, it’s true that they’re not real PCs. What does that mean about their use in schools?
Leslie Rule, formerly a producer at KQED’s Center for Digital Media, argues that iPads may be a game changer in education.
If that sounds a little gung-ho, I think it’s worth wrestling with something that Steve Jobs said earlier this year. He compares PCs to trucks– sturdy, powerful, but not used by the average consumer:
“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.”
If you are evaluating what kind of technology to bring into a school, it’s worth considering how the landscape is changing, as you think about what you want technology to do for students, and what they need to do with technology. Some of the current paradigms have to change — carrying a seven pound laptop in addition to 30 pounds of textbooks just makes no sense.