“Is iPad Good for Education?” is the wrong question!

As I watched the unveiling of Apple’s new iPad, I noticed many different reactions in the educational community. Some people expressed how the iPad will revolutionize education, and others how it will negatively effect it. In reality however, the answer is quite simple. “Will the iPad be good for education? MAYBE!”.

The reason that I say “maybe”, is due to several factors. Mainly, it is too early to pass any judgment since hardware doesn’t automatically mean good software. If we look at desktop computers there are a slew of educational games and software, yet most are useless and ungrounded with any educational theory. So does this mean that it is bad? No, it means as educators you will have to collaborate with your personal network of fellow educators to identify all the good software available and develop strategies in how to integrate it within a classroom environment. Not exactly a new concept, yet it has been one of the major stumbling blocks in educational technology in general.

With most technology, I like to step back from all the hype and really analyze the hardware for what it is. Although the App Store is not saturated with amazing educational software, that shouldn’t count it out of being a viable platform. So let’s break it down to affordances and limitations:

Bigger is better?
Pro: Enables larger collaborative groups and “over the shoulder” viewing encouraging meaningful discourse.
Con: For younger children, bigger is not necessarily better. This maybe a bit bulky compared to a smartphone.

Multitouch:
Pro: The larger screen will allow for multiple students to interact with the screen, and also afford collaboration and discourse. Android is said to be incorporating multi-touch in future releases of the OS
Con: I am not certain, but i beloved that the iPhone is limited to 5 simultaneous touch points, which limits the collaborative aspect. This means that if that no more then 5 fingers will be recognized at any given time. If anyone knows the

Mutitasking
Pro: Sorry can’t think of any.
Con: Could become a pain to have to close in and out of programs, especial once more complex rich interfaces become available. Once you move from entertainment to productivity this becomes an issue. Having to close out of programs to check your email could prove to be a major headache.

Camera:
Pro: What camera? Can’t think of any pro here.
Con: Great you could make Keynote presentation, but you can’t take a picture of your science project. Doesn’t seem like a seamless experience. Adding an external peripheral will just add to the bulkiness, hopefully this will show up in the next generation.

Video:
Pro: Sorry, no camera means no video.
Con: This means no video conferencing, no creation of video assets, and no augmented reality.

Flash Support
Pro: This depends on your personal preference, but some people might prefer no flash. However allowing users to enable and disable flash would be a more democratic alternative.
Con: Much of the educational software that is online is Flash based, such as videos and animations (Brain Pop), games, and simulations.

iBook:
Pro: This could help cut cost on textbook, and will probably expedite publishers offering electronic versions of their books. It will also help me, as an avid book reader to limit the clutter in my basement.
Con: There has been no official partner for textbooks, however there is a rumor that McGraw Hill is in talks with Apple.

Since Apple is offering iBook as a native app, I am under the impression that this would mean that creating a better iBook app would conflict with Apple’s strict terms of services agreement that all iPhone developers must adhere too. According to the agreement, developers are not allowed to mimic any functionality that the iphone already offers.

As a student myself, it is too early to tell if the iBook will suit all of my needs. However, if Steve Jobs happens to read this post, then here is my wish list. Easy highlighting, inline note taking, tagging, bibliography exporting, and social note taking. I would like to make my side notes public on research that I do, and see the reactions of my peers attached to the exact context in the book. Essentially I want Diigo for books. Get on that Steve! Thanks!

DRM
Pro: The only pro to any Digital Rights Management goes to both the publisher and Apple.
Con: Understandable that publishers would like DRM to protect their content from piracy, however according to a post sent by adobe.:

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers.

So what are the ramifications of such a decision? Suppose you start buying all you school textbooks from iTunes on your iPad. In college level courses you could start racking up expensive books rather quickly. Hypothetically speaking, next year Google, Amazon, or any other company may puts out an amazing piece of hardware that better suits your needs. Unfortunately, under Apple’s restriction you are faced with the decision of not being able to transport your books to the new device, or being forced to stick with Apple. I doubt this would last very long, since they did the same thing with MP3 several years ago, and the market forced them to offer DRM free music, but who knows. Do you remember the pain of trying to place an MP3 song on a CD?

Bluetooth:
Pro: students could wear wireless headphones to not disrupt other students, while still reviving appropriate auditory feedback.
Con: apple continues to only support only a subset of Bluetooth. This makes communicating with wireless physical devices such as a keyboard, mouse, or some other Bluetooth enable device impossible without jailbreaking your phone, and installing btstack. Enabling full access would open up so many opportunities as developers. Here is a non-educational related example of what HumanAPI along with BTStack could do. Enabling students to interact with the physical world is always good.

HumanApi, Sports ECG in real life from uxebu on Vimeo.

These are just a few, I am sure you could all come up with others, so feel free to add them into the comments. As a developer and technologist that loves learning about education, I feel it is part of the process to identify what tools are available to me. More educational software developers and designers should take the time to really dig deep into the guts of any sort of interaction they are proposing, and make sure they align with some sort of educational theory, and how limitation could effect their design and target market. There is no way to truly answer if any technology is good for education since it is really dependent on the software execution and how well it has been integrated and delivered by the instructor and what types of scaffolds the instructor provides.

Personally, as much as i think that the iPad is a great piece of hardware, I am hopping that the rumored Google/HTC tablet version takes away some of the cons that i listed (naturally they will be replaced with other cons), or that Apple corrects them in future releases, but that is to be discussed another day. I plan on holding off and see how the market reacts to the iPad before i make an decisions for my personal use, but at some point I, like many other will have to get some sort of tablet/e-reader.

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