A new trend is using the apple itouch in the classroom. People have been blogging about it. Here are some interesting articles:
- http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/apple-itouch
- http://thumannresources.com/2008/11/02/itouch-the-future-i-teach-foreign-languages/
- http://wirededucator.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/an-ipod-touch-in-every-classroom-yes-with-education-focused-apps/
- http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2009/02/02/an-ipod-touch-in-every-classroom-by-kelly-croy/
So lots of people are playing with the concept. Ipods/itouch’s are very versatile devices, and they really do change the way you work and live. So it’s not hard to figure out that you can do quite a bit with them in the classroom too. Yet if one reads the accounts it’s obvious that this world is still in its infancy — right now people are basically adapting existing apps and techniques to the classroom. A lot of it is still about simply having and using technology. This is the weakness I see in a lot of educational uses of technology – it’s all about simply acuqiring interesting technology and not enough about meaningful applications that deeply get the educational context while utilizing the cool hardware. It’s really the applications that make the hardware purchases profoundly useful.
There’s also an interesting debate going about whether or not the future is with ipod like devices or with netbooks which are also pretty small but have real keyboards. All of this may get complicated by the arrival of larger devices like the big kindle or the rumored apple touchpad – which will see a convergence between devices like this and the classical book. If the small devices can mostly replace a text book then they save a great deal of money in school or in college. At that point, you can start using this as a platform for different kinds of educational experiences that are more interactive than a traditional book, but benefit fit from the combination of portability, yet with a reasonably large form factor. After 25 years of PC hegemony, only partially broken by the laptop, I feel we’re on the cusp of a great explosion of different kinds of smallish hand-held devices, not quite as small as a cellphone perhaps, which will enable whole new ranges of applications. We’ll have to see.
