Saturday, January 30, 2010

Week 3

With all the fanfare regarding Apple's iPad, I've been wondering about its application in a library media center. If we overlook the price, could this be a valuable tool?
It seems to me although it is unlikely the iPad as we know it will find a home in classrooms and libraries, tablet devices should be the future flagship of academic tools. Much like laptops are ubiquitous on college campuses for their versatile academic and entertainment functions, I envision middle and high school students using school issued tablet devices in lieu of pens, notebooks, and textbooks.
In the coming years, as prices go down, I can not think of any realistic reason not to see tablet devices moving to the forefront of educational tools.
I imagine students downloading "textbooks," uploading homework, and real-time interaction between teachers and students in and out of school. Multimodal learning materials will literally be at students' and teachers' finger tips.
I hope this does not seem like a far-fetched idea. I expect this type of technology to be universal during my career as a slms. It was only 20 years ago that computers became prevalent in schools. I am excited to see what the technology of the next 20 years has in store for students and educators alike.

1 comments:

mpg said...

While researching assistive devices, i stumbled across the Microsoft Courier - http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=7696

This is more akin to what I had in mind as far as what we might find in schools in the near feature.

Post a Comment