Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced the newest product in the burgeoning Apple line up: the iPad. News of this announcement has been leaking to the press for some time, and people like me have been expecting to see the Apple version of a Tablet PC. What we got was something totally different. And for education, it is the next level of student engagement.
I have been watching the announcement on Apple’s website a day later to “see” what I could only hear during the live event. The iPad is not necessarily a computer in the way we think of one. But it is a great interactive tool. Jobs seemed a little unsure of himself at times, and the crowd wasn’t as spontaneously exuberant as they have been over the iPod or the iPhone. Maybe that’s because everytime Jobs said “amazing” or “beautiful” or “fantastic” we all can now hear his brain going “Cha-Ching!” After all, for Apple every tool they make is about adding money to the bottom line. But as an educator, I was watching for particular classroom applications, and it did not disappoint.
Around the 50 to 52 minute mark in the presentation, Jobs demonstrated their newest collection called iBooks. Apple is going to try to do with books what they’ve already done with music: turn the world upside down. While Google is trying to digitize every book in the world into flat, readable PDF files, and Amazon is trying to sell a hardware device that only reads books called the Kindle, Apple has unleashed the power of totally interactivity. And that’s what people want.
I’ve already blogged about this previously, but thought it was more a “pie-in-the-sky” wish list based on current hardware available to schools. Online textbooks will eventually revolutionize education and student engagement. No, not the kind that takes the current text and simply digitizes it for easy of use. No, I’m talking about an iBook. Textbooks that embed in them videos, podcasts, pictures, websites, field trips, interviews, music, and more.
And what if these textbooks enabled kids to create their own blogs? Allowed them to write to an authentic audience? Allowed them to take pictures and create videos of their own?
And what if schools could use textbooks like Wikipedia and add their own content? Their own videos? Their own local flavor?
Enter the iPad.
The basic, stripped down version of the iPad starts at $499. Imagine slipping one of those into the backpacks of every 3rd grader in the nation at the beginning of next year. And then, every year after that, a new generation of 3rd graders gets one while the others get to keep theirs. Upgrade them in 6th grade and 9th grade. Suddenly, kids have a tool they want to use in the classroom. They have a tool that is theirs.
And that, my friends, makes this education thing a whole new ballgame.