At the end of January I wrote an article about the iPad and it’s potential impact in education. Since that time I have done more research and pondering on the topic. I have also convinced my wife to allow me to purchase one when it goes on sell. I can hardly wait!
I truly believe the iPad will revolutionize the classroom in a multitude of ways. Not all of these ideas and revolutions will be from the first generation iPad and apps, or even from Apple Computer. But just as the Nintendo Wii has and is transforming the world of console video games, the Apple iPad will transform the world of education. In a matter of a few years, I can envision the iPad will make a huge impact in education. A lot of the success of the iPad as it enters the realm of education will be on the shoulders of iPad app developers, curriculum developers, and educators.
In my opinion, the six biggest things the iPad will change in schools and education are textbooks, note taking, paperless classroom, studying and reviewing, student interest level, and individualized curriculum. You will find my reasoning for these things below.
1. Textbooks
The biggest impact will come in the form of textbooks.
Currently textbooks are one of the largest budgeting issue facing schools. With some textbooks costing more than $100, the price tag adds up quickly. If a typical student has six different textbooks, this could easily be $600 per student for textbooks alone. Many schools have minimized this cost by only having classroom sets of textbooks. This does not help students though when it is time for them to do homework or study for tests. A typical high school teacher could have more than one hundred students that will share only thirty textbooks. How is this fair to the students?
Secondly, textbooks are usually only purchased every few years. For many schools, this is done only every five or six years. Some textbooks do not have much change in the content, but get purchased again anyways. So the school must find a buyer for the old textbooks and then purchase truckloads of new ones for essentially the same content. Also, for some content areas like technology, by the time a new textbook is purchased, much of the content is already outdated.
Thirdly, many textbook publishers are now publishing additional content online. This content can be in the form of video clips, small games, or interactive reviews. It does not make sense for this supplemental content to be disconnected from the actual textbook in the digital age.
And then there is the iPad. The cheapest retail version of it will cost right at $500. Schools may be able to get discounts on it, but that information is not yet available. Schools will no longer have to purchase expensive textbooks, but can instead access content online. Textbook subscriptions could be paid for and installed on the iPads of the students. The digital content can seamlessly be integrated into the text. So instead of having a stale picture, it would be a video clip or a game to reinforce learning. Practice problems could be done on the iPad with the the correct answer being shown and explained if the student did it wrong. Students could take the 1.5 pound iPad home to study from instead of taking 20 or more pounds of textbooks home to study from. Any difference in costs between textbooks and iPads with digital textbooks would be negligible compared to the benefits.
2. Note Taking
One of the largest complaints I hear from my students is that the lost their notes. They either don’t know where they put the paper or it got thrown away by mistake. The same thing goes for homework. Students tend to not be very organized, but how can you blame them? They have grown up in a digital world. They are used to having the things saved automatically on a computer or iPod. If they need to find something they just do a keyword search and it finds it form them.
And then there is the iPad. Imagine students using a stylus instead of a pen or pencil as they take notes in class. Their handwritten notes get converted automatically into a legible computer font. The file gets saved with the date, subject, and keywords automatically recognized by the note taking app. The same thing can be done for homework as well. The students could also easily annotate their digital textbooks by highlighting and underlining keywords and phrases. The students will no longer miss their notes. No longer will they have to spend lots of time copying notes they missed when they were absent. Their friend could just email the notes very quickly. And the notes are LEGIBLE! Is it magic? No. It’s the power of the iPad with powerful apps designed for note taking.
3. Paperless Classroom
Many schools have started rationing the number of copies a teacher can make in a week, month, or semester. How terrible is that? How can we as teachers do our job properly if we can’t print worksheets, practice sheets, laboratory directions, quizzes, and tests? Other schools have started requiring that students bring a ream of paper as part of their school supply list. We won’t go into the whole recycling issue here either. My school does not have the money to afford to pay for a recycling program, so all of this paper gets thrown away. So much waste!
And then there is the iPad. A teacher wants to give the students a worksheet to complete. The teacher sends the worksheet to the students either through a digital scan or through a natively digital worksheet to the students’ iPads. If the students use the stylus, it automatically converts their work into a readable font. If the students use the integrated, or external keyboard, the answers can be typed directly into the available slots. Teachers don’t have to worry about the lack of computers since each student has their own iPad. It’s great! Once the students are done, they can digitally submit the worksheet to the teacher. Since the student writing was automatically translated into a readable font, these could be graded automatically for the teacher as well. Correct answers could immediately be given to the students as well. Feedback is key when it comes to teaching.
It is difficult to provide feedback to every wrong answer for every student, but through this medium, the iPad and various installed apps, feedback can be provided almost instantly. Not only does it make the teaching more effective, but it also makes it so the classrooms can become completely paperless.
Now, the size of the impact of becoming totally paperless will depend heavily on the successful development and deployment of appropriate iPad apps with these goals in mind. The technology is there; it only needs to be packaged accordingly.
4. Studying and Reviewing
This relates directly to the textbook and note taking capabilities of the iPad. Students will have all of their notes legible and organized and all of their “textbooks” with them on the iPad. This will make studying and reviewing so much easier for students.
In the future, there could even be possible iPad apps that facilitate online study groups for students. They will no longer have to go to a common meeting place in order to study together. This could greatly increase the likelihood of study groups forming. The only problem is the current iPads lack webcams. Possibly in the future iterations of the iPad this will come standard. But even without the a webcam, the microphone and chat room-like apps could make collaborative studying easy and shared through chatting and a shared workspace where they can draw out their ideas and illustrations.
5. Student Interest Level
I think many educators are unaware of the impact the iPad could have on student interest in the classroom. In my school students complain all of the time that they are not allowed to use technology in the classroom. Part of the problem is there aren’t enough computers in the school and the high school lacks a computer lab. My students prefer using computers to do work than using pen and paper. By actively embracing and integrating the iPad into the classroom students will be more interested in class, if for nothing else than the chance to use technology to help them learn.
6. Individualized Curriculum
The power of having the technology in the hands of the students is that an app could be developed to help customize the learning experience of individual students. There are already programs out there that help students study only the topics they do not fully understand by using a review game of various topics. The topics the student struggles the most with has more review built in than the topics the students excel at. The same thing can be done with iPad apps. In fact, entire courses could become more independent of a teacher. Students could begin working more or less at their own pace as educators help each student progress individually.
For some school districts and states, this might be a topic of huge debate. However, if schools are to do a better job of educating every student, not just the students in the middle, then schools need to embrace the technology that allows for the “multiplication” of teachers in the classroom without having to pay the salary of extra educators. The iPad’s technology could easily allow for more individualized instruction and curriculum for every student. Students that struggle can get more guided practice and teachers could focus more energy on them, while the other students can work more independently as they work ahead to master the content. The students could also collaborate with their peers as they work through the curriculum. In this way the teacher begins to facilitate a more student-centered classroom instead of a teacher-center classroom built around lectures. Students would no longer become bored because they do not understand the material or because the teacher is going too slow. Education can truly become personalized. This can all be thanks, in part, to the iPad and the iPad app developers.
Final Thoughts
The iPad could provide the students the chance to take better care of their educational resources. They take care of their cellphones and iPods and even find opportunities to use them when they should not. There may be complaints from some educators that the iPad will provide too many distractions for students with its ability to play games. My experience though is that when educators try to enforce strict guidelines about technology, the students rebel and find ways to use it anyways. By embracing the use of technology, especially the iPad, the reasons to rebel will not be as appealing.
For more information about how I envision the iPad apps functioning to accomplish many of the things discussed above, please visit my other post Three Concepts of iPad Apps for Schools.
For an active discussion about the iPad and its use in education please visit http://ipad4edu.com/.
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Related posts:
- Three Concepts of iPad Apps for Schools
- Is the iPad the Future for Schools?
- A Friendly Disagreement about the iPad and Education
- 15 iPad App Concepts for Education
- Common Concerns about the iPad’s Use in Education
- Confirmed: iPad Available for Pre Order March 12
- The iPad’s Potential for Science Education
- Two Must See Documentaries about Education in America
- 10 iPad Educational Game Concepts
- iPad Pre Order on February 25?
16:55, 03.02.2010
Hi Trevor, thanks for sharing this post with me and building upon my rough thoughts on the iPad last week. I think you’re spot-on in terms of individualized curriculum and collaborative study, two items I didn’t really think about in my initial post. I’m hoping to do some proof-of-concept stuff for the former when my iPad gets ordered and arrives.
For the latter, I believe the initial version of the iPad *is* slated to have a microphone–I’ve heard Skype will work with it just fine. There’s some debate right now as to whether there’s a webcam in there or not–although Jobs didn’t demo it, some people are reporting it will be in the model that ships in a couple of months. However, even without A/V input devices, there could be some neat adaptations of Web 2.0-style real-time and asynchronous studying/collaboration. It will be interesting to see how iPads and their inevitable copycats will transform how we think about web interfaces, just as the iPhone has done on a smaller level.
Thanks again for sharing!
Aaron
21:01, 03.02.2010
I appreciate the thorough comment Aaron. I can’t wait to get my iPad either. My wife gave me the okay on purchasing one when they become available. I truly believe the iPad is the stepping stone to really revolutionizing the way schools operate.
14:26, 04.02.2010
i cant wait either. i told my husband i will be getting him an ipad. i really like the fact that it is so neat and intreasting, and he cant what!!!!!
14:29, 04.02.2010
i think the ipad is a neat thing to have, i wish i had one
14:44, 04.02.2010
I really liked this article, I like how you talked about how expensive technology can help students in the classroom.
15:17, 04.02.2010
the ipad is very interesting but its to big
15:32, 04.02.2010
I think the iPad will only change education if we allow it to. WE will need to accept the technology and the things that it could be used for instead of school, such as facebook. But as with anything new that is something that is inevitably going to happen.
15:33, 04.02.2010
This makes some amount of since
15:35, 04.02.2010
the ipad is pretty cool! I dont want one though. i’ll just use my friend’s ipad!!
15:40, 04.02.2010
your right i would love to have an ipad. i would like if the school would just give us an ipad.
15:45, 04.02.2010
Sounds like a neat way to get students interested in their lessons, as long as they dont ruin the IPad and the experiance for everyone else.
12:33, 05.02.2010
It sounds like a good way to get students to pay more attention to school.
12:33, 05.02.2010
I like this article. It’s very informative. Very good points are made.
12:34, 05.02.2010
I like this article because it sounds like a cool way to get students interested in their lessions. The only thing is the students ruining the IPad and for other students.
12:35, 05.02.2010
its cool adn i think that our school should get it for us maybe students will get more done.
13:03, 05.02.2010
I liked the article and you can do lessions and it would be cool!!!
13:35, 05.02.2010
I think these steps towards education are great! I’m tired of learning from books straight from the 90’s.
I think a keypad would be better to take notes than a stylus. Of course the i-Pad will already have that.
14:03, 05.02.2010
This is so neat. I wish I had one to help me in school.
14:04, 05.02.2010
the school should provide us with an ipad
14:06, 05.02.2010
I think the ipad is a very intresting piece of technology. Also if students had them in school it will be a better way for us to get work done..!
23:14, 06.02.2010
The issue with iPad evolving into other forms of education tools in addition to being an eReader is that Note Taking tool: Stylus technology was never developed sophisticated enough to recognize all hand-writings.
Also an all-in-one device like iPad that has games, Browser and Apps, would distract students more than help them in the class. Even now in grad schools you see students falling asleep at the back, eating, checking facebook on mobiles etc… imagine K12 students with powerful devices.
But I whole heartedly support an eReader in Schools because it can save money and be green.
Check out my blog on this @ http://blogs.collegetou.com/2010/01/apple-ipad-as-ebook-reader-in-schools/.
23:25, 06.02.2010
Sudhir, I appreciate the comments. The issue you bring up about the iPad being a potential distraction for students is a very real concern and one I have been thinking about. In the near future I will be writing a post in regards to that concern, as I imagine that will be a huge stumbling block for the iPad’s wide acceptance in K-12 schools.
05:03, 07.02.2010
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for leaving your positive comment on the post we wrote about the iPad and Dyslexia.
Your post is really useful and we will point interested readers to it.
It would be great to get peoples views about the iPad and dyslexia.
All the best Trevor,
Antonio Farruggia
Co-founder of DyslexicBrian.com
P.S. here is a link to the post about the iPad and dyslexia: http://dyslexicbrian.com/resources/is-the-ipad-good-or-bad-for-dyslexic-children/
06:15, 08.02.2010
[...] interesting. In the primary school setting, maybe more of a potential gamechanger than an iPad? http://www.flickr.com/photos/moe/1467542988/ addthis_url = [...]
11:47, 08.02.2010
I like what you have to say but it seems to be based on a model of one computer per child. What about the classroom that has to check out a mobile cart or can only afford a limited set of iPads? How will students save and open documents? Will they be able to login to their server accounts? Or does everything have to be done on Google-docs? I wish it could use USB flash drives. What about remote desktop for support.
My school is considering putting them in a science lab. I think they will be great. But I’m still figuring out how they will be integrated into our infrastructure.
12:14, 08.02.2010
Greg, I appreciate the comments and questions. It is true that my original comments were geared towards a 1 to 1 classroom, but I think a lot of what I said could still apply.
I feel there would be no problem modifying it to a mobile cart or limited classroom sets.
As far as saving and opening docs, the iPad will run iWorks which will have the ability to open, edit, and save documents.
I am not sure about the login to server accounts, but the students would easily be able to email documents and stuff they created in iWorks to their email accounts that can then be saved to server accounts. However, I am sure there will be some apps developed for the iPad that can accomplish something similar to server accounts.
Web 2.0, such as Google Docs, is one possibility. There will be the iWorks available ($10 for word processing, $10 for spreadsheet, and $10 for presentation software). Web 2.0 applications are the way of the future for PCs though, so it is something to look into. I have written a blog post that includes some free services for teachers (pay for entire school integration) of document sharing, blogging, etc. Check it out at http://www.edutechnophobia.com/2010/01/best-hosts-for-free-class-webpages/. Look particularly at the http://www.edu20.org. That could help a lot with some issues you were talking about.
USB flash drives is something I too was integrated into the iPad. Possibility in future iterations it will be available. The iPad does have Bluetooth capabilities though, so you could easily upload/download from other Bluetooth enabled devices (at least I think it should be possible).
As a science and technology teacher, I too think the science lab will greatly benefit from the iPad.
Check back often on my blog as I will addresses your concerns in more detail and other concerns later as well.
Thanks again for the comments.
15:29, 08.02.2010
Hey Trevor! I appreciate your comment on my blog. I’ve written a fairly long piece based on your brief comment why I don’t see a future for the iPad in education.
http://www.mackenty.org/index.php/dev/comments/a_disagreement_on_the_ipad_potential/
Is the iPad great? Yup. Will it work in Education? Nope. I look forward to hear your comments.
14:33, 15.02.2010
Trevor: Great series of posts on the iPad. You’re thoughts seem to be paralleling my own, that the iPad has tremendous potential to transform education. I am also a high school science teacher and tech guru, and I have also taught courses in multimedia design for the last ten years. I agree with all the general uses you’ve outlined. What are your thoughts on specific uses of the iPad in science education? With the use of the accelerometer and gestural control, I see the iPad as a platform for virtual science labs. Imagine creating physics simulations where the student can control the variables and inputs (acceleration of gravity, velocity, force, friction, etc.). Or an Earth science app that shows a photo of a virtual rock specimen and allows the students to pick from various field tests, such as a scratch test (drag your fingernail or a nail over the speciman), a streak plate test, or an acid test. Or imagine a virtual chemistry lab – allowing the students to pick up the reagents, measure them on virtual scales, calculate molecular weights and stoichiometry, and observe and measure the reaction (with virtual pH titration and other tools). It wouldn’t replace actual hands-on experiments, but it can help prepare students for the real thing and reduce waste and disposal costs, as well as provide a great way to remediate learning for students who missed class the day of the lab.
My biggest area of effort lately has been that of student-created content, student collaboration, and citizen science, and the iPad will be great for all of these in several ways: 1 – as a field recording device for observations and data collection. Hook a GPS or a pH meter up to it (here’s hoping it will come with USB capability) and record field observations directly into the Maps program; 2 – collaborating instantly with students in classes worldwide. My own project is taking groups of students from my Media Design program out to mining and chemical manufacturing sites with digital video equipment and interviewing scientists, engineers, and historians at the sites, then editing it all in a series of podcasts episodes (the first will be up sometime later this week or early next week . . . cross my fingers!). The iPad will be great for student to access the iTunes U and YouTube educational content already made to supplement what’s presented in class, or collaborate on wiki pages when doing a research project (my video groups already do this as they put together the scripts for the episodes), and work together using Keynote to present the results to their peers.
As for the app creation process, those of us who see the need and the opportunity and have the content knowledge, educational experience, and tech know-how will have to take the lead in developing the general apps you mention as well as course-specific tools. If we work with software developers (I’m OK as a programmer but I don’t know the iPad SDK, so I’ll need to work with someone else) then these apps can happen.
I think I’ll write a post in my own blog about this topic today. I’ve been so busy editing the first set of podcast videos that my blog has been neglected lately:
http://elementsunearthed.com/
Thanks again for sparking some thoughts on these issues.
-David V. Black
15:36, 15.02.2010
[...] be in education. Some excellent posts are being written on the possibilities. Here’s one: http://www.edutechnophobia.com/2010/02/six-ways-the-ipad-will-transform-education/ I haven’t weighed in on the issue myself yet because I’ve been so busy preparing the [...]
22:47, 15.02.2010
David,
I appreciate the post and nice things you said. I have gone to your blog and posted my comments on your article at http://elementsunearthed.com/2010/02/15/weighing-in-on-the-ipad-in-education/. I will be posting my own thoughts about the iPad as a tool in the science classroom in the next couple of days.
00:21, 16.02.2010
[...] Recently, one of my blog readers posted a comment asking me about my views on how the iPad will impact science education. He has written his own opinion on the issue here. As a physics teacher myself, this is something I have thought about quite a bit. I will not go over its potential as a textbook again since I have addressed that issue in a previous post. [...]