iPads in the classroom are all the rage in the education publishing market – somedays the oxygen for discussing anything but learning tablets has been sucked out of the room.
As we move beyond the giggling crush stage there are a couple of points to consider that might give publishers a more grounded perspective on where we really are in the adoption cycle.
Falling Off The Learning Cliff
My last post, Apple’s iPad Textbooks Cost 5x More Than Print, touched a live wire.
The majority of comments were positive. The general tone was support for iPads in the classroom (a position I share) but an appreciation for the realistic view of what it will cost to implement the vision today.
Oops – I Underestimated
From a Publisher’s perspective Apple’s iPad textbook initiative is a decent 1.0 release with promise. I’ve had a few weeks to play with iBooks Author and iBooks2 and discuss them with colleagues. I’ll write about the many positives in future posts.
But there is a worm in this apple. All the sweet promises Apple is making are going to slam headfirst into the funding issue. It will cost a school 552% more to implement iPad textbooks than it does to deploy books. That ain’t happening in THIS economy. The press reports I’ve seen have completely missed this because Apple “hand waved” their way around it.
Update – A follow on post discussion of reader responses is here.
It’s been four weeks and my iPad still has that new computer smell. Now that I’ve been using it in my workflow I wanted to post some additional comments on it’s utility in an educational setting.
In general I think my original take holds up well – this is fantastic tool for consuming content, is extremely useful as an outboard content manager, and passable in a pinch as a creation tool (this whole post was written on it).
On a meta level it is truly amazing how natural the “point and do” nature of the touch interface feels. Once you understand the grammar of the device it all just flows. A mouse now feels clunky for most operations other than image processing or massive spreadsheets.
An iPad has been floating around the PCI office for the past week (thanks to Randy Pennington‘s ed-tech jones). Will it be a game changer for education? Can it redefine how we deliver instructional content?
I’ve tried to refrain from commenting on the iPad until I could see and multi-touch it. Having worked at Apple for 7 years (back in the Pleistocene era) I’m wary of 1.0 releases.
It appears that my skepticism was misplaced in this case. My iPad 3G is now on order (yay!).
Today’s hotlinks include Pearson’s take on publishing for the iPad, designing playful experiences, the coolest marketing program I’ve seen in a while, a new augmented reality game to promote social change in Africa, and Photoshop disasters.
John Makinson of Pearson Penguin gave an interesting talk on the future of publishing in an iPad world. Textbook publishers take note – he specifically cites one as part of his examples. This isn’t just for Penguin.
Pearson gets it – mostly. But they can’t escape the book metaphor. Essentially this is the sidescroller stage of evolution. Beyond Pong, but no further than Mario Brothers. Do something interactive, flip a “page.” 3D, embedded social connections (“who else in the world is looking at this page that i could talk too…”) etc. is still in the future and will require some radically different ways of constructing and navigating content. Hopefully they are working on that in the back of the back room. Hat tip to personanondata.
The Education Business Blog