Supposedly I shall be receiving an iPad to 'play' with shortly, prior to some trials in some of our schools. Am I excited? More curious (I have to support schools with Mac or PC so have no zealous affiliation either way) yet I'm excited about the possibilities in schools. However, in conversations, blogs and tweets I am hearing and reading lots of naysayers harping on about the iPad's shortfalls. Problems with school wireless, security breaches and not being able to edit in Wikispaces I'm sure will be sorted out in due course. A bigger issue for me is the problem with Flash (I'm a big user of Prezi for instance) but maybe such applications with migrate to HTML5? However, I can't buy the argument that is now almost a cliché: "its for consumption not knowledge creation". More and more we are moving to 'cloud computing'. We can create and collaborate on documents, audio edit, video edit and more all within the 'aether'. The iPad is a Cloud device. It is not a problem not having a USB port, use dropbox.com. The biggest problem, particularly in Australia, in the short-term is bandwidth. In a few years time we will look back and wonder what the fuss was about. Everything will be in the cloud and we won't need tonnes of ports. The one thing missing in all of the posturing by adults is the students' opinions. They will love using iPads and similar devices in the classroom and will find ways of achieving many of the outcomes we adults say are impossible.
one thing i've learned while watching this kid play with the ipad is not to be afraid to take risk. i admit, i am one of those people who has to look over someone's shoulder to know how to use a function, etc before i apply it. i fear that i'd do something drastic at the end. with this kid, and the hundreds of kids out there, adults should start emulating them...
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