Tablet's Becoming A Big Learning Tool In School

[sniperviper21]

My two sense ?

I use motion tablets at work with full W7 pro touch screen (I7, 6GB RAM, SSD/HDD hybrid and enterprise encryption Wireless N with a finger print scanner) that are dust shock and water resistant with dock stations at each desk. Yet we still have connection issues ect and tablets still get damaged and broken. And we work in a climate controlled building, and lock them up between shifts that only us inspectors have keys too, each one of us uses the same tablet daily too.

Granted schools will not have such high end ones but how well would they stand up to kid abuse?

 

[Cortb]

I realize getting app approval from apple is no walk in the park, and I meant that the app could be used to manage the content needed for school work, not manage the devices themselves. And while not foolproof, schools already restrict Internet usage, to keep students off of sites they shouldn't be on. (I say not foolproof, because I had my own personal proxy sites all through high school so I could Facebook at lunch.) As far as games and other distractions go, I had a dozen games on my Ti-84 calculator. It is and always has been on the teacher to make sure students are using technology properly, which is why I spent many math classes WITHOUT my calculator after getting caught.

I can see the advantages of e-ink/liquid paper, cheaper, less energy required, maybe even more resilient/resistant to damage, but their lack of video support is what kills it for me. I truly believe, that video is going to be an essential part of the learning process. Imagine a dissection for a biology class without the heavy stench of formaldehyde thick in the air, a 3-d graphing calculator with pinch to zoom/rotate, or being able to explore the wonders of the world in a geography class. I just haven't seen any eink tablets that can do this.

Theft could be a problem, but the iPads/tablets have better security features than most other school supplies. I'd love to see some statistics on school ipad theft and recovery. I don't think there's much room or reason for jealousy between students equipped with tablets, but I can totally see them being taken elsewhere.

And as far as device management, I think apple does offer something for that: Apple - iPad in Business - IT Center - Mobile Device Management in iOS

 

[root]

There is a product called mobile iron that we've deployed at a customer site to manage iPads connecting to their network.

The trouble with the app is.
Apple will not let any application that allows file browsing or seeing the data if other apps. That's why you often can't use the built in iPad app to play videos downloaded with a separate downloading program. Or why I can't use one document viewer to write a document then open that same document with a different program (perhaps with different features).

That's why there are no apps that manage content currently.

Standardised user experience is quite important also.
If you want to understand how much standardisation and variation from standardisation changes productivity try moving the start bar to the top of the screen for a week.

 

[Cortb]

A central/combined file storage system would be great. As it is emailing docs to myself is the only way to open it up in another app, but that doesn't work if the file size is too large like videos. And loading those up via iTunes into VLC is a pain.

Not sure about this, but i think they do have some basic sharing of files. Music at least, as i have a few apps that can use my music library. Still, it'd be nice if they'd extend this functionality to other types of files or file locations in the cloud.

Regardless, couldn't this all be bypassed if all of the documents were saved in the cloud from the app, instead of locally on the device? That way they could, in app A, send the docs they need via email as attachments or direct hyperlinks to the documents to themselves. Then open them up in app B?

I know what you mean about standardization, my brother has his startbar on the right of the screen. God only knows why. I trips me up EVERY time.

 

[tomarnold]

I like this idea but is important to use ipads just for education!! The problem is when you allow the kids to use the apps that they want. There are a lot of important educative app but is important to control it.