The new iPad from Apple Computer has taken off commercially and generated a great deal of debate about its quality and utility. Naturally, some of that debate centers on education and training, where concepts such as mobile learning have been growing in interest and importance for the last few years. This presentation looks at the iPad in the context of other computers and mobile devices and how we might make good use of them in education. This presentation attempts to take an early look at what the iPad can do and how it may affect education and training. While I will try to describe here the directions I think the presentation will take, due to its nature, any actual presentation in November will necessarily be very different. New ideas for using the system in education are inevitable, along with new applications and other changes. Over the last month or more, since the introduction of the iPad or even since its original announcement, many people have asked "What can you do with it that you can't do with (insert one or more) your computer, your laptop, your iPhone, your other mobile device. That isn't the best question to be asking, however. New gadgets like this often add only incrementally to what can be done and change instead how or where or when those things can be done. Later, as a variety of people begin to use and think about the device, we find new uses and software that genuinely change the what. These are very hard to predict. For starters, we know that the iPad is a flexible, very mobile platform for finding and viewing information in a variety of media. and for communicating. Other capabilities are emerging as new ideas and apps come along. The iPad has a combinations of features and affordances that may make it extremely useful in education and training. It also has some drawbacks. Among its major attribute are excellent connectivity to the networks (despite some early reports of problems), an interface that makes it easy and even fun to switch among apps and otherwise navigate around the device. The iPad is especially good at presenting the user with media of various kinds: video, audio, books (iBooks and Kindle). It is less good at allowing users to create materials. The virtual keyboard is OK for what it is but not up to a physical keyboard. For example, an educational app that the iPad might seem to be ideal for is creating concept maps, but so far the drawing is not usually good enough and switching between drawing and typing is slow. Communication, however, is likely to be a real strength of the device, even more so when video cameras are either built-in or available to attach to the iPad. This presentation will review the features and affordances of the iPad and relate them to its potential educational uses. While the outline of the presentation is clear at this writing, one month after its introduction, the details will be different in six months. They will be based on reviewing blogs, papers, presentations, and other discussions of the educational implications of the iPad and of mobile learning. Finally, we will discuss the research that is needed in these areas. Participants will describe the major features, affordances, and drawbacks of the first generation of iPad. relate these characteristics to education and training. describe various ways that the iPad can contribute to current ideas about mobile learning discuss research that will contribute to these ideas.
