Bevil Wood­ing

"Imag­ine a fu­ture where our chil­dren are more mo­ti­vat­ed be­cause they are im­mersed in the same tech­nol­o­gy that is in­creas­ing­ly sur­round­ing them in life."

The ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor glob­al­ly has tra­di­tion­al­ly been slow to adopt new tech­nol­o­gy. A wave of af­ford­able, mo­bile com­put­ing de­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly tablets, is chang­ing this. Ed­u­ca­tion ad­min­is­tra­tors, schools, and in­di­vid­ual ed­u­ca­tors are ex­per­i­ment­ing with new touch­screen de­vices, such as Ap­ple's wild­ly pop­u­lar iPad, at a rate that is faster than even the most op­ti­mistic tech-watch­er could have an­tic­i­pat­ed. Schools are in­creas­ing­ly ex­plor­ing the in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy in the class­rooms. And more and more, they are opt­ing for tablets in­stead of lap­tops or desk­top com­put­ers.

The ap­peal

The ap­peal of tablets to ed­u­ca­tors is easy to un­der­stand. Tablets are af­ford­able, adapt­able, in­ter­ac­tive, portable, pow­er­ful, con­nect­ed, and (and if it's an iPad, stu­dents think they're cool as well).

With tablets, stu­dents and teach­ers are no longer con­fined to com­put­er labs to ex­pe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of tech­nol­o­gy-sup­port­ed learn­ing.

Tablets con­tain cam­eras that al­low for tak­ing pic­tures or record­ing videos for class projects. They sup­port video play­back for watch­ing movies, clips or an­i­ma­tions, en­hanc­ing learn­ing with im­mer­sive and in­ter­ac­tive mul­ti­me­dia teach­ing aids. Build-in speak­ers and mi­cro­phone al­low for mu­sic play­back and voice record­ing for mu­sic, lan­guage and hu­man­i­ties sub­jects. And, of course, with wire­less net­work­ing, tablets can con­nect to the In­ter­net, giv­ing stu­dents' ac­cess to the rich, di­verse World Wide Web for re­search, video con­fer­enc­ing, email and so much more.

Tablets al­low stu­dents to eas­i­ly car­ry around more in­for­ma­tion � and less weight - than a bag filled with stack of text books. All this from a de­vice that is less ex­pen­sive than tra­di­tion­al desk­top com­put­ers; more portable, of­fers much bet­ter bat­tery life; and is eas­i­er to use and main­tain than most tra­di­tion­al lap­tops. Af­ter all, what's not to like? Well it turns out, there are sev­er­al things to be weary of.

The con­straints

For tech­nol­o­gy to make a re­al dif­fer­ence in stu­dent learn­ing, it can­not sim­ply be an add-on. Prop­er in­te­gra­tion of learn­ing tech­nolo­gies in­to schools and class­rooms re­quires a sub­stan­tial re­think of ped­a­gogy, cur­ricu­lum, as­sess­ment, teacher prac­tice, parental en­gage­ment and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture. So, as ap­peal­ing and ver­sa­tile as tablets are for learn­ing, there are sev­er­al fac­tors that con­strain their use in the re­al world:

Costs

Rel­a­tive to desk­top and lap­top com­put­ers, tablets are quite af­ford­able. How­ev­er, true cost of own­er­ship in­cludes oth­er charges to cov­er li­cens­es for ap­pro­pri­ate ed­u­ca­tion­al soft­ware and e-books; ac­ces­sories like pro­tec­tive cas­es, charg­ing sta­tions, ca­bles, adapters, key­boards; and equip­ment war­ranties. These can quick­ly add up. Then there is the ad­di­tion­al cost of out­fit­ting schools to pro­vide se­cure In­ter­net ac­cess and to store and se­cure the dig­i­tal con­tent cre­at­ed and used in the class.

Cur­ricu­lum align­ment

There are thou­sands of ed­u­ca­tions ti­tles avail­able for Ap­ple's iPad and an equal­ly im­pres­sive set of op­tions for tablets based on Google's An­droid OS. But the ma­jor­i­ty of apps were de­vel­oped for the US ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem and may not all be per­fect­ly aligned to non-US cur­ric­u­la.

Con­sumer fo­cus

Each tablet plat­form has an as­so­ci­at­ed app stores de­signed for the con­sumer mar­ket. These sel­dom pro­vide spe­cif­ic con­tent and ap­pli­ca­tion man­age­ment fea­tures. Fur­ther, the one tablet one user par­a­digm to not al­ways car­ry neat­ly over in­to the class­room. Ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents must there­fore con­sid­er new method of sourc­ing, shar­ing and de­liv­er­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al con­tent and ap­pli­ca­tions.

Con­tent

Tablets are great at con­tent con­sump­tion, but the ab­sence of a phys­i­cal key­board presents se­vere chal­lenges for con­tent cre­ation in a class­room con­text.

Fur­ther, the sev­er­al pop­u­lar tablet mod­els lack stan­dard ports for trans­fer and sync­ing con­tent be­tween de­vices. This means that de­liv­er­ing con­tent to mul­ti­ple de­vices can be prob­lem­at­ic and time con­sum­ing for teach­ers and stu­dents. Care­ful thought and prop­er in­vest­ment must go in­to en­sur­ing that de­vices can be eas­i­ly and se­cure­ly up­dat­ed and new con­tent de­ployed en-mass.

Com­pe­tence

Not all teach­ers will find the learn­ing curve pre­sent­ed by tablets easy to mas­ter. As easy and in­tu­itive as tablets may be for most stu­dents, spe­cial in­vest­ment has to be made in teacher train­ing and ori­en­ta­tion. Ed­u­ca­tors al­so may not in­tu­itive­ly un­der­stand how tablet apps in­te­grate in­to les­son plans. They may be chal­lenged to find the time and mo­ti­va­tion to adapt to new modes of class­room prepa­ra­tion and les­son plan­ning that tablets de­mand. De­lib­er­ate fo­cus has to be placed on teacher train­ing and ori­en­ta­tion be­fore em­bark­ing on any tablet cam­paign.

Con­trol

De­ploy­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment of tablets, as is the case with all tech­nol­o­gy as­sets, re­quires care­ful plan­ning and con­sid­er­a­tion. Schools must al­so con­sid­er how they will mon­i­tor and con­trol such stu­dent us­age. Video cam­eras, and voice recorders are won­der­ful as­sets to have in the class­room when used re­spon­si­bly.

How­ev­er, in­ap­pro­pri­ate use can lead to night­mar­ish sce­nar­ios. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there are sev­er­al le­gal im­pli­ca­tions, in­clud­ing ac­cess to on­line sites and con­tent, which must be thor­ough­ly re­searched be­fore any de­ploy­ment is con­sid­ered.

Evolv­ing land­scape

As with all things tech­nol­o­gy, the land­scape is con­stant evolv­ing. A new class of ed­u­ca­tion-fo­cused tablets is emerg­ing to ad­dress the chal­lenges in­her­ent in de­ploy­ing con­sumer-ori­ent­ed de­vices in the class­room. New com­pa­nies like Learn­Pad and Am­pli­fy are tout­ing their tablet wares as tai­lor made for the needs of ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. Fea­tures like cu­rat­ed ed­u­ca­tion app stores; safe Web brows­ing, with an "on-de­vice" white-list of ap­proved web­sites; in­te­grat­ed course man­age­ment tools; sup­port for mul­ti­ple user pro­files and de­vice lev­el ac­cess mech­a­nisms; all promise teach­ers greater con­trol over the de­vices in the class­room, and lover to­tal cost of own­er­ship.

Tech­nol­o­gy gi­ants Ap­ple, Google and Mi­crosoft are not stand­ing still ei­ther. Each has an­nounced plans to place even greater fo­cus on the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor in up­com­ing ver­sions of the tablet plat­forms.

Giv­en the range of dif­fer­ent tablet op­tions avail­able, each with as­sort­ed ben­e­fits and lim­i­ta­tions, it is im­por­tant that de­ci­sion-mak­ers un­der­stand each plat­form, each de­vice, its key fea­tures, and how it can be used with­in the school en­vi­ron­ment.

Re­spon­si­ble choice

Tablet com­put­ers un­doubt­ed­ly have a place in ed­u­ca­tion, and more specif­i­cal­ly in the class­room. How­ev­er, care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to the use, con­tent, man­age­abil­i­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and in­te­gra­tion of the de­vices in the class­room. An in­formed choice will ben­e­fit ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents, and set the stage for true 21st cen­tu­ry ed­u­ca­tion.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN (www.con­gress­wbn.org), a val­ues-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it. He is al­so ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy non-prof­it (www.bright­path­foun­da­tion.org). Reach him on Twit­ter @bevil­wood­ing or on face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or con­tact via e-mail at: tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org.