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My husband is such a tech fanboy that he can't resist buying the latest gadgets coming out of Silicon Valley. True to form, when the iPad went on sale a week and a half ago, he made sure a friend picked one up for him from the Apple store since we were out of town.
I was skeptical about the utility of this big iPhone look-alike. But as I watched my children playing with it and reading books on it, I knew I was seeing the future of technology and how it will change the educational experience.
I remember lugging a heavy bag full of books to and from school every day. Publishers will start to make those texts available on devices like the iPad with full color and the ability to display video. It's much cheaper than printing books. Interactive exercises could even be inserted into the texts. Even for the lower grades, publishers will start to create apps that would allow the iPad to be used as a modern day slate to do individual exercises that will be shared instantly with the teacher.
To me it's not a question of if this will happen, but when - 5 years, 10 years? I expect that certainly by the time they are in college, my kids will find that the campus bookstore is no more.
However, this new wave of technology will pose fundamental problems for school districts such as ours where there are many families who will not be able to afford to buy two or three iPad devices for their children. Will we find affluent districts like Westport and Darien leaping ahead while Norwalk students are locked into the educational methods of the last century?
There are no easy answers to this question but we must begin thinking through the implications of this coming revolution in education.
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