Tablets in Education

There is a lot of information about how schools have integrated technology into their classrooms and libraries.  It would appear that iPad is overall the favorite tablet. However, many people had good things to say about Nook and Kindle.

Nook has been successful in library settings. One particular librarian's experience was that she was able to personalize the e-book readings for students emotional, social, and academic needs.  This allowed these students to have their own personal library. The benefit to personalizing a students e-books is that you can capture either their interests to promote the love of reading, or you specialize their academic needs for research purposes.

One blog in particular discussed the struggles with paying for the e-books from Barnes and Noble.  Due to purchase order requirements by the school system, the school credit card was used to make the purchases and then the credit card information had to be removed from each device before passing them out to the students.  In order to purchase subsequent material, the information had to be re-entered and re-deleted. While this was not a problem for this librarian, it was an inconvenience.

Another topic discussed was the difficulty or resistance of some teachers to implement the technology in their classroom.  It appeared that the resistance was less significant for iPad users, as iPads are more usable in the classroom, having plug-in capability for a projector and increased apps selection over the competitors.

I found the blog suggesting 103 Interesting Ways to use iPads in the classroom to be very interesting.  Over time, I would like to explore many of these apps.  The apps suggested on this site benefit both students and teachers.  Some of the apps were designed to help teachers track student's progress, develop pin boards and even tutoring. I like the concept of making learning interactive, because it is one more avenue to being able to reach your students.

However, on an opposing note, some discussion centered around whether purchasing an iPad, or any other tablet, for students was beneficial because skills such as keyboarding still needed to be taught and spending money on tablets as opposed to a laptop was not advantageous.  The questions of how useful the iPad could be for applications requiring flash was raised as well.

I also found that users were happy with their Kindle uses, but the same concerns about integrating them into the classroom due to the lack of projection was raised.  It was also discussed that Kindle no longer allows for e-material to be put onto 6 devices using one account.  You must have an account per device, which can cause a bit of stress for administrators, especially those who originally bought this technology under the agreement that you could use this feature.

Some articles suggested that educators purchased Nooks or Kindle to integrate into their schools and once they were able to overcome that hurdle, the desire for more uses of technology grew.  They then had to reevaluate options and procedures used with their technology and in some cases, they moved to a new tablet option.

My personal conclusion after reading through this material is that if you are going to invest the time and money into purchasing a tablet, it only makes sense to go with the tablet (iPad in my opinion) that has the most applications so that even if your primary purpose is only for library use, you have a technology that can be expanded as you are ready to use it for more things.  I think in the long-run, while the initial cost is higher, it will spark the most interest in the technology and will also be more usable to a wide range of people.

Overall, it seemed that while the educators who purchased the respective tablets were happy with their purchases, they still were not confident that that was "The" tablet to buy.  Through reading the articles, I still felt like the question remained, "which is the best?" A question that will probably continue to be asked as schools begin to integrated technology into their institutions.