I am already an avid believer of Mobility and Tablet computing in the Enterprise, so this week I decided to think about what could be achieved within Education. For the rest of my thoughts I will use my Converged Mobile Device of choice … the iPad.
There is already a student web page on the Apple website saying why the iPad is ready for college/university. It obviously states its great features, the generally available apps and novel books but I think the next step will be beyond that and will leave us asking ourselves 'Why didn't we think of that already?'. It will be so obvious but so simple and change the way our students will learn for the rest of our lives… Tablet Computing in education is poised to the biggest thing to hit academia, than the tablet that students used many many years ago, the slate tablet and chalk.
To me, getting into the education market with mobility is not surprising and will follow the Tablet's entrance into Enterprise mobility. We have already seen the iPad successfully used in lower level education for numeracy and literacy. Even in higher education I believe the iPad is more than capable to be used as a standalone device on day-to-day assignments etc. Just like any enterprise Company education has many desperate systems that need to be brought together and some of these are most definitely systems that students will need to access. I believe it will stop making IT departments of universities thinking twice about building apps to help their students into their day-to-day regime such as timetables and assignment submission. It will become a necessity!
I have a vision of everything being integrated together… Student lectures that can be recorded and made available anytime and anywhere, interactive apps, books that are able to be rented for the time the student is at university and much more.
Mobility is more and more is less!!! The mainstream vision of the overladen student with a huge backpack of books will become history.
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