The iPad will accelerate many changes in the learning space. I think there are specific capabilities on the iPad that will dramatically impact the production of learning applications and learning content going forward.
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1. "Occasionally connected computing" comes of age making any learning environment viable for computer use whether bandwidth is huge, weak, or non-existent.
The iPad fulfills on the promise of the uber-rich client that draws what it needs from the Web and renders it in the most optimal way for the user.
The sci-fi images of the user moving their hands side-to-side through holograms to manipulate a user interface is not far off.
2. Price. User's receive the richest available interface at the same price level as a smart phone.
The beef with tablets and handhelds and phones has always been the nature of their usable interface. Built to be small. Modeled after a keyboard/mouse interface.
The rocket science here is that the pricepoint is right AND the interface provides the ultimate user experience (not the least appealing experience). The expectation that the laptop/desktop experience is the ideal or preferred experience is gone!
3. Trust of the experience from Enterprise users.
The iPad is inheriting the best of the iPhone experience and it is seeing a universal groundswell in demand from the Enterprise user.
Large enterprise organizations, e.g. entire sales forces, are demanding the experience because it not only works as a hi-fi experience for training themselves but training (or demoing to) a customer by just holding up the iPad has real impact.
Who expected that the Enterprise would so rabidly (correct spelling) adopt the device?
4. Content and apps catalogs assumed as a default behavior of coursework.
iTunes tamed music and the iPad will tame coursework. The music labels used to control all the production and distribution of music.
With digitization, followed by stores like iTunes, the democratization of music production and consumption shifted radically.
Edu content will feel the same shift. Major providers of content will feel the shift of production of content into the hands of the distributed marketplace. Expect the aggregation of content from major providers and others into agnostic catalogs. Much of the content will be authored by indie providers. Much of the content will be consumed in short snippets (a single song rather than a entire album).
Expect "Kayak" for "Coursework" to make the iPad an even more powerful learning tool.
5. Collaboration as an experience will be assumed.
Like an OS, the features that accelerate collaboration will become assumed as part of the learning experience.
a. Location: I will understand who and what is nearby that is relevant to my learning and interests.
b. Opinion: I will see what others think of what I am learning. I will see what they think, how they classify my learning, and how they advise me and others to proceed. I will trust these people because either I know them or others I trust have ranked them as ideal sources.
c. Presence: I will be able to connect in real time with people interested in or knowledgeable about the same things I am interested in. Live voice, video, chat, and sharing will become instantaneous and easy in all of my learning on the iPad.
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Undoubtedly the iPad is cool. What is really exciting is that the learning marketplace, including the corporate learning marketplace, appears to have adopted the iPad in a way that is unique and lends itself to becoming the tool of choice for transforming the learning space.
