A very interesting blog post from Hacking Education today. Is the iPad soon to be the darling device for education and specifically for standardized testing? With the entry price of a thousand dollars for any portable device with a keyboard from Apple, this seems a good direction financially with the iPad coming in at $400. A couple of questions for thought: First, is an app a capable alternative to software with high functionality? Do we dumb down the computing experience that students have, or simplify it? What does that mean for computer literacy in schools? Apps don't interact normally, nor do they contain much depth (look at any iPad office suite and compare it to MS Office for instance).
Microsoft is adopting a very similar approach with its unified GUI in Windows 8 and RT. Ultimately I wonder if the app-based paradigm can teach our students to build highly functional creations, or if more depth is needed.
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