WIPTE 2010

I'm currently in Blacksburg, VA at the Skelton Conference Centre at Virginia Tech university. The 2010 Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Computing in Education started yesterday and finishes today. My session is the last one of the conference.

The session revels in the wonderful title of "Tablet PC vs. iPad Education Smackdown"!. I will do my best to uphold the school's honour and not smack anyone down too hard.

For all the talk of a face-off, I think I and my new Tablet PC-using friends are really on the same side of the technological street. The WIPTE attendees have experience in delivering 1:1 technology in classrooms all over the world. I am similarly of the opinion that the cornerstone of our experience with the iPad is the fact that everyone has their own.

We have never tried to say that the iPad is the only way to deliver technology in the classroom. Indeed, we have never said that "technology in the classroom" was our goal. What we have tried to do is recognise the role of digital resources in the modern world and adapt our teaching and IT provision to reflect that.

You couldn't imagine a school where pupils only had access to books for one or two hours each week, or where there is one book to share amongst a class of 25 pupils, yet that is the position of digital resources in many schools. Before our iPad deployment we had just one computer for every four pupils. I don't think that mode of teaching reflects the modern world. In many households, there are more computing devices than people (don't forget to count your smartphones, iPod touches and games consoles!).

Whether iPad or Tablet PC, we have to recognise that the world has changed irrevocably. We can't prepare students for the world of tomorrow by teaching them with the paper-only classroom resources of the 1970s. Everyone at this conference already sees this and I hope we're not going to get too hung up on whether you touch the screen with your finger or a pen.