Reach out and iTouch their education

Who would have ever thought to hear this in his lifetime?  "Sometimes barred from the classroom owing to perceptions of security risks and student 'distractions,' smart phones and iPods are now making their way into the K-12 space, and with teachers' and administrators' blessings."  Would you allow an iPod Touch (also called iTouch) in your classroom?  ...A resounding "no!" is heard from those who shook their fists at the dawn of the cellphone, while the reluctant "yes" comes from the progressive individuals who understand that fighting technology is futile.  I recall the years when even if a cell phone accidentally fell out of your pocket, a hall monitor would be sure to enforce severe consequences.  Now it seems that you'd be hard pressed to talk to a 5th grader that doesn't have one.

But how do you regulate something with such incredible freedom?  "The games, the games, the games.  What an incredible distraction an iTouch would be in the classroom!" says the teacher that disagrees wholeheartedly.  Something tells me these are the same teachers who would be shocked to hear that their students are already playing Tetris on their TI-86s.  If students are interested in class, they will pay attention.  If students are bored in class, they'll find anything to occupy their attention.  It seems hard to justify that if there's a color screen involved that the situation would be any different.

As a matter of fact, not much really is all that different when looking at our first referenced article again: "after the stimulus money runs out, we're going to be in trouble in terms of federal money for technology.  The next logical step is for the devices to come into school."  Is this not what happened with TI calculators already?  Parents and students don't think twice to drop $100 retail for a calculator.  So let's compare prices.  An ebay search will show that many 8 gig'ers are $100 and possibly even less.  A refurbished or returned iPod Touch could run just as low, while a brand new 8 gig is only $200.

But why compare this to a TI if an iTouch can't replace a TI.  Or can it?  Not only is there a fully featured calculator app available, but there's also a graphing calculator app.  Texas Instruments has just started to perspire.  Because then what?  Now we can put the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the iTouch for students to search and discover that the word "democracy" isn't in any of the founding documents.  Next we put maps and atlases on the iTouch so a student who is talking to her friends about a different country can become their resource to show how densely populated India really is.  And then to add a frosting to the cake, we can throw in a fact of the day, word games, math games, and a combo dictionary/thesaurus to wrap it up.  Education publishers are just getting started.

Schools have already begun to purchase classroom sets of iTouches and have developed lesson plans around them.  Even at $200 a pop, a set of these technological marvels is a drop in the bucket compared to the money a school is used to spending on a computer lab or portable laptop station.  Get those lesson plan thinking caps on; it's time to start learning to teach all over again.

*UPDATE* 8/12/10 Although this article was written before the launch of the iPad, we had no idea this shift into the realm of education would happen so quickly.  Here is an article of Apple moving forward, striking deals with schools who adopt iPad sets.