21apples

According to Dr. Henry Lowe, senior associate dean for information resources and technology,“We really don’t know yet how the incoming medical students will use them,” but he claims physicians are quickly embracing the iPad. “Physicians are a mobile group,” he says. “They’re moving around from clinic to clinic, from patient to patient.

Hack Education posted a piece about Stanford Medical School requiring iPads for all students, along with a PDF reader that lets you take notes with your finger. I'm not quite sure how you take notes with your finger, but highlighting seems doable.

I'm neither an Apple fanboy nor hater, but I just haven't understood this rush in education spaces to acquire iPads. I think that the Dean's quotation above says it clearly. I've seen it from K-12 to higher ed, and everyone keeps seeming to say we're piloting it, or experimenting with it. But they're doing so in huge numbers, like Stanford's entire first year medical student body.

Why not go with what your teachers are trained to teach with, what your students are trained to learn with? Why just see where it goes? It sort of flies in the face of everything technology directors have been doing in recent years - sound technology adoption. It's like the whole world has become Google - just beta test everything. I wouldn't want to put my users through it. Perhaps I need to evolve, or perhaps people need to be less seduced by the hype. Perhaps...both.

Thanks @angeleamaiers for the article link