On Saturday, I'll head to the Apple Store in Monterey, drop $500, and walk away with the new iPad I reserved a couple weeks ago. Whether I flip it on Craigslist immediately will depend on the market for these things. I can't afford to walk away from a nice profit just for the luxuary of having it in the first couple weeks of release. Is that wrong? Either way, I'm most excited about how this little device could revolutionize education. Here are seven resons I'm bullish on the iPad for schools.

1. Solid OS The iPhone operating system on the iPad is likely to be much easier to maintain than Windows or even Mac OSX. One of the greatest costs of an IT program at a school is keeping the hard drives clean. While the iPhone's draconian system of app approval and inaccessible file structure has its drawbacks, it makes giving a device to a teenager much more palatable. Kids will still be able to get into all kinds of trouble on the device, but at least for the near future, they won't be able to download a bunch of garbage that can harm the system.
2. Solid state Not only is the OS likely to be more durable than laptops running Windows or other operating systems, the iPad, as far as I can tell has no moving parts. Unlike almost all laptops and some netbooks, all data is stored on flash memory rather than a traditional hard drive with fragile little motors and sensors. Slap a protective case on that thing, and it may hold up pretty well to student abuse.
3. Touch interface Some kids learn better when they can see the content. Others respond better to hearing it. Almost all learn more effectively when they are exposed to both senses. More senses triggered equals more effective learning. The touch interface could provide a way to deliver information to a third sense, touch. Not only students labeled as kinesthetic learners benefit from touching academic material. Imagine the difference between seeing static images of cellular mitosis and actually causing it to happen on an iPad by touching an image of the cell with two index fingers and moving them apart using the multi-touch technology, watching one cell become two.
4. Better than textbooks Every time I mention the inevitable demise of paper textbooks to educators, I get the same response from at least one person. "I just like books," or "I like holding a real book in my hands," or I like the smell of books." Fine. I like books too, but it's clear to me that they are not the most effective way to deliver academic content. Back when Gutenberg launched his printing press and Luther started distributing Bibles in the vernacular all kinds of academics got upset, but the printed Bible in the vernacular had better hardware and better software for distributing information. The iPad with its ability to include text, audio, video, and 3D animation to be manipulated by touch is simply superior to a traditional dead-tree textbook. Finally, to those who still say they just like books--you know what I like? I like having the entire works of Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman, and the rest of Project Gutenberg resting lightly in one hand--downloaded to my iPad for free.
5. Cheaper than textbooks How many textbooks do college students not have to buy before they save enough money to buy a $500 iPad? My guess is seven. I don't know what the thieves in the textbook publishing industry plan to charge for their iPad textbooks, but it's likely to be steep. But the value of all information, including academic content is plummeting. Say what you will about Wikipedia, but I've found the vast majority of information there to be accurate, concise, and well cited. I envision a time when educators and academics bypass the for-profit textbook industry and make all academic content open source and free for all. I'm seeing it happen here at York already.
6. Content creation I'll have to wait to see whether this device will actually serve as an acceptable word processor, but it may. The iPad will not be good for heavy computing or extended writing, but for a quick free write exercise, note taking, and brainstorming, this may work quite well.
7. Polling tools in the classroom The iPad would be the perfect device for this sort of thing.

How else could we use the iPad to facilitate learning? Am I just an overly enthusiastic Apple fanboy?