iPads, Tablets, and iPhones - Oh My!

It's almost scary to think how very far we've come with technology in schools. It was only less than 4 years ago that I was in grade school and teachers we're excited to even get laptop carts for the class or finally getting the outdated SmartBoard that they've been asking for since I was in 7th grade.

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I've worked with tablets for years now, but I've never used them inside a classroom nor have a ever thought about having tablets be used as a top resource in my classroom. After working with them in my Technology for Educators class, the answer to the question "do tablets pose a amazing resource for students?" is a resounding yes. The possibilities are almost endless. Just think - formative and summative assessment can now be engaging, unique, and customized to your class. You can easily grab their attention. This generation of millennials, Gen Y, or whatever we our calling our kids today, thrive on technology. It's part of their daily use. Traditional ways of teaching, just aren't enough anymore, we can do more.

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We even see in the current ads on television, we're now introducing tablets as competitors to your traditional laptop. Granted, I come from a very technological background and work for one of the largest computer technology companies in the world, Dell. I'm supposed to say that tablets can never compete with laptops, but then again I need to make sales. However, in the direction that we're going, I have no doubt in my mind that soon tablets, because of their versatile functionality, will be able to rival to traditional laptop, desktop, and mobile computer systems. I have to say that we'll soon be using tablets more and more in our classroom for assessment, note-taking, class assignments, and just about anything that we can do electronically. Soon we'll be able to do almost anything on tablets and electronically. I'd prefer to have tablets in my own classroom because of their so many useb

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This is a great blog post that I found that about the advantages and  disadvantages of tablets in the classroom. (Blog post can be found here: http://blog.econocom.com/en/blog/touch-tablets-in-the-classroom-what-are-the-advantages/)

I touches base on the fact that tablets are so very versatile and can be used in classrooms to do pretty much anything from recording lectures, taking notes/photos/videos/etc, turning assignments and providing further engagement for our students to get involved in class and stay engaged.

This is also a cool video that I found about the differences between tablets and laptops, but it also includes advantages and disadvantages: