Those of us in education have come to realize that mobile technology is going to have a profound impact on the educational landscape. Our first experience with mobile technology probably came about when laptops became affordable enough to make them available for student use. Truth be told, the real “mobile” part of this came in the fact that the laptops were on a mobile cart, thus freeing us from fighting for space in the school’s fixed computer lab. Eventually, the iPod Touch was introduced, but in the absence of real cloud computing options, it had little impact on the curriculum at large.
Fast forward several years, and we are now in the world of iPads, Nooks, Kindles, and other mobile devices that are both affordable and offer some serious options for curricular delivery. iPads have certainly led the charge, and kudos to Apple for creating a device that has generated such interest in accessibility, but with an entry price of $500, the iPad offers little cost savings versus laptops or netbooks. With Kindle’s introduction of the $79 Kindle Fire, the game might have changed. As cloud technology becomes more mainstream, the curricular focus becomes far less about the device, and more about student access, and if students have the same access from a $79 device as from a $500 one . . . well, you do the math. Even at $199, Kindle’s most expensive version of the Fire, it’s still a far less expensive solution. As less expensive device hit the market place, we are likely to seen manufactures scrambling to cut costs. It’s one of the few times that finances are working in schools’ favor!
USA Today report: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/09/amazon-announces-kindle-fire-tablet-for-199/1