UK School Plans To Outfit Every Student With An iPad 2

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A move sure to cause controversy and division of opinion has landed at the Honywood Comprehensive School in Coggleshire, Essex: the school has announced plans to offer up an iPad 2 for every student. And while some are, not surprisingly, calling this a huge waste of money, there’s a growing body of support for such a move.

The school sent out letters to 1200 households, informing them that their kids would be getting hands on the new tablet for school by the end of the year. They join a surprisingly substantial number of school systems–such as districts in San Francisco, New York, and several other places–who are making the new tablet a part of every day life.

The basic thrust behind the idea is that, not surprisingly, kids like iPads. So why not take something kids like and make it part of the educational process? If they’re engaged with the tablet, then they’re more likely to pay attention, learn, and retain what they’ve learned which is pretty much the point of school from the get-go. And indeed, many schools have discovered the value of something like this, what with the growing popularity of ebooks, it’s now possible to carry an entire day’s worth of textbooks around in a flat hunk of plastic that’s not even the size of your standard five-subject notebook. And these textbooks are much more easily updated, especially since many tablets (like the iPad 2 in question) can quickly and easily connect to the internet and get information about things that are happening right this second from places like CNN and, of course, TFTS. I like to think there’s a science class or two reading us right now.

Of course, with the economy still in shambles in many places, it’s not hard to understand people’s skepticism at dropping huge piles of cash on what may well be the next tech fad (tablet computing hasn’t been around that long), but by most reports, it seems to be doing well when it’s used properly.

So what do you guys think about this? Is there value in the tablet as an educational device, or even just as a textbook storage medium? Or is everybody just jumping on a bandwagon to nowhere? The comments section is waiting, so head on down and tell us what you think!