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iPhone - 3 Features That Will Impact Education

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The hype building up to the June 29th release of the iPhone is just staggering. Steve Jobs predicted that the iPhone will revolutionize and/or reinvent the phone in his Mac World Expo keynote speech. With educators already using cell phones and iPod’s in the classroom, how will this new device impact education? What new ‘revolutionary’ features does it introduce and how will those be important to students and teachers?

If you check out Mac’s ‘Introducing the iPhone‘ webage you will see that it is a typical smart phone with e-mail, calendar, SMS, photo, music, and internet support. That in itself isn’t too exciting. Most smart phones come with that now a days. What people are really raging about is the interface, but I mostly just chalk that up to eye-candy. What can the iPhone REALLY do for educators? Here are three features that I believe will impact education.

1. Multi-Touch Display

By far the most promising technology is the multi-touch display. In this case, it is the technology that will make the difference, especially in the long run. Multi-touch displays are not a new technology. (Apple’s explanation of how it works.) I heard somewhere that people have been working on this since the 80’s and recently Microsoft announced their similar “Surface” computer. What is unique here is the mass production of a multi-touch device. The iPhone will be the first multi-touch device in the hands of millions of people.

When I first came across this technology it was in a TED presentation by Jeff Han. At the very beginning of his presentation he said he was excited. He went on to explain why:

I really, really think this is going to change the way we interact with machines from now on.

He was absolutely right. This new interface will allow people to interact with the computer in a much easier and more human-like manner. This is going to be the jumping off point for a whole new generation of computing. As more and more data becomes available on computers this will be the first technology that will help us to better manage that information.

From a mobile perspective, it has always been a hassle to use a mobile device. Perhaps the multi-touch display will be the missing link for actually using a mobile device in the classroom.

If you have not seen the “This is How” commercial for the iPhone, take a look, it will give you an idea as to the interface.

2. Widgets

Most computer users are already familiar with the wonderful world of widgets. Widgets are most easily categorized as mini-applications. They can be anything and everything from simply displaying the weather and RSS feeds, to fully functional translation devices. There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of widgets out there. In the Information and Reference categories for Macs alone there are over 300 widgets… not a bad start.

Educators, and others, will begin to use the widgets and build others that can easily be added to the iPhone thus capitalizing on the mobility factor.

3. iPhone Applications and a Fully Functional/Easily Browsable Internet

Several weeks ago Steve Jobs alluded to the iPhone being open to third party applications. Today Webware mentions that that is going to be possible with the fully-functional browser.

Athough I normally have quite a bit of vision, I admit I only know at this point that this is going to be important and that this is going to open the flood gates of creativity. Imagine harnessing the power of a multi-touch display in a test. Allowing students to more naturally interact and manipulate the test and then send it back to you over the air, anywhere.

A fully-functional browser, and most importantly, easily-browsable internet will finally allow rich multimedia, and navigation that has been impossible before. Up till now, browsing the internet on a mobile device was terrible. And if the page wasn’t formatted in mobile format, forget it. Now students and teachers can really interact with the internet, and best of all manipulate it.

Yeah, but…
As it stands right now, there is no high speed internet over the cell signal (G3), but there is built in WiFi. All I have to say to that is… don’t worry, this isn’t the final product. We all know things are going to be added on and prices are going to drop.

That brings me to my second point, and perhaps most relevant to education. Price. Right now it costs $499 for a 4GB model and $599 for an 8GB model. That is awfully pricey for an educational tool, and it certainly going to be a long time before most of us educators get our hands on one, let alone enough students to design lesson plans around having one. But I would like to point out that the new Microsoft “Surface” devices are going to cost around $10,000. Even if you could only afford one per school or organization, you would have a multi-touch display that could be shared among a lot of people.

Other Thoughts:

So what am I missing Apple enthusiasts? How could you use the iPhone in education? Maybe we could start a contest to see who could come up with the most creative way to use iPhones and see if Apple won’t supply a bunch for a class. Do you think it is going to live up to the hype?