iPad? Anyone?

Wikipedia is run by volunteers. Nobody gets paid. No rewards. No bonuses. While MSN-Encarta, backed by a software powerhouse with billions of dollars in revenue, should have easily trampled Wikipedia. Linearly and logically, Wikipedia does not stand a chance. Right?

Wrong. Wikipedia is flourishing and is becoming de-facto. Maybe, it is. Linearly and logically speaking, Wikipedia should have not been able to topple down or to make Microsoft give up on MSN-Encarta. But it did.

Why?

Something was at play other than the carrot and the stick :)

Life and business is a lot of things but it is not simply linear or logical.

Which brings me to my curiosity. What happens if we bring the WIFI-enabled iPads to our classrooms? As in, enable students to have an iPad connected to the Internet on their hand all the time. Yes, ALL THE TIME. ALL THE TIME as in even during class discussions and most specially during quizzes.

How will we measure progress? Achievement? Outcomes? Or, what are we to measure if we do that?

Our current linear thinking will suggests - that should not be allowed. That's cheating. They have to master the content.

But is it cheating? Categorically? Cheating?

Do not get me wrong. I see the value of mastery. Mastery of content is necessary. But is life and education about mastery of content or the successful application of the mastered content? If so, why stop and limit education's measure at mastery of content? When our 2011 realities, our 2011 technical realities, allows us this benefit of having an external "brain" of sorts, this chance and privilege to push what can be done in the classrooms in closing the gap between school and the real world? :)

Didn't the great minds of past designers and engineers brought us to this very situation? So, why not partake and eat? And push the development forward?

Are we not tearing down the Berlin Wall that divides the academe and the corporate when we make it a policy to have iPads (or whatever viable tablet PC is out there for our local situation) in our campus and in our classrooms?

Are we not bridging or evolving ourselves in becoming lifelong learners, in academic parlance, or learning organizations, in business speak, if we do this?

I am excited and eager to see how will my profession of facilitating learning evolve and develop in the time of "always-on Internet". At the very least, this I can say for sure, the questions that we, as professors and learning facilitators, can ask and hope that our students can answer would be far more value-adding and rewarding :)

Would that reality be more difficult for the students?

I don't think so. I think it will even tap and engage our current, increasing and disinterested boys to become an engineer their parents dreamed of.

I think, if we are to prepare our next generation Filipinos, we have to accept, as academics and learning facilitators, that boys and girls learn and assimilate knowledge differently. The boys crave it more than the girls "to try and see", which the iPad scenario can enable. And since our current time, space and bias limits us to do this, we see more boys (than girls) lining up and appealing their academic status.

Maybe we can reason out that they truly do not belong in the Institute. Or maybe, I am simply more interested in the nobility of teaching, of learning, of the beauty of the learning process and of leveraging the technology that we have to be more inclusive in helping build a better Philippines :)

"... why think like mere men!"