I’ve recently noticed quite a few articles appearing on the use of Tablet PCs by students. T.H. E. Journal has a feature article this month, indicating that K-12 schools are taking interest in them to foster one-to-one computing.
A story from The Collegiate Times indicates that incoming engineering freshman at Virgnia Tech will be required to purchase Tablet PCs. While some of the students quoted in the story are skeptical about this move, mainly based on the cost of them, the associate dean of distance learning seems to think it makes a whole lot of sense. “When you look at the instructional aspect of the technology in the classroom, this allows us to do more in class ... annotation, note-taking, peer-grading, 3D sketch ... that it allows us greater flexibility," (Glenda) Scales said.
A number of benefits seem obvious – such as the ability to do math problems, to sketch, create diagrams, draw arrows to certain things, etc. I’m also curious about how writing things out vs. typing impacts the learning process. Whenever I have to remember something I write it down. The physical act of actually writing it out really helps me to remember it, much more so than typing. I have stacks and stacks of journals and notebooks where I have written things down – would the tablet be a new solution for this?
