The iPad came for a visit yesterday...

The iPad came to our district for a visit yesterday.

We got to take a look.  Corey from Apple actually let me try a few things on his personal iPad
(the show and tell ones were getting put away.)

First impression was "wow this thing is pretty snappy."  I was expecting gen 1 iPod speeds.  Things loaded quickly and switched pretty quickly.

The second thing to notice was the very nice display.  I am a photographer and when I saw the cute kitten pictures I had to do that little pinch move on the screen to enlarge them to ridiculous size... pencil sized hairs... I think people will need to sharpen their camera skills if they are going to display them on one of these.  Tack sharp or edit it out.

I hear the battery life is way up there.  Close to 12 hours?  Wow.  A guy could forget to charge it and still get a lot done on his next work day.

Bento.  So this may be the reason to learn Bento for a FileMaker Pro guy.  I see it syncs wirelessly.

I also saw that Citrix was installed!  Whoa, so if there isn't an "App for that," you could potentially run the program on your desktop and interact with it on your iPad via Citrix!?

What it won't do:
No printing yet.  But aren't we supposed to be paperless soon?

No Finale or SmartMusic yet.  I am guessing those will be a ways off.

No Flash.  Start learning HTML 5.

I love "white lists" in Safari for my kids at home.  Yes, my kids can surf the internet, but only on parent approved sites.  Here Safari is either on or off.  Be ready to watch students closely when they are surfing the net.

Where would this be a good fit?

This could be a great desk tool for kids.  Especially in the lower grades.  If most of what you do is consume media, read email, read books, do some flash cards, look stuff up (does this sound like early elementary?) this is your tool.  If you are looking to create, especially audio and video productions, the laptop or desktop is the way to go.

Go iPad and have a lab available for the creation-type projects?

You know what your budget is, you will have to make some choices.  If I could swing a laptop for everyone, that would be great and probably preferable.  If I couldn't, an iPad 1:1 project can make sense.  Though the price break doesn't seem that big when comparing the iPad to a low end laptop....

This would also be a GREAT present for someone you love.  Father's Day would be a great time to test this theory at my house.  (Hint, Hint..)