Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

With the launch of the iPad real soon now, a number of main-stream education suppliers are gearing up to provide educational resources for the new machine. Penguin, who now hold the rights to so many of the titles that saw the the boom time of CD ROM, are just one publisher re-purposing content for the iPad. Here’s a video of some of their titles being presented.

There are a number of things that perhaps are interesting in this presentation. Firstly, the applications clearly use some of the iPad features, such as shaking, or the GPS to compare the night sky with the DK resource. It would have been so easy to ignore aspects of the technology built into the iPad. Secondly, it’s interesting to note that education resources, particularly primary content resources, have been few and far between for Windows-based tablets. This might suggest that developers have only seen potential in the iPad’s technology that they have not seen in previous tablets. Thirdly, I wonder if the iPad will effectively slow or even challenge, the move to Web 2.0 and VLE technology in primary schools. One can see the scenario … schools used to buying bespoke software based resources such as CD ROM (indeed many are still buying in this format) might well stick with something familiar with enhanced features? Or is it too late?

(Does anyone know if there’s to be a “Grandma and Me” version?)