Tablets in schools challenge the workstation model

Thomas Fitzgerald from the New York Times talks about how Tablet PCs have found a place in the classroom. [Thanks for the link Chris Coulter and Lora.]

What has surprised me is that the Tablet adoption is coming from the administrators and staff–rather than pushed from below by the students. I would have predicted that students would drive the Tablet adoption in schools. But instead it appears that they share an equal enthusiasm for the Tablet with the staff–once they have them–but it takes the schools themselves to purchase the Tablets. Maybe it’s the cost that’s prohibiting the explosive adoption by the students themselves.

What isn’t surprising is how the schools structurally use Tablets. The old shared-workstation model is fading away. Schools don’t have to dedicate rooms for rows of computers that students use a few hours or so a week. Nope. With Tablets, the old computer rooms can be used for something else. And students can carry their Tablets with them between classes or use them at home or wherever. This, in turn, changes the software that students (and staff) will want and expect. This is a big point.

Yes, Tablet PCs can run regular Windows applications, but all us software developers and ISVs need to take note of this. There’s a sea change in educational software that’s going to spell great opportunity with the expansion of Tablets in schools. And realize, we’re not just talking about an exchange of one app for another. The market is going to grow in size. This is the key. It’s very likely that in the future many students will have their own Tablet. Think about it. Today there are a handful of computers with a handful of licenses in a computer lab. Tomorrow there will be one computer for each student each with a software app that may be written by you. Not bad.

The downside is that in an already tightly budgeted market, there will probably be even greater price pressure. That’s not great for small volume ISVs, however, for those such as Agilix that can define broad adoption applications like GoBinder, there is great potential.

Of course, will all those Tablets floating around in the education markets, more mainstream apps will be pulled into supporting ink too. And for ISVs that provide extremely good Tablet and ink experiences, there are opportunities to shake up the old guard. For some markets, I imagine the transition may be as significant as the transition from DOS to Windows. During that time numerous market-leading DOS apps faded away as easier and sometimes more novel Windows apps took their places.

Will the same story play out with Tablets? My guess is that it might not be noticeable industry wide, but rather it will take place in particular markets, such as the education market.

I wonder though if Tablets aren’t an item to be purchased and owned by individual students rather than the schools providing them and instead schools focus on the infrastructure to exchange and manage the content? Maybe because of the economy of scale schools need to continue to be the channel of distribution of Tablets. I’m guessing, however, that the market will grow bigger and faster though if students become the purchasers of their own Tablets. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.