Susy Doyle wonders why more universities don’t offer Tablets?
Change is indeed slow. Have you noticed though, that it seems that faculty are adopting Tablets faster than their students?
For a long time I’ve hoped that we’d see steep discounts for entering Freshman or large Tablet giveaways, but I can understand why this hasn’t happened on a large scale. It’s throwing money at a problem that the market can decide to solve on its own–or not. If the value is there, people will purchase Tablets. The adoption rate will be slower than otherwise because the market forces are so strong for other, cheaper notebooks, but hopefully this can be overcome in the long run. To me, the Tablet suffered–especially early on–as a result of industry consolidation. A few years earlier or a few years later and Tablets would have done better, faster.
But the market timing also demonstrates why Tablet benefits have to be so good. They’ve improved over time with Centrino, SP2, and great apps such as TEO. However, we have much further to go. If you’ve been following this blog, for instance, you know how strongly I believe that Tablet ink must become a first class netizen. And we need better, cheaper ways to wireless connect to projectors, each other (large and small) as well as share, publish, and consume content.
It’s important to realize, though, that many of the challenges schools face in adopting Tablets campus wide, would be true for most standard notebooks too. Changing processes is a big deal for big organizations–no matter how simple the change may seem to us. We–as students–just have to show up and learn. Schools have to administer and provide resources.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head as to why tablets are being adopted at such a slow rate. Tablets do have a learning curve in that it is a new technology. Laptops are familiar so universities don’t have to spend much in terms of educating students on how to use them. With tablets, to get the best use out of them, you have to learn about the options that tablets offer.