Is it fair to give iPhone (& little brother iPod touch) special treatment just because they’re cool?
Well, I bet you can guess where Apple stands on that question. They are clearly engaged in a serious push get their multi-touch mobile devices in the hands of as many students, teachers, and staff as possible.
At EDUCAUSE 08 Apple is quite present, which is not unusual, but what is interesting is that every scheduled Apple-run session implicitly (if not blatantly) tries to bootstrap the iPhone into whatever pedagogy is being described. (Am I using bootstrap properly? I dunno, but it sounds good, I think…)
And not only that, it’s as if Apple pulled a semi up to the back door of the conference center and flooded the market on vendor raffle prizes. It’s verging on prize fatigue here.
Oh, so you’re saying if I attend your demo I could win another iPod touch? Because the one I got this morning is a little smudged from sitting in my tote bag…
They’re using them as coasters at the refreshment tables.
Yesterday I attended a session on developing apps for the iPhone. Really it was more of an infomercial on how easy it is to use Dash & X Code with the iPhone hook-ins, but you can’t expect too much for 50 minutes. &, slavish iPhone toadie I am I thought “Why that sounds just perfect for Thayer School!”
& I started planning a suite of apps to access and view data on ThayerFS (there don’t seem to be any real options for editing yet), post on the wiki, pre-order the grille special from Byrne…
But is this fair? Is it reasonable to pile so much brain energy and development into the boat of one vendor, one device? Then I sat on the floor to play another game of Classic Labyrinth & forgot whatever it was I was thinking over…
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