I talked yesterday about the back story to our considering the iPod touch for education. We had all but decided to go ahead and look at it in detail when the iPad was announced. I want to talk a little about the response to the iPad.

In a word: sensational.

What normally happens is that something new is produced in tech, I send round a briefing email about it and everyone gets on with their lives and jobs.

With the iPad, I was stopped five times between the front door my classroom by teachers asking about the iPad, what it can do and when are we getting them? The response to the iPad from teachers - some technocrats, others decidedly not - is quite unique in my experience.

Now, obviously, I had primed the pump a little with the earlier conversation about the iPod touch but the way in which the iPad dismissed all three big arguments against the iPod touch was almost uncanny.

Recall that they were:

  1. No hardware keyboard
  2. No projector hookup
  3. No word processor

All nailed by the iPad.

Currrent status: we have an Apple order number now. The store can’t fill 115 iPads from stock, so we’re going on the priority list. As I understand it, the size of a store’s priority list plays at least a part in determining the amount of stock they are sent, so we’re on the list.

The current plan calls for the breakup of the iMac lab, so I’ll be getting on with that in the meantime. We plan to put one iMac in every classroom so that each class can sync their iPads to that machine.

Open questions: do we have enough wifi capacity? Do we have enough server capacity for 115 iPad backup images? How are we going to charge all these iPads? More to do.