Chanatown

The minute the iPad was announced those involved in technology integration in education dreamed of the possibilities. Electronic textbooks were sure to be the next big thing to help our students. Lighter backpacks, interactive and multimedia content, collaborative tools, and a "wow" factor to hook our students were all on the table with the new touchscreen tablet. Since the launch in April, few apps have come close to realizing this dream. I even wrote a recent post on how I didn't see the iPad as a replacement to textbooks just yet. Inkling, a new iPad app , manages to be the first to convince this author that we may be closer than we think.

Image via Wikipedia Last night, I did some catch up reading on news through the USA Today app (highly recommended) on my iPad , and one of the main articles questioned whether college students can learn as well on iPads using e-books . Although I do love my iPad and find many uses for it , interestingly enough, one of those uses is not to read books. I appreciate the attempt to make purchasing and organizing books simple through iBooks . However, I'm still not sold on the iPad as a replacement to traditional paperbacks and hardcovers.