Ponying Up in Educational Technology

On Twitter, SHU librarian Kelly Clever linked to a ProfHacker blog post about iPad snobbishness, writing

We’re so used to most folks at #setonhill having iPads… Is it a different story off-campus? http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ipads-and-the-embarrassment-factor/36245

Having been a committed PDA user since 1998, I use my iPod Touch all the time, but I honestly can’t say I would have thought an iPad was worth the price, if I had to purchase it on my own. So every time I pick it up, I still think, “What fun!”

Seton Hill is well into the second year of a technology plan that created quite a stir when it was first announced.

Check out Seton Hill’s website. It states, in no uncertain terms, that “Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at Seton Hill will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad.” Can you imagine? I remember I was about to go to Clarkson University in New York back in 1993 because they were giving out laptops. But a MacBook and an iPad? That’s like getting a pony and a unicorn. —Techcrunch

Yesterday, I asked my division chair for a Kindle Fire.

He responded by politely suggesting I put it on my Christmas list. (Being a kind-hearted person who wants so solve problems rather than just say “no,” he also pointed out that, from a different fund, I could apply for a reimbursement for textbooks I recently purchased when I took over a colleague’s class due to a medical emergency, and that might very well help me to swing it.)

The freshmen are the envy of the campus because of their shiny new iPad2s. Enough of my faculty colleagues have ended up with iPad2s, for one reason or another, that I find myself hoping for an upgrade. (I’m satisfied to wait for the iPad3, though.)