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So it's worth taking a careful look at whether the company will once again create a new category of device that make waves in education -- as it did with personal computers, digital music players, and smartphones -- or whether the iPad and other tabletss might be doomed to remain a niche offering.

Mr. Jobs did mention iTunesU twice when listing the kinds of content that could be viewed on the iPad, referring to the company's partnership with many colleges to offer them free space for multimedia content like lecture recordings. But he otherwise focused on consumer uses -- watching movies, viewing photos, sending e-mail messages, and reading novels published by five trade publishers mentioned at the event. That does not mean that the company won't later promote the iPad's use on campuses, though, since it waited until after iPods and iPhones were established before beginning to work more heavily with colleges to promote those in education.

the biggest impact of the iPad would be in the textbook market.

What we see in these podcasts are some best practices - using social web tools to enhance online language learning and innovative approaches to utilizing podcasting for educational goals.  While language learning has been around as long as human beings have spoken more than one tongue, the model here is uniquely designed for the Web 2.0 world. Static lesson content is transformed into 'lesson events' by focusing student attention around specific content and encouraging student involvement to further enhance the originally designed lesson.  Podcasts, with their conversational nature, rapid publication cycle and modular architecture can further transform learning into an engaging, fresh and personalized experience. This actually takes steps into Learner 2.0 where the learner changes their experiences and behaviors through a collaborative process as they interact with the content, other users, and the instructors.

I had my students this fall engage in social bookmarking, earning credit toward their class participation grade for doing so. I made sure to spend at least 10 minutes a week having students share their finds during class time, which means that the students’ finds were integrated with other class discussions and not just some out-of-class “busy work.”

I’ve set up a Diigo group for the course. I’ll invite my students to create Diigo accounts and join the group. In deference to FERPA, I’ll let students choose pseudonyms if they wish, as long as they let me know.

Diigo groups allow group members to comment on and “like” bookmarks shared with the group. These are features that Delicious doesn’t provide, and I’m eager to test them out with students. We live in a participatory culture, and our students expect to be able to interact with content they consume. “Liking” and commenting are interaction tools that my students should be comfortable using given their experiences on Facebook, and these tools should tap into students’ desires for community and sharing quite nicely.