A tablet for babies and why books and text still matter By Kathy Ishizuka Jan 13, 2011

Internet-connected TVs, 3-D technology, app-loaded cars, 4G wireless, and ah, yes, those tablets, more than 80 of them, were featured at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Over 2,700 vendors exhibited at the January 6-9 show, which, according to preliminary figures, drew a near pre-recession 140,000 attendees, including this reporter.

While immediate conclusions were drawn—the world (based completely on personal opinion) does not need another iPad/iPhone case, and looks aside, sensible shoes really do pay off—it's taken a few days, quite frankly, to tease the wheat from the chaff in terms of relevant products and trends, and more to the point, what it means for schools and libraries.

Tablets: The Potential for Education

Walt Mossberg, tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal, called it. "CES this year," he declared, "should be called TES, the tablet exhibition show." The standouts? Motorola's 10.1-inch Xoom tablet, running Android's newest operating system Honeycomb 3.0, drew the Best of Show Award. Upgradable to Verizon's 4g LTE network, it's expected to release in summer 2011. Also Acer's dual-screen touchscreen tablet Iconia; the Blackberry Playbook powered by RIM's own QNX operating system; a 10-inch ViewPad tablet as well as a 4.1-inch smartphone/tablet combo from Viewsonic; and a couple of dual-boot tablets, one by Azpen that sports both Windows 7 and Android. There's even a tablet for babies: the Vinci Tab (pictured below right), with a seven-inch screen, surrounded by non-toxic grippable/chewable handles $479.

The Asus Eee Pad MeMo, at seven inches running Honeycomb 2.3, boasts a 1,024x768-pixel resolution screen. Overall, the new tablets were impressively sharp (in many cases, besting the iPad, and in other features, as well). Between them and the ultra high-def TVs lining the exhibit halls, I could ditch my glasses during the show (but, alas, not those shoes). Vendors were largely mum over cost, though many boasted competitive pricing on tablets, assumed to be around $500 to $800.

Belle of the Ball

This year's devices also marked the ascendance of Android as a competitive tablet operating system. "It's certainly possible that someone will come up with a better tablet," Mossberg said at CES's Higher Edtech Summit January 6, alluding to Apple's iPad. The result will be healthy competition that will benefit everyone, including Steve Jobs, added Mossberg, "even if he doesn't know it or admit it."

The greatest innovation of 2010, the multitouch tablet, in the form of the iPad, has revolutionized portable computing, being the first non-pocketable device to challenge the mouse, graphical interface, invented in the 1960s. And the impact is inevitable for education. While he still thinks college students toting iPads instead of laptops are in the minority now, tablets will transform the classroom experience, removing the barrier of the open laptop cover, facilitating eye contact. "It's hard to put into words, but there's something fundamentally different about [the tablet]," said Mossberg. "It's immersive. Some of that extends to ereaders, the Kindle, the Nook. It's different than paper, and it's different than a laptop, it's its own thing. And it has a lot of traction with people."

Innovation inevitably breeds interesting hybrids. Case in point: the Kno, a dual and single screen tablet designed specifically for the student, which accommodates full-size textbook content, covered in depth by SLJ. Given the competitive market, tablets in general, including future iterations of Kno, are expected to drop in price, and ereaders will come down, as well.

Still a Player: Reading and Text

Hanvon's color E Ink reader and iRiver's Story reader, featuring a crisp high-def E Ink display and MP3 playback debuted at CES. Otherwise there were far fewer new dedicated reading devices than last year.

Still, books and reading applications were actively promoted along with tablets, including the red-hot Blackberry Playbook, which featured its Kobo reader app front and center (pictured). Also appearing at CES, Copia, the online bookstore and social reading platform, announced its debut on Windows 7 tablets. With a large booth presence in the main hall, Copia gave CES attendees a taste of the social reading experience. Barnes & Noble, meanwhile, introduced a free application, Nook Kids for iPad (pictured at top). Other content providers at the show included Disney Interactive and the New York Times.

Apps themselves were a big focus for the first time. "[CES] is usually a hardware show. There's lots of talk about content," observed CNET executive editor Molly Wood.

And what of digital text? A Higher Ed Tech summit panel "From Dewey to Digital," including executives from CourseSmart and Cengage Learning, discussed just that. Yet moderator Kenneth Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, concluded that in the fourth decade of computer education, "we're not quite there yet" in terms of digital publishing. Slow start or not, that's where it's inevitably going. With the cost of higher education, Walt Mossberg called the practice of buying, toting, and then having to resell print textbooks "ridiculously primitive." Moreover, "We all know it should cost a whole lot less to move bits than atoms," he added. In another wrinkle, a just released study asserts that students actually prefer print over digital, at least for textbooks.

Stay tuned for more from CES 2011, including the latest concepts in games and learning. And check out next issue's Buzz column for the latest hardware and more products that geeks went "Gaga" over.

Kathy Ishizuka