Tablet PCs Stake Out Higher Ed

• By Paul McCloskey
• 11/26/02

The new Tablet PCs from Microsoft and a host of PC manufacturers were announced last month with the usual coast-to-coast fanfare as the next big thing in personal computing. And while that is always the hope and the hype in such smash announcements, for the higher education community, it just might be true.

That's because seldom has there been a new computer introduced that seems more in tune with both the way business is conducted and the nature of the workers in a single professional community. In this case, the actors are teachers and students, true information nomads moving from one learning oasis to another, receiving multiple daily presentations, engaging in bursts of collaboration, then moving on and synthesizing their experience in periodic reports.

For each of those traits or activities, the new Tablet PC appears to offer support and real innovation where its predecessor, the hardworking laptop, sometimes falls short. The most striking of these differences, especially for the higher-education community, is the Tablet's ability to give users the power to incorporate free handwriting into the personal computing experience.

"The Tablet combines all the power of the desktop with notepaper and the ability to take notes," says John Bailey, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. "The result will be that teaching and learning will become more accessible. Students won't have to stay hidden behind their screens."

The secret formula of the Tablet PC is its operating system, Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, which allows the computer to act as a highly mobile traditional computer as well as a writing tablet. "There have been tablet-like devices that have been introduced before, but for the most part those have been sacrifices to broader computing," says Tim Tiscornia, education product manager for Microsoft Corp. "The difference here is that [the] Tablet PC is really the evolution of the notebook. Everything you can do on your notebook PC today you can do on the Tablet PC, but more."

In this case, "more" is contained in three key applications at the core of the new Tablet computers: Windows Journal, a handwritten note-taking utility; digital pen, which lets users write directly on the screen; and handwriting recognition and conversion technology. Together, these applications have the power to transform the way teaching and learning are conducted in U.S. higher education, experts say, much like the introduction of desktops, laptops, and small calculators, in turn, shaped higher-education processes over the last three decades.

Paper and Ink
Like many innovations, the Tablet PC is likely to be first carried onto campuses in the knapsacks of students, who will be attracted by its sleeker form factor and easy portability and mobility. But it won't be long before the Tablet PC will start to fundamentally change the way students conduct their business, claim Tablet developers, especially in the classroom. The key tool here is Microsoft Windows Journal, the note-taking utility that lets users take, keep, search and manipulate digital notes in their own handwriting. With Journal, they can also convert handwriting to typed text, input typed text into notes, and search for keywords across all their text and handwritten notes.

"Taking notes on a laptop is fairly difficult, especially in math, statistics, or economics classes, where students needs to draw," says Ted Clark, vice president of the new notebook business for HP, one of six original equipment manufacturers who announced new Tablet PCs last month. "Journal supplies the student with an unlimited sheet of paper to capture what's on the board as it's delivered."

While the ability to write in freehand on the computer screen is a profound innovation, it would not be half as useful without the Tablet's use of handwriting recognition technology to perform keyword searches of handwritten text. "Students take a lot of notes, and a potential downside is to then have to locate where they recorded something," explains Bailey, who says that the search function worked effectively in the beta test.

Along with text search, the Tablet PC's ability to let users mix freehand notes and text digitizes a practice that is as old as scholarship itself. Says Clark: "If I walk into a classroom I can wirelessly download a presentation, markup that presentation right on the screen, adding my notes right on top of PowerPoint slides, for instance." The application will not only help students retain a greater amount of information from the classroom experience, but help maintain the distribution chain of learning materials between teachers and students in a simple, effective, way.

Handwriting over text, together with the slim form factor of Tablet PC, might help revitalize another moribund e-learning tool, the electronic book reader, experts say. "We've been hearing about eBooks for years, but the form factor has always been somewhat difficult," says Education's Bailey. "You've been limited to notebooks and desktops while information is displayed in a still-awkward fashion. Here you have a Tablet you can hold, move around, and use like a normal book. It might help revolutionize the eBook."

Because Tablets are also wireless devices, with most versions incorporating 802.11b standards, the introduction of Tablets could lead to a rise in the already popular practice of campus and classroom messaging. "Not only can I be capturing things from class, I can also be communicating with others in class," says HP's Clark, who notes, however, that it "sometimes may be a good thing and sometimes may not be such a good thing."

Clark allows that such pervasive messaging, which exists in classrooms today via text messaging, "is probably going to require that some hard boundaries be drawn between people and their technology as they walk into a classroom," especially during classroom exams. Even so, "the fact is I can collaborate with others in a way that's completely unobtrusive. I can write something down on a piece of paper, capture it and then send it around electronically. That's a real change in the way we think about taking a note."

Of course, such nifty applications might be a nullity without another clear improvement the Tablet PC makes over the notebook computer: it advances computer mobility an order of magnitude. While the laptop is portable, you cannot hold a laptop in one hand while talking to a professor in the hallway and scribbling a note to yourself.

Indeed, some of the computer makers who introduced Tablets last month believe the high mobility of the Tablet might be as desirable as the ink applications, especially in the more youthful, higher-ed market. "If anything, we've erred on the side of mobility," says Tom Offut, general manager for the advanced technology group at ViewSonic Corp., another of the six 'EMs that introduced a Tablet in a slate form factor that weighs about three pounds. "We really tried to give a real ergonomic feel to it: how d'es it feel in your hands, how useful is it to you on the go?"

Faculty Adoption Rates
The purveyors of Tablet PCs believe students will be early adopters, but they are also confident that teachers will convert quickly. That's because Tablet applications have the potential to truly change the classroom teaching experience. One of these scenarios is the interactive whiteboard. "The technology is there today that would allow the professor and the students to have access to a live whiteboard," explains HP's Clark. "Students could in fact take control of the pen and start marking and asking questions right on that whiteboard."

The Tablet might also be useful in some of the practical arts of teaching. Tablet makers envision that in using a Tablet PC, a professor would accept assignments digitally, and then use the Tablet in "slate" mode to sit comfortably and grade and comment on the papers in ink. Instead of carrying the stack of assignments in their briefcase, a professor could e-mail hand-annotated assignments back to the students.

Tablet markers are sanguine about the prospects for the computer, especially given the habits users have already adopted in their portable computing. "The thing about higher education is that it has always been an environment where pen and paper have always been a comfortable medium of input," explains Microsoft's Tiscornia. "The Tablet PC, by taking pen and paper and putting it into digital format, really removes the barriers for anybody who might be thinking about whether or not they want to be using the device."

Powered by these qualities, Microsoft expects that by the end of 2003, one-third to one-half of mobile PC sales will be Tablet PC. He adds, "And the reason for that is that you don't give up anything; you only gain."