Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59887
Technology "There's something about the way the hand and mind work together that allows students to internalize difficult information." —Charles Grisham, University of Virginia Tablet PCs Find Home in Higher Ed Since 2002, when Microsoft founder Bill Gates touted it as "the future" of computing, the tablet PC has had a bumpy ride. Slow to catch on, tablet PCs have yet to break annual global sales of 500,000; by comparison, 189 million PCs sold in 2004, according to Gartner Research.Many people are impressed by the tablet PC's abil- ity to function like a pen and paper— users can enter text and drawings di- rectly onscreen with a stylus. But they've been less impressed with what tablet PCs have lacked: keyboard, on- board disk drive, and affordable price points. Often costing $2,000 or more, tablet PCs haven't been able to compete with the steadily falling prices of laptops. This could change in 2005, say market analysts. Computer makers like Gateway,HP, and Toshiba are launching next-generation tablets with keyboard and disk drives on- board. In addition, the newest tablet PCs are convertible: They can open in a clamshell fashion to work like a laptop, but also have monitors that swivel and fold back on the base to function like a writing pad. Google Gets Bloggy For the last 18 months, Google Weblog has offered its company community access to an internal Weblog sys- tem. With the popularity of creating Weblog diaries and communication, or "blogs," on the rise in the corpo- rate sector, Google is now considering offering its blogging feature to business, according to IDG News Service. Jason Goldman, product manager for the company's Blogger in Google (BIG), told IDG that Google employees had been using the tool for everything from posting meeting notes to sharing code and diag- nostics, to simply keeping personal diaries. "It really helps grow the intranet and the internal base of doc- uments," says Goldman. With so many blogging tools on the market, analysts believe Google will be extremely cautious about throwing its own hat into that particular ring. However, with more businesses using blogging to facilitate communication and information-sharing within their ranks, it's clear that more software companies will be watching the trend with interest. 48 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2005 Bentley faculty and administrators also tested the devices. At the end of the semester, users completed a sur- vey about what they thought of the devices. Forty-four percent indicated they would be interested in purchas- ing a tablet PC, while 29 percent said they would be "very likely" to purchase one. With two years of slow sales be- First-year business student Erin Schumacher uses her Gateway M275 tablet PC in class at the University of Vermont. Bill Gates isn't the only fan. Tablet PCs have developed a small, yet devoted following. In 2002, for example, students and faculty at the McCallum Graduate School of Busi- ness at Bentley College inWaltham, Massachusetts, conducted a school- funded study in which they asked 250 college students across the U.S. to use tablet PCs, acquired from 12 different companies, for a semester. hind them, computer makers are once again putting tablet PCs in the hands of students and faculty to build buzz and boost market share. Last year,Microsoft and Thomson Learn- ing worked with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to donate tablets to 400 biochemistry, psychol- ogy, and statistics students in its Col- lege of Arts and Sciences. In another collaboration, Gateway teamed with the University of Vermont's School of Business in Burlington to provide tablet PCs to 180 first-year under- graduate business students at a price point comparable to that of the aver- age laptop. Erin Schumacher, a business stu- dent at the University of Vermont, has been using her GatewayM275 tablet since last August. For her, it has become an indispensable educa- tional tool. "I use it as a personal computer and for note taking in my business and economics classes," says Schumacher. "I have all my notes in one place, and I can easily go back to check my notes from last semester without having to find a separate notebook."Writing onscreen is "the same as writing on a piece of paper," she adds. Faculty are also taking advantage of the benefits the new technology brings to the classroom. They can write a note or draw a picture on the tablet PC and beam it wirelessly to a projector for display, from any point