Sera mesmo que o uso dos Tablets e IPhod s ("aifod s") serao mesmo capazes de melhorar a aprendizegem da nova geracao, ainda mais nas series iniciais ??? Uma noticia q saiu na The Economist na secao de C&T deles, me chamou a atencao...The future of teaching Difference engine: Let the games begin Jan 27th 2012, 7:17 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES FULL marks to Apple for devising ways to improve how science, mathematics and other topics are taught in primary and secondary schools across America. The companys Reinventing Textbooks event last week showed how effectively Apples popular iPad tablet computer can replace the stack of tedious, and invariably outdated, textbooks that school children have to lug around these days (see A textbook manoeuvre, January 19th 2012). Apple is providing a free Macintosh application, dubbed iBooks Author, which allows publishers, teachers and writers to produce interactive textbooks with video, audio and even rotating 3D graphics that spring to life with the touch of a finger. By and large, interactive multimedia offer more engaging explanations that students more readily grasp and remember. To play such books on an iPad, a free application called iBooks 2 must first be downloaded from the companys App Store. Interactive textbooks can then be purchased from iTunes, Apple's online store, for $15 apiece or less. That is a seventh of the price of the average textbook used in schools today.No question that interactive textbooks deliver results. A pilot study carried out for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a textbook publisher based in Boston, compared the performance of two groups of children over the course of a year at the Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside, California. A control group used the traditional Holt McDougal Algebra 1 textbook, while an experimental group used iPads with an interactive version of the same coursework. At the end of the year, 78% of pupils using the interactive text scored proficient or advanced on the California algebra test, compared with only 59% scoring likewise with the standard textbook.Done properly, interactive textbooks offer not only video tutorials, more personalised instruction, just-in-time hints and homework help, but also instant access to assessment tools, teaching resources and the ability to network socially with students elsewhere. Using tools for highlighting and annotating virtual flash-cards, students can select information within the text and store it for later revision. Searching public databases, direct from within the textbook, is also possible. At school, students can sync with their teachers computers, to hand in their quiz results and homework for marking. Houghtons pilot programme in Riverside was not the first attempt to use e-books in education. Indeed, digital textbooks have been around for more than a decade, but have made little impact on education so far. According to Forrester Research, a market-research company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, e-books accounted for only 2.8% of Americas $8 billion textbook market in 2010.The problem has been the lack of suitable devices for reading them. Laptops and PCs have been too cumbersome for the job. Dedicated e-readers have lacked the screen size, colour graphics and computing power