News3

Joe Szczepanski
Photographer

As Apple introduces the iPad, technologies are already emerging for the education market. The Stillwater
School District is looking into this as a way to put more technology in to the hands of students.

"We are planning on receiving a few as a pilot program," said Mike Dronen, District Technology Coordinator.
"We're going to see how it works and move from there."

Expected public release date is late March for Wi-Fi models, but there is a possibility that the school district
could have them sooner than that. 3G models are slated to be released in April. The 3G plan will be sold
separately, and is planned to be allowed on all major U.S. carriers, unlike the iPhone and its dedication to AT&T
service plans.

"It's not going to replace a full-size laptop; the same is said for netbooks," Dronen added. "We did a study with
the netbooks, and we found that students would rather take a 7 year old laptop over a brand new netbook."

Currently, the iPad is based almost completely off of an iPod Touch. Other than the 9.7 inch screen, its
operation is currently identical to that of an iPhone/iPod Touch. Apple's iWork applications (Pages, Numbers
and Keynote) will all be available on the app-store for $9.99 each. Other operating systems could be released
with the iPad, either when it is originally sold, or at a later time.

The iPad is also supposed to have many upgrades from the iPod. Better speakers, accelerometer, and much
smoother overall performance due to a better processor. Hard drive space currently is slated as 16GB, 32GB,
and 64GB. However, as time goes on, expect the hard drive space to increase in the iPad, as many iPods and
Mac computers have had dramatic increases in hard drive space thought their life time.

The school district plans to purchase a limited number to test. Expect to see some iPads around the school in
the coming months.