Judging from the turnout for our live coverage of Apple’s education event–which was much sparser than for something like the iPad 2 announcement–a lot of tech enthusiasts lost interest in today’s news when they figured out that it didn’t involve any new hardware. That’s a shame. The news–a new textbook-friendly version of iBooks, a free book-creation tool called iBooks Author, and a spiffier version of the iTunes U courseware app–has as much or more potential to make its mark on the world as any new iPad or iPhone could. Everything looks really, really cool.

But while the folks who did comment during our liveblog–a smart bunch–and the ones I ran into here at the event were impressed by much of what they saw, they also had questions. Lots of them. And so do I. Here are a few of them:

Just how likely is it that large numbers of great big school systems will buy into this? They’re not known for boldly seizing new opportunities. And even if a $500 iPad and $14.99 digital textbooks make more economic sense than a whole stack of $60 textbooks, how will schools acquire the iPads and textbooks and distribute them? Apple didn’t really address this during the event, but everyone I chatted with in the demo room wondered about it.

Is it an issue that these textbooks are iPad-only? You can’t read them on a Mac–let alone a Windows PC or a Kindle–even though you use a Mac to create them. I don’t blame Apple for its iPad-centric approach to textbooks, especially since the standards don’t exist to push out truly rich, interactive textbooks across multiple platforms. But I wonder whether schools will be wary about wedding themselves to one tablet, and whether any of them will have the guts to ask Apple if it plans to release an Android version.

Can we trust kids with iPads? College students, sure. But how about K-12 ones? (Apple’s Phil Schiller said that iPads are more durable than dead-tree textbooks because they don’t get dog-eared. But textbooks don’t shatter when you drop them.)

Will this democratize publishing? I came away from the event excited about the new stuff’s potential to change education–but I also started thinking about publishing my own books using iBooks Author. It’s already possible to self-publish for the Kindle, the Nook, and other platforms, but with iBooks Author, whipping up a beautiful, beautifully interactive book is theoretically within the reach of normal folks who know how to use a word processor. (Apple provides themes that help non-designers create books that aren’t eyesores.)

How about the competition? Amazon has dabbled in textbooks with the increasingly outdated Kindle DX and textbook rental, but it hasn’t set out to change the world. Startup Inkling is out to change the world, but it’s just getting started, and now it’s competing with Apple. I’ll be curious to see if Apple will be a one-of-a-kind player or part of a bigger revolution.

More thoughts later. For now, I’m interested in yours…

At 10am ET this morning, I’ll be at the Guggenheim Museum here in New York for Apple’s education event, liveblogging the whole thing at technologizer.com/appleeducation. Doug Aamoth of TIME will join me with color commentary–and I hope you’ll be there, too.

MacInnis also mentioned GarageBand in our interview. But what he was describing was a sample iPad textbook, produced in-house and packed with pedological bells and whistles, that would serve as a reference design for textbook publishers, much in the way GarageBand for the iPad showed iOS developers what the new platform could do.

MacInnis does expect Apple to unveil new tools for creating iPad textbooks, along with a new content repository to make e-textbooks easily available to teachers. But the tools are not a “GarageBand for e-books.” And according to MacInnis, they’re designed to support the textbook industry, not to do an end-run around it.

A technology shift is underway. The PC’s promise to transform how learning happens in the classroom is being realized by Apple’s iPad. Students and teachers in grade school through higher education are using the iPad to augment their lessons or to replace textbooks.

The iPad is especially helpful for students with special needs. Its simplified touch interface and accessibility features help these children learn more independently; aftermarket accessories assist in making the iPad more classroom-friendly.

In March, I wrote about how my mother learned how to use her iPad for basic stuff–like checking e-mail and browsing the Web–without ever having used a PC in her life. Students at all grade levels are finding it just as easy to use.

Jennifer Kohn’s third grade class at Millstone Elementary School in Millstone, NJ, mastered the iPad with minimal training. For the most part, the students didn’t need to be taught how to use their apps, Kohn says.

Kohn uses the iPad when it’s meaningful to enrich, extend, or introduce what students are learning in the classroom. Her class has used their iPads to interact with storybooks, brainstorm ideas for creative writing, and to learn mathematics. Math Bingo, an app that teaches kids math through gaming, is one of the top selling iPad apps  for education.

The students used netbooks prior to the iPads’ arrival, but the PCs were hard to use, sluggish, and would slow down over time, Kohn says. “The iPad’s one-button interface makes a big difference when working with kids. Its better for most things.”

Here’s a video of the Millstone kids with their iPads:

The Millstone experience is reminiscent of a story recounted in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography of a an illiterate child who was able to instinctively navigate an Apple executive’s a journalist’s iPad despite never having encountered a PC or “smart” device before.

College students are also turning to the iPad to do what they do instinctively well: saving themselves money. Marianne Petit, a New York University staff member, recently began taking credits in pursuit of another certification, and uses her iPad in place of textbooks.

“The price of the iPad pays for itself after a single semester,” Petit said. “iPad books cost so much less…It’s a legal alternative for students who are using BitTorent [to pirate books].” Steve Jobs was exploring the textbook market near the end of his life, according to Isaacson.

There is also high interest in using iPads within clinical settings, Petit said. Aside from her studying, she works as a master teacher at the Interactive Telecommunications Project, an initiative of New York University’s Tisch School. Tisch has formed community partnerships to create assistive technology, and students write apps for healthcare.

“For a device without a tactile interface to be the most accessible device for people with visible impairments would have been shocking just a few years ago, but they’ve been so good developing interfaces,” Petit said.

Students who have special needs can benefit significantly from the iPad’s adaptability and ease of use, says Jennifer Lowton, director of GMPDC, a professional development center for teachers. She also works as an in-class consultant.

“Motor skills are not necessary. Three year olds are using them and instantly figured out how to swipe from left to right,” Lowton said. “The home button gets you out of anything.”

Lowton credits Apple for investing in accessibility features for students who have less defined motor skills. Apple recently released its Assistive Touch software for people with spasticity and motor impairments.

Other non-lingual interface elements such as + signs to add photos also make it easier for students to work independently, Lowton says. “It instills confidence in them.” PCs were more challenging for the kids to operate.

While PCs were sometimes helpful, students frequently struggled, because managing a mouse, double clicking, and the handling a large keyboard requires high motor skills, Lowton notes. Special education students and students who have motor issues often have low motivations because of those difficulties, but the “iPad overcomes so many of those issues”

In practice, Lowton says students with communications issues–such as trouble difficult pronouncing words–can use apps that insert phrases to comment for them.

Some of Lowton’s classrooms use Evernote to take pictures of notes and upload those images to the cloud, so that they will never lose them. Students to whom English is a second language can use apps to translate anatomy and science terms .

Not a panacea

Like the PC before it, Kohn noted that the iPad isn’t a panacea for educators: It has its appropriate time and place. “I don’t use them with every lesson or even day. It’s not always appropriate to lesson or objective of what I’m trying to teach,” Kohn noted. “You need meaningful apps used in the best way for kids – not just another thing to do with them.

Petit said that Apple’s App Store policies might hinder app development. “Tisch student have a lot of issues around…Apple’s openness for developers.”

It may also be difficult having kids handle iPads. The standard iPad cover proved insufficient for third graders: Apple’s Smart Covers didn’t protect the hardware from being dropped and didn’t elevate the screens high enough for confortable desktop use.

Millstone Elementary uses an iPad accessory called the iPhome, a multi-sided foam case that can be positioned for hands-free use and stacks for storage in the classroom. “It’s not flat on the desk, and is easier for all of them to see and use,” Kohn explained.

Lowton recommends the iPhome for unique learners, because having the iPad become hands free limits interactions to tapping and swiping. “Students grab on to them and they just go,” she says. “The iPad is very slippery, and the smart cover wasn’t very smart for the classroom–it’s just held on by a magnet.”

The iPad may also pose challenges for school IT administrators, and some are having difficulty pairing the iPad with schools’ existing technology investments/ iPad adoption is most difficult for schools that have standardized on the PC. File sharing, syncing, and printing are some of the primary issues, and not all schools have Wi-Fi.

“We have to find creative workarounds,” explains Lowton. Those workarounds include using cloud services such as Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Docs. Some schools have used Bluetooth dongles to share files in place of WiFi. iOS 5 and iCloud have improved syncing, but are not usable for large files such as iMovie videos used by students for digital story telling. Teachers may also have trouble deploying apps.

While network administrators may have difficulty managing, supporting, and tracking iPads, Lowton notes. “It’s less of a problem for the teachers.” And teachers are driving demand for the iPad. Lowton is presenting an iPad “boot camp” this month, and it’s already overbooked. “Schools are going over to eBooks–paper text books are outdated and loading down students shoulders.”

“They want it all on device. Some schools are doing a 1:1 initiative with Kindles or iPads.”

The iPad is less than two years old, and it’s already proving to be a disruptive technology in education. Despite years of talking about going digital, PCs never were a suitable substitution for paper. The iPad and other smart devices just work better. The long reign of the traditional textbook could finally be coming to an end.

[Thanks to iPhome founder William Fitzgerald for helping to arrange speaking to the teachers quoted in this story.]

The computer is not much larger than a USB keychain dongle, and includes an HDMI port to connect a display, and a USB 2.0 port to connect peripherals. The device runs on Linux, thus keeping any software licensing costs low (if not non-existent).

The Raspberry Pi is no gaming machine — that’s for sure — but it should be great for its purpose of teaching computer science: a 700MHz ARM11 processor powers the unit with 128MB of RAM, and a SD/MMC slot would handle the memory needed to power the device. It also seems modular — the picture of the device above shows a 12-megapixel camera module attached.

Braben and Co. hope that the device’s low price attracts governments, parents, and children alike to scoop the device up and get it into as many hands as possible quickly. It also seemingly puts pressure on OLPC — the $100 laptop folks — although the Raspberry Pi has no included monitor or input device.

The device is not yet ready for prime time: first it must produce a better prototype, then prove that it can be manufactured for the $25 target price. After that, mass production needs to begin. All that is going to take about a year according to the team.

I hope they make this available to the general public, because the geek in me really wants to get his hands on this. For $25, can you really go wrong?

He appears to have the basic methods of navigating the device down, which is somewhat amazing since he likely cannot read and is just learning to speak. But Bridger’s father Mike says in the comments that “his speech, understanding, word recognition, and even hand eye coordination have improved within just a short while.” Quite an an accomplishment for a gadget from Cupertino, no?

See for yourself:

The above video is not the only one on YouTube. Here’s another showing a 2 1/2 year old on an iPad (questionable if it’s her first time as claimed), seemingly having no trouble getting around:

And yet another:

So in our ever-digital society, may the iPad be an important tool in education? I think so. At this age children are very impressionable, and have a sponge-like ability to soak up new . Developers understand this and the potential marketability of the device to parents, and there seemingly is an ever increasing number of educational apps in the App Store for both the iPhone as well as the iPad.

These devices can assist the child at learning at his or her own pace, and possibly in his or her own individual way. Is this better? I’d leave the answer to that question to the education professionals — I’m just a journalist.

There are definitely some downsides to this digitized method of learning. Growing up in front of a computer limits interpersonal communication and inhibits development in how we deal with each other. It also replaces the parent as the teacher. We shouldn’t leave the experience of raising our children to somebody else.

I’m interested in hearing the opinions of Technologizer readers when it comes to technology and its role in education (not just limited to the iPad example I’ve given here). Is it good for kids to be exposed to these screens early? Or do you think technology is playing too big a role in their development? Sound off in the comments.

The survey was conducted by the UK’s National Literacy Trust with a sample size of 3,001 school children aged nine and showed that 16. 24% had their own blog, 82% sent text messages at least once a month, and 73% used instant messaging services, according to the BBC’s report.

Students who used social networking or blogged trumped their less tech-savvy counterparts in writing skills–by their own assessment. 61% of the bloggers and 56% of the social networkers rated their writing as “good” or “very good,” while only 47% of students who performed neither activity felt the same way. Almost all of the students still used pen and paper in the classroom.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, told BBC News. “Engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries.”

I do trust that assessment (though the survey itself is lacking). Those students practice writing more often, and share their enthusiasm with their friends. Peer review does lead to better writing. But I would also like to see any cross tabs that detail their income levels, and whether their parents (or caregivers) were college educated.

We’ve all heard about the digital divide, where lower income students lack Internet access. This could be just another example of it manifesting itself. Though, direction from teachers and parents still matters a great deal.

We’ve also heard the story about the student who handed in a paper written entirely in SMS shorthand. That is an example of a student that was given proper direction about what is the appropriate use of that technology. The National Literacy Trust acknowledged that was an area that needed attention.

Technology can cut both ways, as another study, published in 2005, concluded that it was detrimental to learning. The latter study included 100,000 pupils in 31 countries.

In his remarks, Obama told school children that students sitting in classrooms a generation beforehand had grown up to produce Facebook, Google and Twitter –changing the way Americans communicate with one another. Those successes would have been hard to come by without an education, the President noted.

Obama successfully leveraged social networking in his campaign to become President, building a large grassroots following on the Web. His campaign leveraged Web services to rapidly convey his message and to respond to political attacks.

Despite the President’s praise, technology didn’t get a free pass in his speech. He cautioned against too much of a good thing, and asked parents to manage how much time their children spend watching TV and playing Xbox. (Obama singled out Microsoft’s game console rather than mentioning the PlayStation and Wii as well, a fact some folks noticed).  He also told children to be careful about what they post online (which was a world away from President Eisenhower’s generic appeal for students to study math and science).

Here’s the speech in its entirety, in two chunks–thank you, YouTube:

Controversy aside, the President gave common sense advise that it would behoove every child to follow. Maybe the inventor of the next big thing was listening in, and became inspired by the President’s words.