Learning with Tablets

Tablets provide unique opportunities for instructional content. In addition to traditional paper content, tablets offer further possibilities like 3D, video, live data, etc. Many contemporary materials like PDF textbooks resemble raw digitalization of print content. There is much room for improvement.

Traditional paper textbooks render 3D materials into static 2D pictures. It's difficult even for professionals to reconstruct original structure in 3D. Let alone interactivity. Consider DNA molecules. Traditional textbooks mostly can only describe the structure as a double helix. However, with live 3D interactivity on tablets, fragments of DNA may be explored and examined to check that the double helix indeed follows chemical constraints, like Watson and Crick did.

In quantum mechanics, the Schrodinger equation for hydrogen atom is solved as a combination of various functions. Except for the ground state, it's difficult to visualize what happens in a hydrogen atom. With colors and 3D on tablets, wave functions may finally appear intuitive to learners.

Bioinformatics is a rich field due to its rich data sets. Paper textbooks only offer tiny bits to represent the whole picture, which is grossly inadequate. With tablets and cloud computing, bioinformatics may be presented with live data, sacrificing no information.

Chaos was discovered in a computer simulation. It's most natural to present the material together with its mathematical significance on tablets with detailed plots for neighborhoods and topologies. Animations enlighten topics like Smale's horseshoe map.

For arts, the possibilities tablets offer are boundless. Photography can finally be taught in a digital darkroom that everyone can experiment with creativity. Classical cinema may be introduced with live text and multimedia so that subtle effects are properly explained. Music can be presented with live composition with the whole transformational structure.

Many additional topics like calculus find useful illustrations in computer automation and open-ended Internet learning. The future for learning with tablets is bright.