Let’s just say that some hardware company was making a multi-touch tablet for the school market. By the way, the ePad is a fictional name — I think Intel has used it at some point or another. Although it is clearly iPad inspired, and Apple has a huge head start, there’s no reason HTC couldn’t make such a device using Android.

So… what features would ePad have? I started thinking about this for an article for Ednet and came up with the following:

• Two cameras and voice recognition. On the back, a high-resolution camera with OCR in back well suited for scanning or converting any document into a PDF. On the front, a lower resolution camera for video chats, so a student in the back row can beam a comment to the big screen.

• A report card icon. With a single tap, I am looking at the faces of 24 children. I tap a child’s face and see a Facebook-like page for each child, with photos, videos, and teacher comments dating back to preschool. A hierarchical set of learning objectives makes it easy to document a child’s growth, and a “reading sample captures” makes it easy to capture a child’s reading fluency over time. “Growth alerts” can be broadcast to each child’s parents or “friends list” with a single tap.
• Built for a war zone. The terabyte solid-state hard drive has no moving parts, increasing the chances that this device will co-exist with first graders’ juice boxes and serve as second base for a little league baseball practice.
• Simplified controls. Unlike the iPad, ePad has LED illuminated volume controls and ports and a headphone jack for use in a darkened lecture hall.
• Ports to the outside world. Underneath a hinged flap is a string of ports sure to bring a smile to any tech coordinator, including an HDMI port, SD card expansion, and two USB ports.
• A stylus. Fingers were not made for writing. The Nintendo DSi-like stylus slips in a special dock, again much like the Nintendo DSi. The capacitive tip offers fine resolution pointing and writing for filling in bubble forms or jotting notes.
• Endless batteries. Like the roof on a new Toyota Prius, the ePad is coated with solar cells, plus a conductive plate designed to pull charge from a matching plate on a desk. There is also a PowerBook-like MagSafe port for fast charging.
• An EduApp Store icon leads me to thousands of apps, each aligned to school and state standards, plus links to vast archives of videos and affordable educational apps, including YouTube.com/edu. I was amazed to find content from every major textbook publisher and a complete, working version of MIT’s Scratch.
• Theft proof. A fingerprint sensor makes it easy to match each child to his or her ePad, which can be bricked if it isn’t synced over the course of a school day. Fortunately for me, that feature hadn’t been activated on this prototype, so I could continue snooping.
• Three types of wireless connectivity. A glance at the control panel reveals Bluetooth for linking to peripherals, Wi-Fi for playing collaborative games or accessing the Internet, and 4G for the school bus. With this device, a band director can instantly transpose an arrangement and beam it to every music stand, or say, simplify the third trumpet part on the fly. There are also apps that convert the ePad into a stand light, metronome, practice log, or tuner. A marching band app makes it possible to take over thousands of ePads on the same network, for creating light patterns, waves, or a new kind of marching band art. With ePad, every student can be a pixel.

So… What would be on your wishlist?

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