[ig1]

You don't plan for today, you plan for five years down the line. Tablet computers are likely to become as ubiquitous as desktops or laptops, it's purely a matter of time.

Tablets are a much more useable form factor in classrooms, etc.

[nhebb]

That line of reasoning makes sense. He specifically mentioned iPad - not tablets in general. When I think of the educational needs of tomorrow, I think of school districts like Los Angeles, where the drop out rate is ~33%. It's really hard for me to imagine a scenario where tablets are wide spread among students in the lower income areas of that district.

Hopefully the iPad is just a kickoff point. One of my philosophies is that at least some part of your job should give you joy, and out of that great things can happen. Maybe iPad development is just something he wants to do for the joy of it.

NB: I know that John's not a one man army, and I'm not trying to lay this all on his shoulders. I'm just thinking out loud on HN.

[jeresig]

"Hopefully the iPad is just a kickoff point."

That's precisely it. Being who I am, I'm going to be building everything with Open Web technologies and most likely built on top of jQuery Mobile. The iPad is just serving as a good initial platform to target and test on before expanding massively.

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the work that happens on the tablet version of the site gets back-ported to the main site itself (as things like tablets and mobile devices tend to encourage minimalist UIs and a larger emphasis on what the user is attempting to achieve).

I did work for the One Laptop Per Child project in the past, I'm a strong advocate for getting useful resources out to as many people as possible - regardless of their means.

[jasonrr]

John beat me to the punch here. We're thinking about a much more general mobile strategy. My personal mission is to try to design an experience for content, student interaction, and exercises that is usable on smaller screens because, although the tablet market is booming (thanks in great part to the growth of the iPad) the smartphone market is much bigger and growing more quickly. They are also likely to become commoditized more quickly (if you want to argue that they aren't there already). In any case, replace the word "iPad" in his post with "mobile" and I think you are closer to what John, I, and the rest of the team are talking about.

[jerfelix]

Congrats on your new position! I love Kahn Academy.

Do you think there's any chance that Sal will open up contributions to other teachers? I believe that Kahn Academy could evolve into a MUCH better tool if Sal focused on establishing the curriculum (and which videos and exercises need to be developed), and allowed other people to submit videos from across the internet.

While it's cool that Sal is the sole instructor, he's not the world's best instructor, and I'm sure the overall product could be improved through contributions of others. And you could go from 2100 videos to 10,000 videos a LOT faster if you allowed others to contribute.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[sshconnection]

I agree that tablets are going to be ubiquitous in the future, but it may not be iPads that get into the most hands. I'd like to see John put his incredible javascript knowledge to work on a great cross platform web application rather than a native iOS app.

[jeresig]

As I replied a few minutes ago - it absolutely will be a cross platform application using web technologies. It remains to be seen how it'll be bundled (likely using PhoneGap, I suspect) so at that point most of the major platforms are feasible.

[rtaycher]

"Tablets are a much more useable form factor in classrooms, etc."

why?

[pbhjpbhj]

I'd imagine: Easy to store, easy to interface with, can be passed around, relatively cheap, easier software installation than some OS, don't take much desk space.

Anyone else other ideas?