I have been teaching in an all laptop college for more than ten years. While I embrace the new technology and find many times it enhances my teaching, I have found myself more often resorting to using a whiteboard and engaging my students in discussion. From my student’s comments they prefer this to death by Power Point and say they learn more. I do think I-pads are a game changer and could replace paper text books and offer even more new ways to teach. However, I doubt that kindergarten students would have that much much benefit and could be a distraction.
One advantage to paper textbooks and handouts is that it can be taken home, where the parents can see it.
With an iPad or similar device, the school could control what material is stored locally on the device, and what is only available from the school's wireless network, preventing parents from seeing "controversial" content, but still making it readily available to the students while they're at school.
Distraction? I don’t think so (having experience teaching kindergarten)...some people are assuming I mean using the ipad to replace the teacher, I’m thinking more along the lines of a center in the preschool/kindergarten classroom, used in rotation with other centers...the possibilities are very exciting from what I’ve seen with my own children (2 yr old b/g twins and a 10 y/o g)—yes, involving the entire group in discussions will always be a great learning opportunity, but these ipads are great for reinforcing reading skills, writing skills, computer skills, language skills, math skills, science skills, problem solving skills, music skills...these are the ones I’ve seen in my own kids...I just wish I’d had a few of these in my inner city classroom years ago, when I had non-English speaking illegal immigrant gang members who wanted NO part of any free education they were given...how many kids could I have saved from the gangs and the streets? I just have a vision that in the future this tool will make a BIG difference in the lives of many children, from all walks of life. :-)