From engadget: “London school children to get free loaner iPhones in experimental, educational trial”

The Gumley House Convent School — a small, Christian School for girls ages 11 to 18 — in London has laid out its plan to use give Apple’s smartphone to a select group of 30 students as a test educational measure. … The girls will have free access to all of the phone’s features with the exception of actual calls, and the trial will last until the end of the school year.

So assuming that the school has wifi, the students are basically getting an iPod Touch that can browse and use apps. Since I am a BlackBerry user its hard for me to evaluate the role the iPhone could play in education. Of course, a mobile internet device with some doc support can certainly play a role in terms of access and before domain aptitudes using new tools. Also, I’m sure the school is looking to buy some love from the students by giving them all a hip device. That said, it is always a question of balancing the benefit of using a tool and facilitating work and discovery, versus spending time building domain knowledge and expertise with that tool so that is a facilitator rather than a hurdle. Which is faster: great mental math skills, or digging out an actual calculator or booting up the calculator on your computer?