I bought an iPhone in January and have enjoyed experimenting with it. Amazing technology. I visited the Top 100 site you suggested and downloaded a dozen or so new apps. Dictionary.com comes up with a defintion and recorded pronunciation fairly quickly. I love the Google Search that can be used by voice. It recognized what I was saying and came up with a range of search results. The connection to all the other Google apps from that program is handy, too.
I use my iPhone to hunt down information all the time and I imagine students will, too. While recently visiting my mother-in-law, we were talking about pirates in the Seychelles area. She really wasn't familiar with that island country so I went to Wikipedia and read her that information. We had a debate going over birthstones for each month and solved that with the iPhone, too. She suffers from blindness, so she can't really see the device screen, just the device. She kept saying, "you're getting all that information from that little thing!"
I see students mainly using them for gathering information and possibly placing that information on a "Cloud Computing" server such as Google Documents. I see the shared documents as a great resource for students (although, quite frankly, I can't imagine that any business would want to store their business information on someone else's remote server as was suggested in the linked video. Most of the companies I know have strict policies against doing that.)
Once the iTouches are fitted with cameras, having the ablity to take and save photos can provide great documentation for events.
I, personally, find my eyes strained when I try to read a lengthy passage. I'm especially better off in other formats for book reading.
There are a few challenges for school use:
1. We cannot receive cell phone reception on most of our campus. We have to walk outside to get a signal.
2. The battery/recharge issue. My phone charge lasts about two hours if using the Apps features.
3. They are so small - where might they hide?
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Interesting thoughts... I, too, have an iPhone and love using it for all the things you mentioned, in addition to the texting/phone features. Thinking about an iTouch in the school arena is both a scary and exciting thing to me. I'm more worried about the potential loss than anything else.
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