Watters identifies 2013 as 2011 revisited when it comes to hardware. What she means is that two years ago was "the year of iPad" and this year is another such year. That said, she does note other players trying to get into the education tablet market, thought they've had little success. But her main conclusion is that despite the iPad's coolness and the demand from schools systems to have them in the classroom, issue far outside of actual teaching continue to get in the way: management, hacking, theft, cost…
Which brings me to geography and GIS education and iPads. I guess iPads are in use in geography and GIS education, but no one is shouting about it. Esri has a couple of posts from 2012 and 2013 about using ArcGIS Online (what else?) on the iPad, but otherwise, I see very little mention of them.
I will share that I do see some iPad at education GIS events, but I see far more, proportionately, at generic education events like EdCamp.
If you know how iPads have revolutionized geography or GIS education, I'd love to hear about it!