With a growing number of schools across the nation embracing the iPad, the device is gaining significant momentum in the education market. And while it’s still early in its history, it’s beginning to look like the iPad could be the biggest thing happen to the classroom gadget market since the overhead projector.

Consider this: Apple’s third quarter was the second consecutive one in which the education market purchased twice as many iPads as Macs. And Mac sales to education for the period were at an all-time high.

Discussing Apple’s third-quarter earnings during a conference call Tuesday, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that iPad sales in the U.S. education market had set a new quarterly record, nearly doubling year-over-year to just under 1 million iPads. A key driver of those sales: The reduced-price iPad 2. Evidently, the device’s $399 price point has really helped to unlock demand in the sector.

“The reason that we [adopted a lower price point for the iPad 2] was because we believed that sales would be incrementally larger if there was price elasticity,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the earnings call. “We knew there were buyers that really wanted the best product, but needed it to be a little less expensive. … So I think the lower price did help our sales. And I think it’s particularly helping in K-12. The adoption rate of iPad in education is something I’d never seen from any technology product in history. Usually, education tends to be fairly conservative in terms of buying or K-12 does and we’re not seeing that at all on the iPad.”

via iPad Sales to Education Market Nearly Double – John Paczkowski – News – AllThingsD.