Australian Schools Go iPad-Crazy

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like it's not just Apple fanboys that are going wild for the iPad: in Australia, virtually every state education department is trialling the tablet in schools — and some schools are even trialling it without the official support of their department. One university in Adelaide has even abolished textbooks for first year science students and is allocating free iPads to first year students instead. It will be interesting to see what happens when the inevitable wave of Android tablets hits over the next six months."

Comments

Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPad is iBad for your freedoms.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend was issued an iPad at work, and imminently balked at the restrictiveness of the device. She's a basic user, and wouldn't know what source code even was, but she was definitely trying to articulate that this device was stealing her freedomz.

In summary, she called the iPad "just a gadget".

Re:Remember, folks:

[MichaelSmith]

Meanwhile school administrators and your wife's employer are delighted at the restrictiveness of the device.

Re:Remember, folks:

[juasko]

I'm much freer on Apple DRM iphone4 than I ever was on the open Nokia I had.

I have come to the conclution freedom has to be governed, otherwice freedom will close it self up. Perfect exaple of this is the mobile market in USA. The American way is the liberal way, however, my mobile is much freer in Finland an many other countries due to the fact that there are governing laws on how competition is allowed to act.

In my homecountry Finland, GMS and NMT mobiles where never allowed to be sold with a carrier plan. Result was that carriers didn't have huge stocks of phones in their shops. Yes they had some phones, but most people piced up their phone at a regular store or electronics store. Then they opted for their carrier.

The law was reviwed to boost 3G development, now the carriers are allowed to sell phones with contract and even lock the phone to it. However, no carrier is allowed to build their own antennas in an area where there allready exists an antenna. Eeach carrier can compete on bringing the anntenna first to an area, but are forced to rent the bandwith to competitors. And that is freedom for everyone. The consumer and the carrier.

A reslut of that is that new carriers have turned up, who have no network them selves but rent from the bigger carriers. And yes they are competitive. No maintenance costs, and can bargine high network trafic prices with the network owners. It's again a win win situation.

But the market is not free as in free beer ala American market. And I've seen the same with the iOS products, yes they close me to Appstore, but infact that has been a positive thing for me as an consumer. And I argue that it generally has been a positive thing for developers, though there are exeptions.

But Nokia OVI sucks because the market is fragmented, and that is true for Androids also I experienced last week.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

The American way is the liberal way

Realistically, that hasn't been true for a decade, maybe more, and repeating the mantra isn't going to make it so.
With that out of the way...

I have the expectation that my phone, and indeed any piece of hardware doesn't work against me. With general purpose computers, that is true, but with phones, it seems that freedom is impossible for now. (Or I could build a tux phone)
That is why I have a phone that although modern, looks like it was designed for developing markets. I have prepaid SIMs in all countries I travel, none registered to me.

The phone SHOULD be a free platform too, because I say so. But it isn't right now, so I minimise my exposure to the non-free platform.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Haedrian]

I've read this more than once and I still can not understand your point.

From what I can surmise is that you are comparing "I put up the infrastructure and you people may rent it" to "I control what products and services you can use" and concluding that since one worked the other does too.

Monopolies are always bad for the consumer - the problem is this:

"but are forced to rent the bandwith to competitors"

That is the breaking point of your argument. They are forced NOT to have a monopoly in the area. This is the total OPPOSITE of the Appstore - you have a monopoly and they don't need to rent it to anyone, they can choose to disallow stuff at a whim, they can add their own rules (No VMs!).

Now I don't understand what you mean by 'market is fragmented'. I have a symbian myself. I use the Nokia OVI store. I also downloaded some applications from sourceforge, and an e-reader from another website. That's called freedom, and that helps the consumers.

Re:Remember, folks:

[MichaelSmith]

The big difference between the US and other countries is the strict enforcement of GSM as a standard. Competition is limited in the USA because carriers have developed their own versions of standards, which limit portability.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Lumpy]

But it's the only choice.

All the android pads are utter and complete crap.

Honestly, give me a Android pad that has plain old android on it not your locked down shit, or your stupid ereader on it. PLAIN ANDROID, LATEST RELEASE...

These devices makers are not interested in making something that sells. all that make is crash prone underpowered crap like the Archos products.

Re:Remember, folks:

[marcello_dl]

Is the school supposed to create men or sheep? We know the answer, I'm afraid.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

A reslut of that is that new carriers have turned up, who have no network them selves but rent from the bigger carriers. And yes they are competitive.

That means that your system is more capitalistic/free.

What America has is CORPORATIST rather than capitalist.

Re:Remember, folks:

[digitig]

After all, Australia needs more sheep, doesn't it?

Re:Remember, folks:

[jedidiah]

Except this doesn't seem to be about "tablets" at all but rather about book readers.

As a book reader, the iPad is rediculously overpriced.

At the very least, these schools should be evaluating other book readers.

It's like the Lemming Second Wave.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know the answer, but I wish I could take *that* biology class...

Re:Remember, folks:

[h4rm0ny]

Meanwhile school administrators and your wife's employer are delighted at the restrictiveness of the device.

I think at least half of them are just excited at being able to be trendy. I've worked in education and a friend's school did this when the buzz was, I forget, not laptops, PSPs or something. Anyway, as an actual teacher rather than someone who got to go to local conferences and talk about being "innovative", his impression of a kid with a new gadget was... rather memorable. In University's, I've heard some right nonsense talked about "mobile learning". Mainly by managers who got to apply for grants on the back of it and go to conferences to talk crap about it to other people who then talked about new educational paradigms. (Sorry, you get lynched if you use out of date buzzwords in Academia. I think they're new pedagogical models or something now).

It's like technology. First you it doesn't exist so you can't use it. Then it exists and the muppets start using it everywhere like a fucking kid that's just learnt a "naughty word". Then people denounce it as not the radical wonder-fixall it was "supposed" to be. Then people settle down and start using it when it's appropriate. We're not at the last phase yet, we're in the muppet stage. There's a lot of good potential in electronic devices in school. A school is unlikely to get Richard Dawkins to give a lecture to a class. But a hundred schools, watching and asking questions electronically, can. There's a lot you can do with interactive quizzes, seeing at a glance which kids are struggling or excelling in real-time, or group work with such devices that's worthwhile. But what they ain't, is a drop-in replacement for manageable class sizes, actual teaching and knowledgable teachers.

Also, the choice of iPad's is a bad idea which goes right back to the real motivation of a lot of these schemes which is for people not doing the actual work to pat themselves on the back and be trendy. If they had any sense, they'd hold off a little and use one of the open platforms as they become available. Aside from saving money (always helpful in schools), they'd be able to have an open platform. If Apple get any kind of lock-in in Education, it will be bad, same as it's bad when any group gets a lock in. Find me one teacher in the UK that you can put a polygraph on who can say the the name "Capita" without their pulse hitting 150, and I'll show you a headmaster who hasn't done any real work in a decade.

Re:Remember, folks:

[sakdoctor]

Somebody needs to make ebook readers so cheap, that only rich people will read dead trees.

Re:Remember, folks:

[somersault]

They've got to compete with New Zealand somehow.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

and that is just another name for fascist.

Re:Remember, folks:

[shoehornjob]

I can see why an employer would want the device to be restrictive as it pertains to getting these in the hands of users. I deal with that at work all the time. If you don't like your local school district policies you should lobby to change them. After all you'll have a far better chance of implementing change at that level than you ever will in Washington.

Re:Remember, folks:

[shoehornjob]

Is the school supposed to create men or sheep? We know the answer, I'm afraid.

That is a parents job. School systems should not exist for that purpose. It's like relying on the federal government to represent everyone's best interest while your congressman in taking money from large corporations to do their bidding. The system should work but we all know that it doesn't. Sorry I better go put my tinfoil hat back on.

Re:Remember, folks:

[sortius_nod]

I really don't see what the "reistrictiveness" is. If you're already comfortable with an iPhone, an iPad is no different. I actually find it a wonderful tool in my job in support. Nothing like walking around the building with all your documentation you need and full web access. I can't count the amount of times it's saved me a trip back to my desk to get information due to the firewall restricting sites for general users but not support.

Sure, it could be more open, but to be honest, I don't see any competition at the moment.

Re:Remember, folks:

[MikeFM]

Meanwhile people like me that live and breath code somehow manage to do just about everything with the iPad. It's hardly the devices fault if someone can't figure out the App Store. I know that search box and browse by category thing is totally new still after all these years of using the web. And given I've seen six month old children successfully navigate between apps, play games, etc it must be very difficult for some adults.

If you want to get into how Apple doesn't encourange much innovation by hardware developers I can agree. You might have some sort of point that until it gets iOS 4 it lacks multitasking, printing, etc it probably should have shipped with. But claiming you can't do real things with it means you didn't try.

Re:Remember, folks:

[cheater512]

Yup. They are restricted to 80 different types of fart apps.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you say that to please yourself?

my company is working on visual aids for big pharma via the ipad. Once, your enrolled as a dev, you can get any app to work on any ipad jailbroken or not, with or without app store.

Or you can use froyo on a tablet, and have no marketplace, and 3 apps that fit your screen provided by the tablet manufacturer.

yeah i know you read on the interwebs that Apple is the new MS, but honestly, /. trolls are at least 400% stupider than they used to be.

Re:Remember, folks:

[dnaumov]

The law was reviwed to boost 3G development, now the carriers are allowed to sell phones with contract and even lock the phone to it. However, no carrier is allowed to build their own antennas in an area where there allready exists an antenna. Eeach carrier can compete on bringing the anntenna first to an area, but are forced to rent the bandwith to competitors. And that is freedom for everyone. The consumer and the carrier.

Stop spreading misinformation. There is absolutely no obligation to rent the mobile network infrastructure to your competitors in Finland. And yes, I work for a major finnish operator. There IS an obligation to provide your copper (and only copper, this doesnt apply to fiber) networks for rent to other operators who want to sell ADSL over it, but this has nothing to do with mobile service whatsoever.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

Archos 10 is underpowered, but has plain android.
I have an Archos 9 and never encountered any crash.
Some Archos products have crash problems, not all. Don't generalize.

Re:Remember, folks:

[tophermeyer]

The readers are already wicked cheap. And for the existing libraries of free books they are wonderful. What fails is the content delivery system, where the cost of new e-books is not significantly less than the cost of new paper books. $140 for a Kindle is what I consider to be dirt cheap. Even cheaper readers are on the horizon. But I'm not going to do that if I have to pay $6.99 for a e-book when I could just buy the paperback for $7.99.

The tech is there. The content delivery model is not quite ready yet.

Re:Remember, folks:

[mark72005]

Doctors are starting to use them as well. With Citrix extensions available now for the iPad and iPhone and wireless available all over hospitals, it's possible for them to do almost everything they'd need a cart in the room for, or to go out to a kiosk or back to their office. One I saw even had a special lab coat made with a pocket sized just right for the iPad.

Re:Remember, folks:

[mark72005]

How are you going to make tablet that's cheaper than a paperback book?

Re:Remember, folks:

[VolciMaster]

I can see why an employer would want the device to be restrictive as it pertains to getting these in the hands of users. I deal with that at work all the time. If you don't like your local school district policies you should lobby to change them. After all you'll have a far better chance of implementing change at that level than you ever will in Washington.

And for those folks in Australia, effecting change in Washington isn't really a high priority, I'm sure :)

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

As a book reader, the iPad is rediculously overpriced.

Good thing it's not just a book reader.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Americano]

I call bullshit. This either never happened, or your girlfriend was simply parroting your commentary on the iPad in an attempt to please you.

Nobody with a corporate-issued device (managed by any IT department worth its salt) has a reasonable expectation of "freedom to do whatever I want with my corporate device." Corporate laptops, cell phones, desktops, servers, and networks are just as locked down as that iPad, for security reasons. Please explain to us what the "freedomz" were that she was complaining about her company "taking away".

Re:Remember, folks:

[cgenman]

Having worked in places where the user can't install any applications, change any preferences, or otherwise use a computer as anything other than a terminal to specific company-controlled services, lots of workplace computers are "just a gadget." Entire industries (and swaths of Slashdot readers) are devoted to ensuring the restrictiveness of computers at work.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Americano]

As a book reader, the iPad is rediculously overpriced.

As a place to store a spare tire, cars are ridiculously overpriced. But then, cars do a lot more than store a spare tire in the trunk, don't they? Perhaps that additional functionality justifies the price.

but rather about book readers.

Until you realize that textbooks can benefit (if well-constructed) from the addition of color, sound, video, notetaking and highlighting features, a handy web browser / internet connection for free-form research, etc. etc.

And then you realize that adding even a few of those features eliminates most of the present generation of "book readers" from the competition due to display limitations, or processing power.

Which is why "book readers" are cheaper than general purpose iPads.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked in education and a friend's school did this when the buzz was, I forget, not laptops, PSPs or something.
In University's, I've heard some right nonsense talked about "mobile learning".
First you it doesn't exist so you can't use it
There's a lot of good potential in electronic devices in school.
Also, the choice of iPad's is a bad idea
If Apple get any kind of lock-in in Education, it will be bad

Maybe they could design an iPad app that teaches proper grammar and appropriate use of apostrop'h'e's'

Re:Remember, folks:

[fast turtle]

One advantage that the iPad has over most other E-Readers is the ability to handle Color. If you're ereader/ebook use E-Ink, then you're screwed because they don't do color as yet. The only issue I have with the iPad in this setting is the lack of robustness and I wonder how many of them are going to end up with busted screens. Having a lack of moving parts is going to help but the screens are way to fragile and kids will throw/drop/sit and hit each other, meaning lots of busted screens.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Gilmoure]

Naw. Fascism is music-hall uniforms and screaming ideologs and seek to organize nations according to a corporati... OMG!!!

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to be a techie to be paranoid!

Re:Remember, folks:

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I hate to point this out on a site like Slashdot, but the openness of a platform is not always the most important thing when buying a product like an iPad. And trendiness isn't why the ipad is so popular, either.

Re:Remember, folks:

[aristotle-dude]

The iPad is iBad for your freedoms.

My freedoms have nothing to do with software. Software is not the centre of my universe despite the fact that I work as a software developer on the windows platform. I can choose to write software for multiple platforms and I find it laughable that the FSF keeps on talking about freedom when the GPL is full of restrictions and requirements. BSD is true freedom because freedom applies to "PEOPLE" and gives people the right to do whatever the hell they want with the code. Inanimate things like software and code only exist because some person created them. Code does not have rights, people do.

If someone wants to bring up Android as an example of openness, I would quickly point out that it is only open to the carriers and that hackers rooting android phones are doing nothing that they could not do with a jailbroken iOS device. The end user on most Android phones is restricted in what he/she can do on it without rooting the device which is basically the same as jailbreaking an iPhone.

Re:Remember, folks:

[StayFrosty]

Meanwhile people like me that live and breath code somehow manage to do just about everything with the iPad. It's hardly the devices fault if someone can't figure out the App Store. I know that search box and browse by category thing is totally new still after all these years of using the web. And given I've seen six month old children successfully navigate between apps, play games, etc it must be very difficult for some adults.

While it is true that it is easy to install apps from the app store you are either clearly missing the point of this discussion or are totally blinded by Steve's reality distortion field.

Apple does not allow software to be installed from someplace other than the app store. They restrict the languages that the software can be developed in. They restrict the machines that the code can be developed on. Sure you can do some "real things" with it, but there's a lot of stuff you can not do as well.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Achromatic1978]

And given I've seen six month old children successfully navigate between apps, play games

Please, put some videos of these supposed children on YouTube. Or have their parents offer them up for scientific study. A 6 month old isn't even putting together coherent word sounds yet. Just a goo-goo ga-ga babble. They don't walk, many don't even crawl. They will sit only if propped up. They primarily explore objects around their immediate vicinity by putting them in their mouths.

They are certainly not fucking "navigating between apps, playing games" on the jesusDevices.

Re:Remember, folks:

[MichaelSmith]

Well okay but at high school we had Apple ][s which had games written in BASIC. A lot of us patched the games for our own purposes and wrote our own games from scratch. Development tools are, of course, banned from the app store.

Now I suppose somebody could port a development environment to the ipad and install locally but you are limited in the number of ipads you can do that to, and not being able to use the app store would probably make the idea unworkable.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

the FSF keeps on talking about freedom when the GPL is full of restrictions and requirements

That's because the GPL isn't just about freedom, it's about protecting freedom.

Re:Remember, folks:

[llow]

Yeah, there is a lot of hype to break through before there can be any real gains in terms of teaching and learning. There is a WHOLE BUNCH of learning design that needs to happen if any mobile device is to be used for effective learning, and I really hope these schools and universities are considering those factors beyond the tech and hype. :p http://mlearning.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/university-of-adelaides-faculty-of-science-going-mobile/

Re:Remember, folks:

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

If it's about learning how to program, then there are more than enough languages for web dev. You don't need native iPad apps for learning and seeing the potential in software development.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman had to destroy your freedom in order to save it, right?

Re:Remember, folks:

[h4rm0ny]

I hate to point this out on a site like Slashdot, but the openness of a platform is not always the most important thing when buying a product like an iPad.

But it is an important thing. Openness results in: greater learning potential due to being able to tweak and study how what you're using works, enforces an open market meaning the barriers to entry are low and anyone with a good idea can get stuck in more easily, prevents price hiking due to competition. Now you can order the importance of those however you like, but they're all good reasons why open is better. "Openness not always the most important thing"? Well that's a statement that's true, but not useful. The question is does openness have important advantages over closed and the answer is yes. :)

And trendiness isn't why the ipad is so popular, either.

In schools? I think trendiness is indeed a reason for their being handed out to pupils. Having worked with people in education who make decisions like this purely on the grounds that something is trendy and because it allows them to go around talking about how radical and innovative they are, I have great confidence in saying that trendiness is a part of roll outs in schools. If you're just shifting the discussion to the general issue of the iPad's popularity rather than these school programs, then that's a different discussion and we should be clear to separate the two.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all.

Re:Remember, folks:

[juasko]

Well, while on the nokia, Ovi and other sources of app, sucked. I had to use hours to find the applications I wanted, I had to google every featrure i wanted for symbian s60. And most of the time the applications where totally crap.

Under iOS i go to Appstore, search for the feature I want, read the reviews and decide which one of them to opt for. Faster, better, and freekingly much simpler.

The freedome here is that iOS devices is not a monopoly, you can opt for the IMO infernor options like Nokia, or Android. You have all the freedom you need. Appstore is good because it forces developers to one distribution model, that is the absolut best thing with it. Then the censor ship can be argued.

Re:Remember, folks:

[juasko]

Ok maybe I'm missinformed, but here is the finnish law, and it includes wireless networking, including the mobile network.

law in finnish: http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2003/20030393
law in swedish:
http://www.finlex.fi/sv/laki/ajantasa/2003/20030393

Basically the law says if ur a major telekomunication company your forced to rent your bandwidth.
If your a small local company, this law will not apply.

Re:Remember, folks:

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

The question is does openness have important advantages over closed and the answer is yes.

Another question is: does closed have important advantages over openness? The answer is also yes.

Re:Remember, folks:

[h4rm0ny]

Another question is: does closed have important advantages over openness? The answer is also yes.

Well you see, I said Open had important advantages over Closed and went on to list them. You say that Closed has important advantages over Open and... ?

I would be interested to hear reasons why Closed is better for the School community than Open. Reasons that apply to Closed, but not to Open, logically.

Re:Remember, folks:

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I think Apple has shown the advantage of a closed system; it makes it easier to produce a polished product. Yes, this is an advantage more from the perspective of the people making the product rather than directly to the consumer, but the consumer can still benefit from it.

Re:Remember, folks:

[h4rm0ny]

I think Apple has shown the advantage of a closed system; it makes it easier to produce a polished product. Yes, this is an advantage more from the perspective of the people making the product rather than directly to the consumer, but the consumer can still benefit from it.

I don't agree that having a closed system makes it easier to produce a more polished product. I'm interested in why you feel that would be the case.

I have a feeling that you're talking about Apple's role as a guardian of quality and putting forward that the closed nature of the iPad is what allows them this role. I.e. that they are able to filter out bad software.

The thing is, having an imposed guardian of quality (a) has some down sides, but (b), more relevantly to this discussion, only offers advantages when there is no other "guardian of quality". Here we are considering everything in the context of technology provided by the Australian school system. There you have a number of bodies ready to step forward and create the "approved list" of products. And we're talking about commercial software. The Australian school system doesn't need protecting against accidentally purchasing an app that isn't suitable or has a misleading description or contains ad-ware. The Australian school system would be asking a company for a demo of their software and then purchasing licences if it met their needs.

If you're not talking about Closed platforms keeping out unpolished products, then apologies. The other meaning I can think of is that you suggest that the limited nature of a closed system, provides a more stable and predictable platform for software then an open one. For example, Mac OS X is pretty slick. One reason for that (not wishing to detract from the great amount of thought that went into it), is that it only has to run on a very limited range of hardware and can be adjusted accordingly. Linux, though I like it greatly and certainly don't consider myself a novice with it, keeps running afoul of each new graphics card / wireless card / motherboard APCI setting or whatever. Similarly Windows backed by the commercial might of Microsoft and hardware manufacturer's supportive development, gets a lot more hardware cover, but still suffers from everyone installing every 2-bit badly written bit of code on it. But neither of these apply greatly to the scenario we're discussing - professional educational software decided on by the educational community as a whole or an educational body, and rolled out on a limited set of OS's and hardware.

Anyway, I hope this is different to a normal /. argument where two parties attempt to throw ideological dogma at each other. I'm attempting to engage in what you're saying. Also, nice bug photos.

Regards,
H.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Tharsman]

But it is an important thing. Openness results in: greater learning potential due to being able to tweak and study how what you're using works,

The way my car works internally is of no importance to me. In a similar fashion, the divice I use to make phone calls I just expect to work. If I need to know how it works, then something is horribly wrong with it.

I can see developers themselves being interested in finding out how the device work, but ranting about it is as bad as prospect doctors complaining they cant go left and right cutting people open to see how they work. Albeit Apple only provides Mac Tools, there do are free tools you can download to do your learning, if learning is all you want to do.

enforces an open market meaning the barriers to entry are low and anyone with a good idea can get stuck in more easily, prevents price hiking due to competition.

Look at the app store. It's flooded with competition. Software goes for an average of 99c. The fact that a Apple refuses to approve a very small set of things (and that set of things resently got smaller since removed many restrictions recently) seems to not be getting in the way of keeping prices low. Heck, I wish Windows software was as cheap as software in the extremely competitive iOS App Store.

In schools? I think trendiness is indeed a reason for their being handed out to pupils.

Having worked with people administrating education, I bet budget is the first and main reason for the institutions to approve this. Imagining all digital text books remained the same price as the printed ones, they still would save money by giving all students iPads instead of having to buy massive amounts of classic literature that can be downloaded for free from iBooks. I don't doubt trendiness encourage whoever made the proposal to come up the idea, but for the budget to be allocated they had to be smart and actually prove they would save money in the short run.

Re:Remember, folks:

[Tharsman]

It all depends on what the goal is. If they are planning for the iPad as a reading device (given some are stopping the purchase of textbooks it sounds like it) you may only care about the device as a book reader. At that point the argument jumps from "why a closed iPad instead of an Android device" to "Why an iPad over a Kindle". That question may easily be answered by the content of the digital bookstores. If both stores offer all books they require, then it comes down to added features (like much smoother web browsing and email capabilities.)

As for a list of benefits of closed systems, in the general context (not just education,) well, it's not just about spyware but overall malicious applications (off which spyware is just a subset). I feel much more comfortable allowing my wife to use my iPad than my computer. I feel i nearly have to reformat my computer every other week when she uses it regularly due to all the accidental software installation that is either malicious or plain out resource hugging. This is not a problem with the iPad.

At the end of the day, though, the iPad is not THAT closed. Any institution that wants to open up their iPads for in-house app development just have to enter the proper Apple Dev Program. Sure, it's $500 a year, but that's nothing. Heck, that's the price of the cheapest iPad, and WAY less than what the institution will pay to the developer that will write their own apps. Pay that fee and you get access to the tools you need to publish your own apps within your institution.

As a lone Joe, I can subscribe to the paid Apple Developer program that goes for $100 a year and I get to set my devices as developer devices where I can test my own apps, maybe even just leave them there for my personal use.

At the end of the day, this program may prevent average Joe from bypassing iTunes as a method of distribution, or some one that want free access to it all, but the means are available.

I may only argue that it may, perhaps, be nice if Apple provided some way for the basement geek to do his own stuff and run it in his own iPhone/iPad at no cost even if it requires registration. I don't consider it a requirement for success or viability, though.

No.

[Smekarn]

"It will be interesting to see what happens when the inevitable wave of Android tablets hits over the next six months."

No.. Not really.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It will be interesting to see what happens when the inevitable wave of Android tablets hits over the next six months."

No.. Not really.

What's your problem? We don't need choices, monopoly is good?

Re:No.

[Joebert]

Those of you who downvoted this have no soul.

Re:No.

[tophermeyer]

I'd hate to be going to the school that gets open source Android tablets instead of an iPad. Can you imagine how much you would get picked on. Android is like the K-Mart of tablets.

If by that you mean that it is capable of doing all of the same things at half the price but without the iBrand, then I would be happy to shop at K-Mart. That's actually where I do shop for office supplies and low end household electrics. The products work just fine at a fraction of the price.

I would be happy to send my kid to school with an Android tablet. At least then he might get a chance to learn something about how to make his software running on his device do what he wants it to do. That's better than having Apple tell kids what apps are suited for their iEducation.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because literally what will happen is that nobody will care about how open Android is and they'll just keep using iPads because they're made by Apple.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because literally what will happen is that nobody will care about how open Android is and they'll just keep using iPads because they're better.

Re:No.

[CleverBoy]

Fractions of the price? It will be very, very awesome to see that. Competitors have had many, many months now. Are you going to wield carrier subsidized prices as evidence of this "fraction of the cost", or am I to believe from your comments that other manufacturers will actually offer comparable WiFi Android tablets? Also, will consumers need to hack Android Market onto these tablets, or will there be some other type of store available for app distribution? And what about Google's Chrome strategy? Questions, questions. Still. It would be awesome to see a sub-$500 capacitive multitouch tablet device with WiFi, running Android (or something really nice, other than iOS). Rational people have to admit Apple has really stumped them though.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love how people just talks out of their rear ends.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better my ass. When it runs flash and the apps I want let me know. The iPad is a flat piece of crap.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the price? Where?

Waste of Money

[16K Ram Pack]

It's just some adults having fun and burning money in the process. If it's about text books, why not give them Kindles which cost a lot less? Oh, because they're not as sexy and cool as an iPad.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just some adults having fun and burning money in the process. If it's about text books, why not give them Kindles which cost a lot less? Oh, because they're not as sexy and cool as an iPad.

Because Kindles (and any e-ink based device) royally suck for non-linear texts (i.e., reference books, textbooks, etc). And this comes from someone who absolutely loves his Kindle for reading novels. I would never consider using it for something where I need to constantly flip back and forth between pages, or look things up in charts and tables.

Use the best tool for the job, and at the moment, the iPad is a better tool for this type of usage scenario.

Re:Waste of Money

[daem0n1x]

Someone has too much money in their hands. Here in Europe they're bitching the whole time about deficit and cutting expenses but, at least in Portugal, they're giving crappy netbooks to studends. Guess what. The company that makes these belongs to a good chap of our Prime Minister. For those, there is no deficit or expense cuts.

Re:Waste of Money

[Joce640k]

Android tablets will be here before you know it (if they aren't already). Android seems a much better choice than Apple - functionality is about the same but you get competing hardware vs. Apple lock-in.

Expect Android tablets to be much cheaper than Apple by the next school year.

Re:Waste of Money

[kaiidth]

This may be related to Australia's recent funding opportunities.

The Australian government's reaction to the current world economic situation has been to throw a series of large bucketloads of money in the direction of research, development and infrastructural work. Australia decided it could spend and 'innovate' its way through the next few years. There are some restrictions on the use of this plentiful funding, notably that it all has to go to Australian institutions. As is usually the case with this sort of funding it is also strictly short-term.

I would imagine that a lot of people have found themselves with a few k left in a budget and a need to zero the budget in the very near future, have asked themselves, "now what can we do that sounds sexy and means we get to play with cute shiny hardware?" and they've all come up with the same (incredibly unimaginative, sorry guys) solution.

The e-book research area is currently choked with iiiiiiPPPPaaaaaaddd zombies. It would be depressing if it weren't - no, wait, what am I saying? It's depressing.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia, with a population of 25 Million, there are 40 iPad developers - yes 4 -zero.
Getting any local content developed - or taught will be impossible - headhunters report they are chasing the same people.

Next existing laptops do ebooks and wifi, so do the 10 inch net-books - at 1/2 the price, so why shift to a slower incompatible processor - ARM., given all the money they poured into X86.

Nope, it is a waste of money, justified by sexed up reports, wanting more full fee paying enrollments based on a tangible gimmick.

Re:Waste of Money

[icebraining]

The company that actually makes them is Intel, because the Magalhães are just a rebranding of the second edition of the Classmate PC.
The Portuguese company just puts it in a rebranded box and receives major profits.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Android tablets will be here before you know it (if they aren't already). Android seems a much better choice than Apple - functionality is about the same but you get competing hardware vs. Apple lock-in.

Expect Android tablets to be much cheaper than Apple by the next school year.

Android tablets already are here (and have been here for several months). By all accounts, the ones that are available are abysmal. That's not to say that they won't get better. But for the time being, they're not even a serious option.

On top of that, I'm not aware of a single Android app that's been developed to specifically take advantage of the larger screen/form factor of a tablet. This is one area where Apple has done it right. They've established two general baselines for iOS development -- the smaller iPhone and iPod touch platforms, and the larger iPad platform. This makes it much easier for developers and (more importantly) consumers to know what they're dealing with.

Again, it's entirely possible that Android tablets will fill in the gap and make consumer app choice easier to deal with, but they've got quite a long ways to go. And getting back to my original AC post up there, one key thing I wrote was "at the moment". So responding with some vague notions about what may or may not happen in the future is inconsequential, because we are talking about now.

Re:Waste of Money

[ChrisStrickler]

Exactly. I picked up a 32gb iPad last weekend for this reason alone.

I'd tried out the newest Kindle, Nook, Sony E-Reader, Pandigital Novel, Velocity Micro Cruz Reader over about a month. I've returned each of them (other than the VMCR, that one I borrowed for a day from someone who bought it off of NewEgg). I've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the Notion Adam to come out (or at least make some progress that is noteworthy) but I got fed up with them - if they were (or are) serious about their business, they'd fix their website.

Kindle, Sony and Nook had refresh rates that were far below what I felt I needed to use my textbooks adequately - each page flip was like hitting a wall. The Pandigital was a piece of crap with a crappy UI that was easily the slowest implementation of Android I've ever seen. When you removed their stock UI and put a better one on it, it was massively improved but still just slow and difficult to use. The VMCR felt the same way, just... sort of slapped together with left over bits of phones that were old when they were created.

So I bought an iPad. I felt dirty; I've been entirely Apple free since I got out of elementary school in the late 80s and I despise most of their products - for example; it is my opinion that the iPhone is a toy (give me a BB any day), the hardware is ridiculously over priced (or their software is 'valued' outside of sanity's grasp). With the iPad though... I'd played with my brother in law's iPad on a flight for a few hours and thought it was neat, but not a great gadget. I still feel this way but its got one massive element above the others mentioned that is damned impressive for school.

If you scan the textbook in as nice HQ jpeg's and put them into a .CBR format - it's like working with the actual textbook, and in addition to the iPad/iTouch it works on any computer I've come across (with the free readers available). Fast refresh rates; great color on the images. No, it's not completely word-indexed in this format - you can't just search for a specific term and have the program find it for you - but what you can do is use the textbook like its meant to be used. I took 100+lbs of textbooks (medical textbooks for one semester) and scanned them after cutting off the bindings. Total file size is something like 4gb for all of them in color and decent resolution. If you buy used textbooks, it's even cheaper. I literally go to most classes with just my iPad and a 25 cent college-ruled notebook.

The $5-600 for the iPad is a much better expense (again, in my opinion) than the cost of pretty much any medical treatment for a destroyed back.

Re:Waste of Money

[Lumpy]

Have you ever used a kindle? they utterly suck for technical or non linear books. the Sony ereaders as well are crap for such uses.

Re:Waste of Money

[rolfwind]

If it's about text books

If it's about textbook, follow the Japanese model. They give students short paperback texts, 80-120 pages, that lasts 6 to 8 week in their subject instead of a heavy, intimidating tome that contains way too much information for the scope of the class. While we're at it, a state or nation can probably hire someone to write these books, someone to illustrate, and someone to edit it. Get feedback from teachers, and make necessary changes the next time around. (Instead of aesthetic, which textbook publishers do.) It will be all in public domain. States and nation will be able to copy off each other freely.

Even if the don't do it this way, short paperbacks are much cheaper. Look at the Schaum Outlines:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=schaum+outline+series&x=0&y=0&sprefix=schaum+ou

They usually contain as much info as a textbook, lack a little handholding explanation sometimes but cost only $12-13 on average. A six to eight week text should be much less. I wish wikibook would take off, but I think they need to start giving a financial incentive for it really to take off.

Kindles and iPads are both gadgets. Gadgets are okay but they not the solution here. Plus, with kids and bullies, they break. I would prefer the iPad, I owned a kindle and I hated it -- all it does is read novel at bad contrast. At least with an iPad, I could see someone developing a Rosetta Stone like software in the future, but for all topics, which imo, is the way to go. Plus the school could send out schedules and grades on it. But I think that's years away so it's all moot.

Re:Waste of Money

[juasko]

The kindle is better book "reader" yes, but the iPad is a better whatever "reader".

Why I would opt for the ipad, over kindle.

Re:Waste of Money

[anarche]

Sort of.

Capt. Kevin's "Economic Stimulus Package" - which was very successful at insuring us against the GFC - was more aimed at getting money spending than where it was spent.

My old primary school (that my parent still live down the road from) now have two lovely, big, identical assembly areas - coz the Gubberment didn't bother to ask if they needed a second one, but just built it.

And while the funding "had to go to Australian institutions" - where else could it go? But as soon as it gets to Hardly Normal, that new iPad sends the money straight to the US...

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

You could have paid half the price for a NetWalker Z1 or T1, which runs Ubuntu and has a much clearer and easier to read screen.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

It did very little to steer us through the GFC, for the most part Australia was only slightly affected by the GFC and Austrlaia's big saviour was the mining industry not the abundant amount of money wasted by the government so people could buy imports further hurting us.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have paid half the price for a NetWalker Z1 or T1, which runs Ubuntu and has a much clearer and easier to read screen.

So by "clearer and easier to read", you mean half the physical size coupled with a lower resolution than the iPad's, too, right?

Re:Waste of Money

[jedidiah]

In short: they need to liberate content rather than throw an expensive viewer into the mix.

Of course the fanboys don't care about cost or effectiveness.

The rest of us look at these things and contemplate the need to pay for everything we've been getting from the public library.

Even some kids are smart enough to figure this part out if you show them an e-book reader.

Re:Waste of Money

[mac84]

Really! How are all those kids going to do their homework on the beach?

Re:Waste of Money

[h4rm0ny]

That's even worse!

Re:Waste of Money

[UnknowingFool]

If it's about text books, why not give them Kindles which cost a lot less? Oh, because they're not as sexy and cool as an iPad.

That relies on the premise that Kindles make good text books. They are good as books but not text books. For one, they lack color. While they you can have images, the images are basic graphics. Also they are good for books if you are reading linearly. Going back and forth is harder.

Re:Waste of Money

[Reality Master 101]

Out of a population of 25 million people, there were only 40 capable of learning something new?

Congratulations. Of all the arguments against the iPad, this one is the most ridiculous.

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

Probably the most wrong thing i've ever read on /. Please never post again Joce. Android has no functioning app store on tablets, it's disabled because google doesn't think froyo is a tablet os. (used to be /.'ers knew this shit) There are also, no tablet apps there anyway, so you better lovvveeee the 3 or so apps put on your android tablet by the hardware manufacturer. Lock in? You mean like how your locked into a carrier for a few thousand extra dollars, for 2 years? vs. the month to month $30 plans the ipad has? You know schools, dev's, they can install there own apps minus the app store. I'm always surprised when people don't know that you actually can do that. Cheaper. the newest 7" samsung is over $700. Failllllllllllllllllllllll

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

Maybe he wanted a devices with a decent amount of software his machine can run?

Re:Waste of Money

[oh_my_080980980]

Really? Buying an iPad is burning money but buying a Kindle is not??

How about because a Kindle is a single use device whereas an iPad is not. Why would you buy a one off device? Now that's a waste of money

FYI the article was talking about handheld devices, not just the iPad.

Re:Waste of Money

[vtcodger]

It's an intriguing idea. It WILL happen someday. And maybe now is the time.

As a retired school IT guy (in the last of my many IT lives), I have two questions.

First, how close is it to being completely indestructible? Because, let me tell you, K-12 education is every bit as harsh an operating environment as military service.

Second, can it realistically be secured by the school IT people? How hard is it to configure a few hundred of them? Can a bricked/jailbroken unit be ressurected/restored in less than a day? Thankfully, there is no camera and no USB port. Can they prevent the thing from accessing porn/malware at home then uploading it to the school network?

And make no mistake, there will be malware for these things. And they will be jailbroken. Are there tools for IT to make these essentially personal devices behave like controllable, educational tools?

Re:Waste of Money

[MikeFM]

Wow, somebody understands why we're in this economic mess and is doing something to try to fix it? Yeah that research and development stuff is all bullshit anyway. Getting kids excited by technology that actually works - idiots don't they know it's more fun to take a garbage device and give it a dipshit tweak that makes it worse but gives it your own personal picture of a naked anime chick on every button!? We know that real economic health comes from finding loopholes and playing tricks with numbers. Maybe it'll be better if we give out more stimulus checks or lower the price of HDTVs.

Obviously to much for most Slashdotters to grasp. Go back to your video games and pr0n. Wake me when you've learned to code, moved out of your parents basement, gotten laid, and gained experience points in a life that doesn't require a monthly subscription.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

Your comment makes no sense to me, there is significantly more software available on the T1 or Z1 - basically every piece of software in the Ubuntu repository has been rebuilt in ARM. According apt there are over 25 thousand packages available in the main repository alone. Top that with the fact I can actually do things like open a terminal, run the editor of my choice, write code on the device and compile it with GCC/G++/run it in Ruby or view it on some of the latest versions of Firefox and Chromium just like a normal desktop. There is a built in book store application as well to purchase and view e-books - but I've never actually used it as I use the device to write code, do work (open office, thunderbird), and surf the web.

Re:Waste of Money

[ChrisStrickler]

Ask me in a year how sturdy the construction is. It is so far much better than the other devices I tried (no flexing under its own weight like the PD-N, and it doesn't feel like off-brand tupperware like the Nook). My kids so far haven't broken it, and I feel perfectly fine letting my 2 and 3 year old kids play with it (I do have a screen protector on it).

My school's IT dept. says that the iPad is fine for their private student/faculty internet access. As a note, they make all Apple laptops (regardless of OS version) and any XP/Vista/Windows 7 or Linux machine needs to go through a personal vetting process where they make sure your machine is clean and up to date with all software on it. If it doesn't pass their scrubbing process (which is repeated anywhere from every 3 business days to a maximum of 2 weeks depending on a risk assessment) no school internet for you _period_.

I am well aware of the risks of malware, and I looked into Jailbreaking mine (at the moment I have no need to; only reason I would have was for divx playback but there is a VLC port/app for it). I do wish it had a built in USB or SD card slot for offloading or quickly sharing some files, but frankly I've not seen much practical need for these. I like the fact that it does not have a camera, part of my lab classes involves working in a cadaver laboratory and we aren't allowed with any camera devices in there. So my phone and my laptop end up staying in a locker; but I can bring the iPad in to work as a dissection recorder. I'm going to look into voice controls (over a BT headset would be nice) for it in these cases but in the meantime I bought a cheap stylus for it off of Amazon.

I will never make any pretenses that this is a PC replacement. It can do a lot of task-offloading for a PC, but it feels extremely limited in some ways - for example a lot of websites just don't work right (or they kick you to their featureless mobile versions). I despise using iTunes to back it up but I'm not all that interested in searching for alternative software to give me the same functionality - rather I just sand-boxed iTunes to its own VM with nothing else on it.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a built in book store application as well to purchase and view e-books - but I've never actually used it as I use the device to write code, do work (open office, thunderbird), and surf the web.

Nice. So you readily admit that your needs are totally different from those of the guy who you were originally responding to. Yet you felt compelled to make a suggestion for something that doesn't particularly meet his needs simply because they met yours.

Re:Waste of Money

[Rogerborg]

For the record, I disagree with your point, but will defend to the death your right to angry-old-geezer-slap those damn kids these days.

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

And costs the same as an iPad (if not more due to possible import fees and shipping costs).

The only online retailer I can find for the T1 has it for $582.66 + shipping which, according to my neighbor's 5 year old, costs more than $499.99 with tax (between $30 and $50 approx) and no shipping fees.

So, uh... where's the benefit?

Re:Waste of Money

[TheSeer2]

Educational institutions don't pay anywhere near RRP for Apple products.

Android tablets are ALREADY here. Haven't heard of them? They suck. The ones that are coming, could be good, but they're not here now.

Re:Waste of Money

[shellbeach]

Use the best tool for the job, and at the moment, the iPad is a better tool for this type of usage scenario.

Actually, the best tool right now for a reference text is a physical book -- best resolution, best at adding margin notes, and far better for flipping through quickly.

But an iPad sounds sexier. Or something.

Re:Waste of Money

[Joce640k]

What's a "carrier"? Are you talking about telephones or something?

Re:Waste of Money

[pablo_max]

On the other hand, do you really want the state involved in the creation of text books? You want these nuts in Oklahoma creating your kids science textbooks? I think not.

Re:Waste of Money

[FallinWithStyle]

Kindle, Sony and Nook had refresh rates that were far below what I felt I needed to use my textbooks adequately.

Well I'd hope so -- somewhere around 0hz -- as that's the point of the e-ink screen. What rate do your old textbook pages refresh at?

Jokes aside, I personally bought a nook (instead of reading on an ipad/monitor) because it's hard to read from a bright, 60hz-75hz display for an extended period of time. How is reading a book on your ipad any different than reading it on a netbook/laptop display?

Re:Waste of Money

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, because a resource than can also show colour photos, graphics, play videos, and allows decent interaction would have no advantage in an educational setting, right?

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

Carriers for the 3g features on the devices. I haven't seen ONE without a 2 year contract with a carrier. (well one, but made by apple)

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

the benefit is that it doesn't have an apple logo basically, ohh, and there's no software support for it. duh.

Re:Waste of Money

[DinDaddy]

Probably he's referring to the Samsung Galaxy S tablet, which has a rumored list price of $700 or more, but will be subsidized o $200-300 with a data plan commitment, making it "cheaper" than an ipad.

Where that would only be cheaper if you were already paying for a data plan of some sort, and dropped that in favor of the one for the Galaxy. If you are adding the plan to your phone plan, or getting your first data plan, not really cheaper.

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

Really? your comment makes no sense to me. A pen to get around the fact that your touch based device is using an OS that is not nearly suitable. How many ubunutu apps are made with a 1024 x 600 res in mind? if you can run 25k apps on that thing, i'm the queen of england. Idk if you know this, but you can write code, and use terminal on iOS too. (i cannot yet however compile it) how does vlc handle 720p? but anyway, seeing as with it's 800mhz arm processor, open office takes about 30+ seconds to launch (http://tablet-news.com/tag/sharp-tablet/) with 512mb of ram on it, i doubt you do much work on it. you could install flash! (you however couldn't use it) you think dedicated ipad apps, built from the ground up for that resolution, processor and input type are going to slaughtered by what magic repo? Ubuntu supports this tablets dedicated graphics chips? so much fail

Re:Waste of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.

Computers are a much better tools for reference than books.
Even microfiche is a better.

Re:Waste of Money

[Americano]

best resolution, best at adding margin notes, and far better for flipping through quickly.

That's great if "flipping through" a book gets you the answer you want. How about full-text search? I'd consider that a pretty good use for an ipad or ebook reader device, and a far better solution than "flipping through" a physical book hoping I find the answer.

The margins on an ebook are virtual, and thus can hold way more margin notes.

The physical book is printed, and cannot be easily updated with errata & new revisions... ebooks can simply be updated in place with the equivalent of a code patch.

There's certainly drawbacks and benefits to both ebooks and printed books, but your commentary here touches on some of the weaker justifications for needing a printed book.

Re:Waste of Money

[owlstead]

Problem is that both the market and mobile technology are moving pretty fast. There are already quite a few new technologies on the horizon that promise eBook kind of reading together with quick updates (and, probably later on, color). It seems to be a bit of a waste of time to develop all kinds of applications for the iPad and then find yourself locked in. The Android tablets that are now out are indeed terrible compared to the iPad, but they are about 33% of the price too. Now we just have to wait for someone to make a higher end tablet like the iPad without the ridiculous pricing (600 to 800 Euro's seems a lot, even when counting in the - fantastic - IPS screen).

Re:Waste of Money

[ELitwin]

Use the best tool for the job, and at the moment, the iPad is a better tool for this type of usage scenario.

I have an ever better tool for this type of usage scenario. It's called a textbook.

Re:Waste of Money

[zman58]

You are missing the big picture.

Of course there is software support for it.--Just like there is software support for Ubuntu if you want to purchase a service contract. There are many possibilities and FOSS software support can be provided by various parties or, if desired, provided on a self-serve basis. The real advantage is that the software support is not monopolized by one single entity in each case that can charge whatever they want and demand some draconian license model to follow --and administrate.

You can use the T1 combined with other hardware including servers, laptops, and desktops running Ubuntu. There is an incredible opportunity for an enterprise or educational system running under FOSS (e.g. Linux). You don't need the Apple logo with all of the usage restrictions and expenses that go along with it to succeed. You just need the guts to be able to step out of the box just a bit and go there and do it. Students, teachers, administrators, and all involved would learn far more in this avenue--including how to gain the advantages and cost savings of using totally unrestricted FOSS. Don't believe me? just ask Google who has done very well with this model.

Concerning the iPad; It's just too easy to spend the taxpayer's money on frivolous gadgets in the name of "technology and education" when all you are really doing is pandering to a large enterprise by purchasing their latest overpriced restrictive gadget. The hidden costs of an approach like this will eat a budget into the red in no time. In the end there will far less for everyone and the money will be gone. Golly molly!, now we need more money.

Re:Waste of Money

[kaiidth]

And while the funding "had to go to Australian institutions" - where else could it go? But as soon as it gets to Hardly Normal, that new iPad sends the money straight to the US...

True. The implication of 'had to go to Australian institutions' is just 'no international collaborations.' It just tends to characterise the profile of work that gets done (ie. everyday research activity commonly has international elements, which will not be possible with this funding), the type of deliverable, and so forth.

Oh well. You can never have too many assembly areas, or too much multimedia, or too many case studies.

Oddly, I'm actually a fan of the Australian government's approach, even though I can't spell 'innovate' without scarequotes. But there are predictable results to short-term funding with specific terms and a risk of the cash being clawed back by the agency, and this sort of spend-and-study activity is often seen when there is a short-term surplus.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

I have yet to run into an application that didn't fit comfortably in the screen and I've run quite a few. Everything runs quite well, and timing it just now it took me about 7 seconds to launch Open Office Writer. 720P in mp4 (h.264 or XVID) plays quite well - in fact I encoded a bunch of movies and my kids watched them in the car on a recent trip with no problems to speak of. And yes the graphics chip is supported, the modules are actively developed by Freescale and full source is available on the Freescale web site (I used it a while back to play with OpenGL ES 2.0 stuff). The T1 actually has a compositing built in GLES and it works very well (transparent terminals make working on small screens very nice!). In general everything is pretty snappy, it doesn't take much time to load applications and everything is pretty responsive. I'm guessing you are such a mac zealot you can't possibly accept something could be as good or dare I say better than your beloved iPad and you are trying to rationalize that by making vague assumptions. The Z1 and T1 are very nice devices, they can do a lot right out of the box and you don't even need to jailbreak them just to open a terminal. They are inexpensive, fit in a pocket, and you can read the screens in sunlight without a special film. I've used an iPad before and while it is flashy the actual practicality and unrestricted freedom of the Z1/T1 just totally outweigh that for me. How about you actually check one out before you make assumptions.

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

if you say your encoding 720p, with a arm processor running at 800 mhz, darwin will take care of you soon. they are NOT inexpensive, they do not fit in a pocket. You were reaching with even playing 720p, Kage, so bascially your 100% full of shit. I have low power machines, mostly atom's which should be more powerful, running at double the frequency, they can't play 720p running windows or ubuntu. Have fun making shit up though. And encoding on arm processors. what a fucking joke, you could build a much better machine to do your encoding for half the price. /from someone who just re-encoded 2TB to h264

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

by the way http://tablet-news.com/tag/sharp-tablet/ is where i got the open office in 30 seconds to launch quote, you should read the review. really though, keep up the humor in your replies.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

I encoded on my desktop then copied to the Z1, sorry if my wording was awkward English is not my first language. It IS inexpensive compared to the iPad, and generally around $300USD is not that much for a device such as this so for what it is I don't personally feel it is expensive at all. Also it's not the ARM core that is decoding the video, you are obviously uneducated about embedded architectures. Here is a video of 720p on the BeagleBoard under Android, the BeagleBoard being a less powerful device than the Z1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdnDpH3543Q . They both have peripheral media sub-cores which handle video and both TI and FreeScale provide kernel modules and source to utilize them. My wife has an Atom subnote that not only plays 720p it can record 720p digital broadcasts, and it runs Vista - the 720p encoding and decoding on it is no doubt assisted by special hardware in the video card but it's playing 720p with no problem none the less. Now please just accept reality and stop trying to twist my words.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

Wow, did you actually watch the video linked there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D53GVyVxWw&feature=player_embedded#! Note how he shows it playing, and confirms it is playing 720p video. Look at how long it takes to launch applications, FireFox is maybe approaching 10 seconds there. Again, it took me 7 seconds to launch OOo writer, maybe it takes longer for the spread sheet but certainly not half a minute. The written review is just short and negative, that guy was having a bad day or has a grudge against Sharp or Ubuntu or something. Watch the linked video and see for yourself.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

The review links another as well: http://www.pocketables.net/2010/06/review-sharp-netwalker-pct1.html I'd say that is fairly accurate, and points something out that I had not yet realized: that people would try to write in roman(english) letters on the device. The handwritten input is mainly tuned for Japanese script and kanji, and while it is not perfect it works pretty well. When I am writing roman letters I use the on-screen keyboard but on days when I am writing code on the train I bring the Z1 and not the T1. The T1 is really great for documents and "office work" and it's a pleasure to be able to write with my hand. It's also true the interface is not finger friendly, but I'm not a fan of big clumsy interfaces and fingerprint smudged screens so for me that's a moot point.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

Oh and while we are at it my Panasonic 930p cell phone can play full wide VGA video and it can record one-seg video in the background (while I use the phone normally otherwise). The Sharp 9xx series on SoftBank even had a dual one-seg tuner and recorder. Both the 930P and the Sharp 9xx series are ARM cores (I'm guessing both Renesas boards and running T-engine or straight up TRON).

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

A grudge? He said it was slow, and it didn't read like an op piece to me, much less so than your comments. Are your numbers from a cold start? Sounds like you may be caching everything by relaunching a few times and counting the fastest time. I was just pointing out how absurd your last post was. You do re-encode video with a A8 processor (cause that would be rather stupid), and how apparently none of the apps you use require xga resolution, which, is crap as well. There are tons of ipad problems, trust me i know. It's by no means a primary device for me, saying that t1 is a viable alternative to both the ipad and a notebook is utter shite though. you posts don't negate the facts i'm afraid.

Re:Waste of Money

[JesseDegenerate]

sorry meant to say, you don't re-encode video on a A8, cause you know, that would actually be retarded.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

You've never even tried or seen the device and if you watched some review videos you'd see what I'm saying is quite true. The 7 seconds was after logging in and letting it sit to finish loading up all the Gnome widgets, I did not close and re-launch it so nothing was cached. Depending on usage it is most definitely better than the iPad in that it fits in a pocket and runs basically any software that is available on Ubuntu that isn't super dependent on straight OpenGL. The resolution is that of a normal NetBook and it's running an ARM-EL built of NetBook Remix so I don't see what your deal with that is. The iPad resolution is still 1024x768 so that's only an additional 168 pixels on one axis, that's not that much of a big deal. The fact is it does everything I want it to and it does it very well, it is a more viable option than the iPad for people who want a real portable they can fit in there pocket and run real-world applications. If all you want to do is use the device as a toy then go for the iPad, the Z1 and T1 are not much as far as games go - but the screen is nice and easy to read, it will play music and video, there are no restrictions and there are even guides as to how to install different ARM based OSes on it if you don't like Ubuntu so much. I'm sure you like your iPad for what you use it for but for me the Z1 and T1 are excellent and fit my needs and expectations to a T.

Re:Waste of Money

[Kagetsuki]

Actually I think the word you want is "transcode", not "re-encode". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding

Price of textbooks...

[Allnighte]

When the price of [used] textbooks at Uni bookstore for two semesters/quarters equal the price of a tablet computer [which does considerably more than the textbooks], can you really blame them?

Re:Price of textbooks...

[16K Ram Pack]

But you've still got to buy the books as ebooks anyway.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[Joce640k]

So ... will the iBooks be free? Will they be available second hand?

I'm pretty sure the book publishers will see this as a way to make a money-grab.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[Bobakitoo]

Or you copy them... "It not the school official policy, but only idiots buy the book anyway." will be heard alot around class.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the price of [used] textbooks at Uni bookstore for two semesters/quarters equal the price of a tablet computer [which does considerably more than the textbooks], can you really blame them?

I wonder if the e-books will cost $150 too. In total, my entire engineering degree I spent over $7000 on books as I purchased them all new. Where I was from, it would take a good 6 weeks to source any used book, and we didn't know what "version" of the book we would use until the start of classes. Assignments and such were taken from the book or referenced the book in odd ways if the problem didn't match what the professor wanted, such as "take problem 17 on page 36, but flip the ramp horizontally and increase the force of friction by a factor of 2. Solve for the remaining variables" - this is how we could tell the professors were just lazy and/or getting kickbacks for selecting a particular book.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[lachlan76]

In the case of Adelaide the release stated that they were to produce a set of open-source textbooks.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[Joce640k]

That'll take five years and a lot of money to do. What happens in the meantime?

Re:Price of textbooks...

[Jarnin]

How long until Apple has a deal with all the major text book publishers to sell their e-books on iTunes?

Re:Price of textbooks...

[Lumpy]

Actually you only have to buy one copy of each.... crack the DRM.... now all the students have the books.

Or stop being idiot school administrators and use some of the great open education texts already available in ebook format.

http://www.ck12.org/flexr/

Re:Price of textbooks...

[allo]

in europe (especially in germany) teachers are allowed to copy (parts of) schoolbooks for their pupils

Re:Price of textbooks...

[lachlan76]

The details of the program at Adelaide are here. While as a EEE student I cannot speak for the sciences beyond first-year physics, most lecturers already provide sufficiently-detailed notes that textbooks are not necessary. I expect that, at least to start with, it will just be a matter of loading existing PDFs/slides/whatever that were either bought from the copy-shop or handed out during lectures.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[h4rm0ny]

I wonder if the e-books will cost $150 too.

This isn't me arguing that the books should cost this amount of money (far from it), but why should the book being available in e-format make a difference? How much of the $150 do you think is printing, materials and distribution costs? Really, if you're factoring in these costs, then you're probably going to say the e-book is around $10-15 dollars cheaper, tops. Again, I'm not arguing that $150 isn't overpriced, I'm pointing out that providing it electronically is not much of an argument for why it should be cheaper.

Re:Price of textbooks...

[microcars]

I would guess that they would indeed cost $150 each. Or more.
Given the option to buy a massive stack of books and lug them around as usual or paying the same amount of money and having them all available on an iPad...what would you opt for?
I know that most all my Biology and Anatomy books already have online supplements that are basically the entire book online with animated sections (flash of course).
Many of my fellow students would use their security code (good for one semester) to access the online material.
If you bought a used book with an online security code that does not work, the publisher will sell you a new one for around $30 for the semester.
A discussion about the iPad came up one day and I brought in my wife's iPad to show people. Pretty much everyone agreed they would fork over the money to not have to lug around heavy textbooks. The subject of resale was brought up and most people never even thought about resale until they were DONE with their studies and the books were outdated anyways so they got practically nothing.
*I* resell my books ASAP but most everyone else I have encountered does not seem to do that so it is not factored into their budget. The only thing factored in is "I have to pay $7000 for books".

iPad Lost Generation

[martijnd]

Graduates from 2010-11 will be the year for employers to avoid.

All click, and no content. Spend the year playing games in the back of the class.

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[Sonny Yatsen]

When I was going to school, some people with laptops were playing games in class, too. Does this mean employers should avoid graduates from the classes of 2002-2008 as well?

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[Allnighte]

When I was going to school, some people with laptops were playing games in class, too. Does this mean employers should avoid graduates from the classes of 2002-2008 as well?

You've summed up the reason for our high unemployement rate with two sentences. Congratulations!

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[imakemusic]

Who needs a laptop? I sat at the back doodling in the back of my exercise book and playing squares and word games.

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[MikeFM]

You might have a point if the majority of graduates weren't completely useless anyway. They get some pansy liberal arts degree or get into computer science without knowing their CPU from their hard drive and coming out still completely lost as how their computer works, how to write software, what Unix is, or how to do anything especially useful. Or maybe they'll get a biology degree but decide not to go into medicine or research. Yeah those bio degrees are horribly useful when you end up working at McDonalds.

Heck, most recent graduates I've dealt with don't even know enough to look at you when they talk to you. They stare off into space. And they think a group hug means they've mastered teamwork.

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year in English 1 I was probably the only person that wasn't playing Farmville the whole time in class. I think this answers a lot of questions about grammar and spelling in the emerging adults.

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[Gilmoure]

At the college I worked at (third tier lib-arts school with private beach for rich 'C' ability students), the game playing on laptops started in mid-90's.

Re:iPad Lost Generation

[Americano]

You forgot the obligatory "Now pull your pants up, for christ's sake, and stay the fuck off my lawn!"

Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[telomerewhythere]

Whether it be ipad or an Android tablet, I would love to see a interactive tablet for students that shows g or f=ma or the basis of trig in animated form. i.e. an animated triangle that shows what sin cos and tan really are... Oh, and chemical reactions. Those could be awesome for someone interested.

Also a way to read to young children where they see the word as they hear it. Although parent(s) reading to their kids would be better in my mind...

Hopefully this doesn't turn into a distracting of students or virtual experiments that don't react like in real life.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[MrHanky]

Yeah, I remember that from the 80s as well, back when it was called video. It didn't work particularly well then, either, but it was popular among students as they didn't need to concentrate.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Antony-Kyre]

The biggest advantage to digital textbooks is yes, interaction. For example, when a math book shortcuts things to save space, yet, could be animated in digital form to show how operations are done on tables and such.

Although, a physical book is very nice to hold, to flip through, which you can't easily do with digital ones.

The iPads are what, under 10 inches diagonal? Not nearly the size of certain books, which can make it a bit more tricky to read. Sometimes a big page conveys things differently, especially if you're reading text near something graphical pertaining to said text.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[zwarte piet]

F=M*A can be used by terrorists to create ballistic weapons. Chemistry can be used by terrorist to create bombs. Terrorist info is banned from i-pads.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Sonny Yatsen]

I'm sure an interactive tablet might be helpful, but when I was young and CD-ROMs were the new rage, my parents bought me a similar type of interactive science software with all sorts of interactive animations and stuff. One or two animations is fine, but you'll be surprised how much time watching an animation or interactive applet will take up while learning. You're dependent on the content creator's pace to learn when you use animations and interactive applets, whereas if you just read the thing, you're dependent on your own.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[telomerewhythere]

I was thinking more to use multitouch as a way to let student have a degree of input. If it was responsive (quick) and was robust enough for more than just a few pre-programmed 'movies' then it might help students who wanted to explore knowledge. Imagine three fingers used to describe the vertices of a triangle. And then moving one point and watching the angles and sin cos and tan change. (That is what I was thinking)

Or dragging an H2O molecule into a Fe surface and watch the reaction.

I can dream right? The pessimist in me says it will probably be a way for a lazy/distracted/addicted to Internet teacher to not have to work. And the laggards will play and the driven students will program games or such.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Mitchell314]

With a keyboard, duh.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[MrHanky]

The "interactivity" of those things you mentioned were only a bunch of user-triggered animations, possibly with added calculator functionality. Basically a more colourful way of not thinking.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Lumpy]

You just want a speak and trig...

Robotic voice:" What is the cosine of the hypotenuse?..... that is incorrect!"

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[srussia]

F=M*A can be used by terrorists to create ballistic weapons.

Just imagine what they could do with E=mc^2 (exclamation mark omitted to prevent factorial.., but then again imagine what they could do with !)!

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Drakkenmensch]

And history can be used to criticize the government for making bad judgement calls that were already proven failures by previous administrations or other countries.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Anonymous Coward]

IT WORKED particularly well then, you can learn about the weather or electromagnetism or nature using encyclopedia Britannica videos or very good documentaries in a way it is simple impossible to do in any other way. I learned a lot this way, and now as an Ph.D I could teach to those that are interested with the help of this tools.

It is just only one of the tools at your disposal, but is very good. For those that are not interested, NOTHING will make them learn, even less with boring monochrome text and pages.

Computers could be very useful too. Of course, people could use it for distracting their selfs, sending IMs and surfing the web, but those that want to learn will learn, faster and better than before.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[zwarte piet]

Not with the correct version of the history.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[JohnnyBGod]

Also a way to read to young children where they see the word as they hear it. Although parent(s) reading to their kids would be better in my mind...

People were talking about Starfall a few days ago, on an edutainment story. It sounds like what you want.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[telomerewhythere]

Sorry, I reread my first post and realized that it really didn't say what I was thinking. I deserved that flame mod. If it is just a movie within a textbook, then it will be better than a pic, but not by much.

Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher.

[Mandrel]

you'll be surprised how much time watching an animation or interactive applet will take up while learning. You're dependent on the content creator's pace to learn when you use animations and interactive applets, whereas if you just read the thing, you're dependent on your own.

Yes! That's also why Flash websites can be so frustrating — having your brain idling while UI elements "beautifully" animate.

Apple ate my homework

[El_Muerte_TDS]

What to do when the battery dies?
What to do when you forgot your iPad? You can't borrow the one from a friend because (s)he needs it to read an other book. (Also, you might be violating the license when you do that).

Re:Apple ate my homework

[kevinNCSU]

What to do when the battery dies?

Well, I'm not a Doctor, but I assume you'd just plug it in. Considering the ubiquity of laptops in college these days a lot of classrooms have power outlets built into the desks themselves, and I've never heard a student complain they couldn't do their work because their laptop didn't have power. That and how often do you really use a textbook in class anyways? Usually class is lecture time and the textbook is used back at the dorm at night with reading/problems assigned.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[El_Muerte_TDS]

"Dies" as in "dead", not as in "without charge". Laptops usual work when connected to an power outlet even though the battery no longer works. But does an iPad? An laptop battery can usually be replaced easily without the need to send it away for a couple of weeks.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[whisper_jeff]

What to do when the battery dies?

You obviously haven't used an iPad. The odds of a student using the entire charge of one without having a convenient opportunity to recharge it are somewhere between none and fat chance in hell. Seriously, the battery life on the iPad, even under heavy use, is considerable and more than adequate for a student's needs. They will be back home and able to charge the device before it runs out of power.

What to do when you forgot your iPad?

Probably the same thing that people do when they forget their notebooks. And, let's be serious - it's far _LESS_ likely that a student will forget an iPad, which is light and cool and fun compared to them forgetting a collection of notebooks which are heavy and boring and dull.

Any other hypotheticals you'd care to throw out there?

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve, I didn't know you were on Slashdot. I'm a Real Fan - can I have a turtleneck along with my iPad?

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you drop it on your toe, huh? What do you do THEN?!

Re:Apple ate my homework

[yakovlev]

I have enough trouble getting my kids to put their lunchbox in the kitchen rather than leaving it in their backpack overnight. I seriously doubt that kids can be counted on to recharge the iPad daily. Thus, having textbooks with a battery IS a major issue. Only if you told me that it would hold up to over a week's worth of use would I believe that it is "good enough." That's about 5 hours a day for 6 days, so 30 hours of use (display on, mostly showing static text) per charge, to ensure that most students "only" don't have their textbook once a week.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[whisper_jeff]

Your kids go to university?

Re:Apple ate my homework

[jedidiah]

> You obviously haven't used an iPad. The odds of a student using
> the entire charge of one without having a convenient opportunity
> to recharge it are somewhere between none and fat chance in hell.

I have. Although some of my difficulties arose from being in another country. On the other hand, you will have students by the score having these issues.

Suddenly the infastructure that seems to work well for a single person in a single house won't pan out as well as you think.

These are the sorts of little details that non-technical people prone to being distracted by shiny things tend to forget.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[srussia]

Steve, I didn't know you were on Slashdot. I'm a Real Fan - can I have a turtleneck along with my iPad?

You are obviously not a RealFan--I wear a mock turtleneck.

Steve

Sent from my iPad

Re:Apple ate my homework

[whisper_jeff]

Well, odds are high that the Australian university giving iPads to their students, attending university, in Australia, will make sure that the students are given chargers that work in - you guessed it - Australia. I don't see this being a significant hurdle that requires any sort of specialized thought and is probably well within the mental processing capabilities of non-technical sorts.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Colonel Korn]

What to do when the battery dies?

You obviously haven't used an iPad. The odds of a student using the entire charge of one without having a convenient opportunity to recharge it are somewhere between none and fat chance in hell. Seriously, the battery life on the iPad, even under heavy use, is considerable and more than adequate for a student's needs. They will be back home and able to charge the device before it runs out of power.

What to do when you forgot your iPad?

Probably the same thing that people do when they forget their notebooks. And, let's be serious - it's far _LESS_ likely that a student will forget an iPad, which is light and cool and fun compared to them forgetting a collection of notebooks which are heavy and boring and dull.

Any other hypotheticals you'd care to throw out there?

You obviously have never met humans. It's a lot easier to remember a giant heavy thing that a light fun thing. Oops, I left my iPad next to my bed last night instead of putting it in my backpack. Too bad the backpack felt exactly the same with and without it. Oops, I forgot to charge my iPad last night. Seriously, have you met any kids in the last 10 years? At any given time, a quarter of the cell phone toting kids in high school have either forgotten their phone somewhere or forgotten to charge it. The iPad's going to be worse, because it's used for learning, not exciting socializing.

The iPad's battery life is terribly short. If a kid needs to use it in most classes throughout the day and then for homework at night (which will already be pushing its single charge limits on a busy 16 hour school + study day), they only get one chance to remember to charge it.

Also, while the iPad is good for quickly flipping through pages, it's nowhere near as good as a textbook. Most everyone in advanced science or math classes (and I'm probably foolishly discriminating against history, psychology, etc. here) spends a lot of time with several (>2) pages bookmarked and accessed several times a minute while sorting out new concepts in challenging problem sets. This is mostly a software problem, but as of now the available reader software is going to make this more painful than it is with a textbook. Furthermore, the low resolution of the iPad screen just can't compete with the 300 dpi printing on an 11" tall textbook, so the information that took 3 textbook pages flips will now take several more pages of on the iPad.

For that matter, students drop things all the time. Textbooks get bent a bit. iPads shatter.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[jo_ham]

Take it to an Apple store, pay the price of a new battery, Apple hands you a new iPad.

The battery exchange program has ben running since the iPod came out. If you don't have an Apple store nearby, you can send it away and have another one delivered.

It used to be the case that you could specify that you got back exactly the one you sent in (if you didn;t want a new one, if you had the engraving or some other specific reason) - I am not sure if this applies to iPads.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[natehoy]

The odds of a student using the entire charge of one without having a convenient opportunity to recharge it are somewhere between none and fat chance in hell.

That's true in the first year, assuming of course Little Jimmy didn't intentionally forget to charge his iPad so he'd have an excuse to get out of mean old Mr. Johnson's boring history class. There is one advantage of a paper book - if the student forgets his/hers, you can pull a spare off the stack and hand it to them so they can attend class, and give them a demerit for forgetting class materials so they have an incentive not to do it again unless they happen to enjoy detention. With a laptop, you could keep a few spare charged batteries at the school in case a student runs out of charge with the same demerit system.

I doubt there are going to be spare iPads hanging about with the proper books loaded up, though I suppose if the units do over-the-air backups during the day you could image a new iPod to be just like Little Jimmy's during homeroom so he's ready for his day when the first class bell rings. The same could be true of units damaged overnight, of course.

I suppose there could be an uncomfortable dunce chair in the corner with the ever-so-stylish cap and a charging cable next to it. :)

Having said that, the actual battery life is certainly not an issue in the first year, probably not in the second, possibly not in the third, but how about when the device starts to age? If you're going to drop $600-800 per student on these things, they damned well better be useful for at least 5 years. Apple is very good at solid quality builds, and I'm sure you'll only lose a percentage of them in 5 years to student abuse, but Li-Ion battery tech just isn't up to the job for a long run like that.

I have a 5-year-old laptop that came with a 5-hour battery, I've babied that battery and treated it pretty well, and it's down to 25 minutes now. Fortunately, being a laptop, I can drop $29.98 (with shipping) on buy.com if I needed to and get a factory-fresh battery and get my 5 hours back. Yank old battery, pop in new one, charge it up, and I'm done.

My newer iPod Touch (8GB, second generation) would cost $106 ($99 plus a $7 "processing fee" to accept my order) plus shipping for a battery replacement, I'd get a wiped refurbished unit (not my own unit with a new battery), and I'd lose access to it for at least a week. At the moment, the iPad replacement seems to be the same price, but as Apple's devices get older the cost of battery replacement seems to go up (original iPod battery replacement is up to $250 now). If the school is smart, they'll have an "IT Guy" who can open them up and swap the batteries and save a few bucks (and not lose access to the hardware), but it's a far more complex operation than "unlock old battery, pull out old battery, push in new battery, lock

Within 5 years, the schools will have to start putting electrical outlets at the student's desks, or start paying for replacement batteries every few years for all the iPads that don't get destroyed by abuse. Schools can't afford for these to be "use it for a year and dispose of it" devices, so the batteries should be considered consumables for such a device.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Americano]

Any other hypotheticals you'd care to throw out there?

Pop quiz, Hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do?

WHAT DO YOU DO?

How's your iPad going to help you in that scenario, huh? Huh?!

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Americano]

So what do you do when your kids don't put their lunchbox in the kitchen? I'm guessing you remind them, rather than let them go to school with nothing to eat?

Here's a suggestion: Table by the front door, with a charging station, one for each iPad, clearly labeled "Jimmy," "Johnny," and "June." At bedtime, you take a quick look at that table, and say, "Hmm... no ipads. Hey Kids, before bed, why don't you do the RIGHT THING and put your iPad on its charger?!"

Kids say, "Gee dad, that's GREAT! Thanks for reminding me! I luvs ya!"

You go to bed secure in the knowledge that you're a great parent, the kids have a fully charged iPad in the morning. When they're leaving to go catch the bus to school, say "HEY KIDS, Don't forget your iPads!"

In short, taking responsibility for ensuring your kids are prepared for school, as their parent. I know this is may be an outlandish concept, but for primary-school-aged children, you do it already - instead of saying "Do you have your lunch and all your books & homework?" You can say, "Do you have your lunch and your iPad?"

Re:Apple ate my homework

[TapeCutter]

"Suddenly the infastructure that seems to work well for a single person in a single house won't pan out as well as you think."

A student in Adelaide would need to take a 6 hour international flight to find a household socket that was something other than the standard Aussie 3 pin, 240v. Many young Aussies would not even realise that other countries have something different.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

My campus has 2 outlets per class. And it was built in 2007. It's an engineering school with TI programs.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPad's battery life is terribly short.

In my experience, a better way to describe it would be "impressively long". I routinely take it on weekend trips and, with frequent use, don't need to charge it the entire time. And you can still use it while it's charging, and it takes maybe an hour to get to full from nearly drained. The battery issue as you describe it does not exist.

Your other criticisms have merit, but there is something to be said for the advantage of having full text search available within textbooks.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[StuartHankins]

I'm getting more than 10 hours per charge out of my iPad, which seems to be the norm. If you think that's "terribly short" perhaps you haven't been using these things we call laptops, which typically get between 3 and 5 hours per charge.

If you actually used an iPad, you would know that setting a bookmark is a single tap, and getting to the list of bookmarks is 2 taps. Hardly a problem. As a matter of fact this feature is one of the things that makes the iPad so much more useful than other readers available today.

To my knowledge, my 2 teenagers (one is 19) have never left the house without their phones, nor have I ever been unable to reach them because their batteries are dead. They have, however, forgotten books and lunches. While I'm sure that there's a nonzero occurrence of these things (depending on the child's responsibility), I think you're overstating the problem.

I've used roughly 1024x768 resolution (or less) all day, every day, for decades. You're telling me that a 1024x768 iPad screen -- which can be zoomed if needed with a simple gesture -- has noticably less resolution than a textbook? It actually has an almost unlimited practical resolution limited only by zoom levels and the resolution of the original content. I've yet to see any limitation for high-res content on an iPad.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

How so? The power adapter for the iPad is small, universal, and feeds the iPad via USB. Even a low power USB port will still charge the iPad if you don't use it at the same time.

Re:Apple ate my homework

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I would look at how often they charge or don't their MP3 players or cell phones. As well worse come to worst, you can plug the iPad in at school. If every student has one, it should be easy to find a charger.

Public money is public!

[jplopez]

"Looks like it's not just Apple fanboys that are going wild for the iPad: in Australia, virtually every state education department"

Well, maybe those departments are indeed filled with Apple fanboys, specially when the money doesn't come from their pockets.

Re:Public money is public!

[16K Ram Pack]

I'll bet quite a lot of these "pilots" are 2 iPads, which after the pilot is a failure disappear into someone's home...

Re:Public money is public!

[MichaelSmith]

"Looks like it's not just Apple fanboys that are going wild for the iPad: in Australia, virtually every state education department"

Well, maybe those departments are indeed filled with Apple fanboys, specially when the money doesn't come from their pockets.

Apple were quite popular with the secondary school system here in Victoria, Australia when I was a student. We had Apple ][s and a bunch of Apple ][ clones. They were great, hackable machines. Not sure I can say the same of the iPad though.

Define "abolishing"

[UnknowingFool]

The summary says "One university in Adelaide has even abolished textbooks for first year science students and is allocating free iPads to first year students instead." yet the article says "The University of Adelaide jumped into the handheld computer revolution headfirst last week when it was announced last week that students who enroll in science degrees will receive a free iPads." Getting free iPads is completely different than abolishing textbooks. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Define "abolishing"

[oh_my_080980980]

Did you read the first sentence:

"One university in Adelaide has even abolished textbooks for first year science students and is allocating free iPads to first year students instead."

Instead of text books students in the first year science program are getting iPads.

Your reading comprehension skills are extremely bad.

Re:Define "abolishing"

[UnknowingFool]

Huh? Did you read my post at all? The first sentence of the linked article says: "Schools and universities right around Australia had jumped headfirst into trials of Apple's hyped iPad tablet as they rush to discover exactly what the device's use will be in the educational field -- sometimes with the support of their overarching education departments, and sometimes without.". My point is that the summary says textbooks at a university are being "abolished" in lieu of iPads while the article merely says students are being provided free iPads. The article says nothing about textbooks being replaced. The article does not have the words "remove" nor "abolish". It says nothing whether some students can get both.

Re:Define "abolishing"

[Rogerborg]

Please clarify something for me: are you a clever troll, or a sincere moron?

Students and Apple

[Andy Smith]

I hope the students never need any help from Apple.
http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student

Re:Students and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave gawker's tabloid stories on gawker, plz.

Re:Students and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you bother reading what she and Jobs said ?
Despite not being a fan of Apple in any way, I tend to dislike them, I find that I agree with how Jobs responded.

The journalism student seems like another fine example of tiresome bitchiness.

Re:Students and Apple

[Raenex]

If the email is actually true, I'm with Jobs. The sense of entitlement in her email just pisses me off:

"I was incredibly surprised to find Apple's Media Relations Department to be absolutely unresponsive to my questions, which (as I had repeatedly told them in voicemail after voicemail) are vital to my academic grade as a student journalist."

Why should they be held hostage over her grade? It's also a ridiculous argument. The professor is going to downgrade her because Apple didn't respond to her question?

Re:Students and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

That article should read Gawker in pissing match with Apple.

Re:Students and Apple

[UnknowingFool]

Her journalism professor had assigned her a story on a new initiative at her college to buy iPads for all incoming students. She wanted to get a quote from Apple about the use of iPads in academic settings.

It's been a while since I've done any journalism but I think a quote from Apple would be a bonus but not essential to her assignment. It seems to me that the student should be more focused on a quote from her college rather than Apple. They are the "who" in the story. It would be the same if a university had a new Dell laptop initiative. The story is that the university has the initiative, not so much the source of the laptops, Dell.

Re:Students and Apple

[donscarletti]

The way I see it, why should Apple PR be expected to invest their time in helping this girl with an assignment? Issuing statements requires commitment and non-trival time since it can be quoted, all for something that will be read by a single person. Should Apple reply to every student in her class or just her? When I was in university, we were told that directly contacting the organisation in question will result in a fail, to prevent scores of students simultaneously asking questions and loosing face for the university.

But seriously, if she had any brains, she would have just found out the sales contact used by the university to buy the iPads then asked them, that would have probably got a reply since it actually relates to his own sale.

Re:Students and Apple

[JesseDegenerate]

I'd rather them have the best customer service in the world and not care about the press. oh wait... that's what happens.

Re:Students and Apple

[Arkham]

I hope the students never need any help from Apple.
http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student

Right, because needing tech support from Apple and harassing the CEO for a quote are the same thing.

Re:Students and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the students never need any help from Apple.
http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student

Hopefully, she just learned the most powerful thing any journalist can ever learn:

Nobody has to talk to you. And pressuring people to talk only pisses them off more.

How does this compare...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to the numbers of other types of computers already purchased by schools and universities in Australia?

The article already points out that Western Australia's "institutions receive technology funding to maintain the ratio base of 1:5 for secondary schools and 1:10 for primary schools." So is this an iPad article, or just a "computer" article with a gratuitous "iPad" header slapped on?

(A more interesting question is what have been the tech funding ratios across the years. I remember the high school I'd just left got a lab full of PETs, which I guess was progressive, but I thought it was typically daft of them because I already had a VIC-20.)

Re:How does this compare...

[deniable]

Given that it cites Western Australia's "Department of Education and Training," a name that went away after the last change of government, I have my doubts.

eBook readers good, iPad bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with one of the previous posts...
The main scenario an iPad would be useful for is as an eBook reader.
They really aren't much chop to use interactively for anything beyond recreational activities.
40 to 60 words per minute on an iPad taking notes during a lecture? No way in hell.
One of the main things I've noticed is that "apps" developed for apple products are so basic and lacking in any real features they're more of a novelty than a serious education / work / anything tool.
As an eBook reader, the iPad is simply too expensive.
As other posters have stated, one of the many other tablets that are a fraction of the price using Android OS seem like a much better choice.
Ideally students would carry an iPad and a lightweight laptop as their e-learning tools.
iPad / iPhone / iWhatever Battery bs is ridiculous also...
I try not to vendor bash, but Apple isn't helping the industry move forward at all...
They're just making massive profits off people who don't do their homework.

Re:eBook readers good, iPad bad.

[teh kurisu]

One of the main things I've noticed is that "apps" developed for apple products are so basic and lacking in any real features they're more of a novelty than a serious education / work / anything tool.

On average, yes, but that's because there are so many basic applications in Apple's store. I'd like to know how exhaustive your study of the respective app stores was.

As other posters have stated, one of the many other tablets that are a fraction of the price using Android OS seem like a much better choice.

As far as I was aware, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is the first serious Android-based contender to the iPad, and it's not due out until next month. And it won't come with an OS designed for a tablet form factor. I'd categorise it as a very risky investment right now. In contrast, the iPad market has had a little more time to mature.

Re:eBook readers good, iPad bad.

[Lunix Nutcase]

As other posters have stated, one of the many other tablets that are a fraction of the price using Android OS seem like a much better choice.

Why do they seem like a much better choice? Most of the reviews of those tablets show them to be mostly junk. The Galaxy S tablet is the only thing in the league of the iPad and going to be just as much if not more than the iPad is.

Re:eBook readers good, iPad bad.

[Americano]

As other posters have stated, one of the many other tablets that are a fraction of the price using Android OS seem like a much better choice.

Such as? Which android tablets, specifically, are a fraction of the price, and seem like a better choice? If there are "many others" you should be able to name a few, right?

They really aren't much chop to use interactively for anything beyond recreational activities.

So if iPads are no good for anything but as an ebook reader, why would you then suggest that an Android tablet is a "much better choice"? They're not going to be fundamentally any different in functionality than an iPad... so why replace one thing you claim is only an expensive ebook reader with another thing that, by definition, is just another expensive ebook reader?

bribing the students

[Anonymous Coward]

its just enticements for enrollments

WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!

[definate]

Seriously, I go to Adelaide Uni, and I have friends at UniSA and Flinders, and I haven't heard of anyone trailing it or banning physical textbooks. This would be fucking awesome, and I've been championing this for years. If I could get all of my textbooks on some eReader (iPad or elsewise), especially if it was an open standard, I could actually carry my books with me everywhere, and it would be a lot easier to study with. As it stands, textbooks are heavy, cumbersome, bad to navigate/search, and extremely expensive. I'd be willing to spend a lot of money on a fixed cost (eReader) to reduce my variable costs (textbooks). As it stands I spend 1,200 AUD a year on textbooks, and some of my textbooks are fucking written by the lecturers... who I'm already paying about 1,000 AUD (though admittedly on a government loan).

Anyhow, this would be great tech, and especially with my more abstract math, some visualizations and interactivity could help. The graphs are a good start, but sometimes you need to visualize the graphs changing, and that can be tricky.

I'm sure slow old Adelaide will take 20-30 years to implement anything like this, which means I'll totally miss out on any of this sort of stuff. Fie for shame.

It would also give me a rationalization to buy an eReader.

Re:WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!

[definate]

Well now I feel silly. Apparently it's Adelaide Uni, but only the science department. That really fucks me off, since I could really do with this.

Re:WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!

[MichaelSmith]

But what if the e-books still cost you 1200 AUD per year, and they are locked to your device, while your device is locked to you and you can't sell it? Sounds great for the publishers.

Re:WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!

[definate]

I'm pretty sure I'd find a way to pirate still. Also, it says a free iPad. So the net difference would be that I gain portability, searchability, and similar.

Re:WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!

[vadim_t]

Free?

No, it's very much paid for, either by your tuition, or by your taxes (not sure how things work there)

Re:WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!

[definate]

That's fine. It's not direct, and would be on my government loan then. I wish the textbooks were on my government loan too. But there are problems with that, but I'd prefer not to have to struggle with the costs now, when I've little to no income.

interacting is a much better teacher

[lkcl]

whilst "interactive" may be an "awesome" teacher, interactING is an even better one.

the reasons why OLPC are good apply just as well in the first world as they do to the third, but teachers and governments got snotty about the shit colour and features of the XO-1.

you wouldn't think it, given the price of the ippad, but the cost of hardware is dropping like a stone and is far less than the cost of text books which can be out-of-date immediately.

showing someone f=ma on a graph is all very well, but who's going to write the graph program?

i demonstrated kepler's laws and the laws of physics and gravitation to myself by writing an orbital space game on a BBC micro in 1985.

putting a shit ippad or an anduroyyd tablet in front of kids is about as good as slapping a TV in front of them and saying "there! isn't technology great!"

you can hear the sigh of relief a million miles away from the teacher as they think "thank christ for that - now i don't actually have to think how to keep this little fuckers occupied".

so... mmmm, yeah. i'm really impressed with putting proprietary hardware/software in front of kids (that's remote-controlled by apple who might decide to "censor" certain types of "teaching" material) especially the kind of hardware/software that requires reverse-engineering to get the crap off it and regain control of it.

Re:interacting is a much better teacher

[telomerewhythere]

See above

And yes, proprietary is limiting.

Really, students will make what they want to of school, right?

I longed to learn more about teh science and maths and didn't like that my teachers (by 10th grade) didn't know what they were teaching. (Not really their fault, one was a biology major just beginning to teach physics)

What do you do when you need books side by side

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all nice and everything but what do you do when you need to have two books opened side by side? You buy a second iPad? And a third?

competing with the roaches

[distantbody]

Whenever stories like this crop up (notebooks in, paper out; turn everything into a game), the future of the next generation looks to be dumber, fatter, lazier, more demanding, less-attentive, and more commodity-like; loath-able yet not by their own fault. Basically: less fit to survive.

Re:competing with the roaches

[sarhjinian]

Get off my lawn?

Re:competing with the roaches

[Anonymous Coward]

Less fit to survive... in open savannah. More fit to survive in a big city in a nanny state ruled by giantic corporations.

Re:competing with the roaches

[fermion]

Actually, I would say the novel is the source of the dumb and lazy craze. I mean, really, what could be less appealing than lying in your bed reading about life instead of going out and living life and maybe finding someone to share your bed. And what does on learn in a novel. A limited set of vocabulary with a limited set of metaphors and allusions? At some point it is time to create your own allusions instead of copying existing, often outdated, ones.

As far as the iPad and other flat screen keyboard less devices, the benefits are great. The iPad runs the kindle software, which is an awesome book reader. I am highlighting and learning more using it than I ever was with a paper book. The games are useful to introduce content, what is called engagement in the pedagogy biz. An external keyboard with Google Docs, which should run imminently, takes care of office applications with nearly zero cost wrt MS office. I can imagine OO.org running on any Java based pad. Testing can be more secure if we get a secure browser, like we have for Moodle on the PC. No more paper tests, no more grading.

People tend to fear technology, mostly because they are incapable of learning anything new. We still teach using slightly upgraded black boards, all we did was turn then white, not because computers and projectors and laptops are expensive, but because such devices will give the kids the power learning at the expense of control of the teachers.

Re:competing with the roaches

[Anonymous Coward]

People always find it weird how manual labour is like a reward to me. I own my own business, and I'm a volunteer firefighter. When our community was hit by an ice storm, and I was cutting up trees with chain saws, I made the comment, "This is fun". One of my colleagues baffled says, "Fun?! This is work!". I take days off to do what is considered work for most. (the business is in software)

Re:competing with the roaches

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I keep seeing this argument and I have to wonder: do none of you guys have any vision? Don't blame the technology simply because it hasn't been utilized to its full potential.

Shiny Object Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at multiple schools in Australia as the IT Guy and there are two major differences.

One of my schools has purchased one and is genuinely looking to use it for a worthy purpose but then our statewide firewall has a proxy so anything besides Safari isn't compatible with it.

My other school suffers from shiny object syndrome/Apple fanboy syndrome and we seem to be buying them with every cent we have available. It also doesn't help that the Principal is saying that flash is coming to the iPad, and that we will be using all our online flash educational websites using the iPad in the future and that we will no longer have to buy regular computers. I do try to educate them but its like telling them there is no santa and they are in denial. I also frequently walk in on classes full of students playing racing and shooting games when they are meant to be learning on them.

The only time I've seen iPads do something decent is at Special Schools where the special apps and the touch pad work very well. Besides that I think people are generally wasting their money.

I think there is a proper space in schools for something more open like an Android tablet, the iPad is just annoying and is just a constant "Can we do X task that we do on our PC's on the iPad because its cool and hip"

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Wingsy]

Haven't you guys worn out the "iPad is cool and hip but doesn't do anything useful" argument by now? It would seem that since so many businesses and schools are seriously considering incorporating the iPad, that ALL of them can't be suffering from the shiny object syndrome. There must be a significant percentage of those people who have looked at it and the alternatives in a logical and sound manner and have concluded that the iPad just might be the way to go. Just because it doesn't jive with the way you would go doesn't mean it isn't the right choice... unless everyone is wrong and you're the only one who sees things in their true light.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[laptop006]

I work for one of the companies that does the *large* proxies for education.

Until iOS 4 even the Apple apps don't use proxies correctly, with iOS 4 apps *can*, but pretty much *don't* use them.

The big problem with this is people buying tech and just expecting it to work. Sure this *should* be the case, but it's not, and people seem to have grasped that about PC OS', why not other devices that try to use the Internet.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Haedrian]

I don't agree with you at all.

The iPad was supposed to be the death of netbooks. And yet a netbook can do everything an Ipad can do - and far more.

Lets face it, the only reason anyone buys it because it looks cool. I admit that the idea of touching stuff to get it to work appeals to be - but there is absolutely no other way that an iPad (or any tablet) is better than a netbook

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I'm an AC and this post will likely be buried, here I go anyway:

The author Theodore Roszak wrote a very interesting book on the subject of "Shiny Object Syndrome" in his book, "The cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking" (yes, that's the full title). It is a very, very interesting read.

One of the subjects Roszak covers is the trend in the 80's to say that "computers = education." The push to get every kid in front of a computer in the hopes that it will magically make education "better" did not work. By and large, the phenomenon was driven by corporations with something to sell, and not backed up by any research. When research was done, it showed the opposite...that having "technology" handy didn't increase test scores or make education "better."

So this nonsensical rush to put Apple's latest shiny object into every child's hands is likely doomed to failure. At least in the 80's they were trying to push educational software with it...what educational software is being promoted on the iPad? The damned app store? If they wanted to go the ebook route there are far cheaper alternatives that are not filled with iDistractions like the iPad is.

Recently, the idiotic premiere of Ontario made the headlines by saying he thinks every kid should have a cell phone in class, again using the "it helps learning" line of BS. Naturally this ignores a) the HUGE cost of wireless in Canada b) the fact that lower income families will be shut out and c) there is ZERO evidence that having a shiny e-toy in every kid's hands will help anything other than the government's bottom line from the taxes they'll pull in.

I think Roszak needs to update his book for the modern Apple-crazed generation.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[elrous0]

I'm just glad at least one school system in the world is apparently rolling in extra cash.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[JesseDegenerate]

This post is utterly retarded. They obviously should have come to /. and asked all the AC's what to get. why is the iPad "annoying" to you? It's a farking tablet. Want a reason to not go android? how there are no apps that take advantage of the new screen sizes in android land, having no apps fill up that nice big screen is "annoying to me" just like your post, which is anti apple for the sake of anti apple. Please go back to your geek den where you can look down at us while listening to music on your zune hd.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[oh_my_080980980]

If you are the IT guy you need some serious help.

Do you have any proof that the Android tablet will be more open than the iPad? Do you have any proof that the Android tablet will be more useful than the iPad? If you have read articles about the Droid cell phone you would know that the phone carriers are making their Droid phone just as "closed" off and "proprietary" as the iPhone. Thus, just because they are using Google's Android OS does not mean the tablet manufacturer or the cell manufacturer will let the system remain "open."

The Android tablet and the iPad are both tablets, therefore they have the same strengths and weaknesses. Neither one will be better than the other.

The problem is not the technology as you seem to think, the problem is what is being done with the technology. Based on education software, one could say that computers suck because the education software is quite poor. But that's not the case. Because there is software that people use to accomplish certain tasks that makes to that person the computer highly valuable. So it is how the iPad or Android tablet is used that will determine whether or not it will be successful. Not the technology itself.

And as an IT guy it is your job to figure that out. Which it seems you won't do because of your bias against Apple.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

What in the world are you talking about?

"And yet a netbook can do everything an Ipad can do - and far more."

Can a netbook allow the user multi-touch input? So much for "everything an iPad can do"...

My parents both bought iPads because it is easier for them to use than their Windows computers (including a netbook). You can look down your nose at them and the millions of others but it doesn't make you right. It really just makes you sound like a smug jerk.

Repeat after me, "To each his own".

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[cgenman]

1. The iPad has a larger screen than most netbooks, which can be oriented for the type of media at hand. There is a reason why books are tall and narrow.
2. The iPad is about half of the weight of the current lightest netbooks, although Intel should bring parity back by year's end.
3. The iPad can be held in your hand like a book, and doesn't have to be rested on your lap.

It's not really a question of what does more. It's a question of what is easier to use for normal tasks. If you need power and functionality, you probably want a real laptop with real keys and an actual processor behind it. If you want to wander around your morning reading cnet and checking sports scores while making a cup of coffee, the iPad is an easier form function.

A netbook is just a lighter, weaker laptop. Most of the people I know who have one, have gone back to their laptop for daily usage except for times when they'd need to lug it distances. Besides, they woke up laptop manufacturers to the idea that lighter, smaller, and cheaper were desirable, and now 11" real laptops under 5 pounds are plentiful. Tablets are for those times when you don't need a full laptop, but want something you can wander around with in your hand. Even my netbook would get uncomfortably warm if I were to put it on my legs in the bathroom, and reading from a netbook while wandering up the street is just awkward.

Netbook and laptops work while you're sitting. Tablets work while you're standing up or walking around. That's a pretty significant difference.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Haedrian]

Allright, multi-touch input. That's a means to an end and not an end in itself.

Multi-touch input is simply what falls under "Shiny Gadget".

Lets talk about what it can properly do instead (I'm keeping an educational context)? Like - can you run e-books better than on a netbook?
Can you use office software better than on a netbook?
Can I print my assignments from it?
Can I view flash/silverlight animations which may be useful to explain certain concepts to me?
Can it run certain useful software which are needed? I'm in ICT - I'm pretty sure it won't run half the compilers or IDEs I require.

That's the sort of thing that matters. Whether I can touch it with two hands does not.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[thechink]

Can't use a netbook while standing or walking

Can't use a netbook on a music stand

Can't use a netbook easily while reading on my back in bed

It's the form factor stupid.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Multi-touch input is part of "Shiny Gadget"? You do realize the relative age of mouse and keyboard based input, don't you? Touch screens are the future, not to entirely replace traditional inputs but to enhance them. I don't think most people would be so quick to write off multi-touch as a gimmick as you. Particularly, seeing as how most modern mobile devices now utilize touch input (often multi-touch) as a primary input. Surely Nokia, HTC, Apple, Samsung, and others might be on to something?

You're reframing the argument to suit your needs. Your original post had the tone of, "Why would anyone want a tablet? They suck and netbooks are better in every way." Now you've backed off that tone and you are focusing on 5 points where you think netbooks are superior. Even those points are entirely debatable: 1) Yes, I think many would say ebooks are better consumed on a tablet. In fact I think that is a common argument in favor of tablets. 2) Tablets are meant to consume information, not create. However, non-tablet based software has had decades to mature. Tablet productivity software is in its infancy. But whatever: okay, netbooks are better for running "office software". 3) Yes, in a couple of weeks for iPad. Probably other tablets can already do this? 4. iPad does not have Flash. For a lot of people this is a benefit due to Flash's well documented issues with low power devices. This is more of an issue with Flash than tablets. But since you're raging against all tablets: yes I'm certain Android tablets will support Flash. 5. This point is pretty much irrelevant. Cherry picking software to prove your point isn't really sincere. There is a lot of software made for Android/iPad that does not run on your netbook.

Anyways, I don't really mean to say netbooks are bad. I just think it is silly to act so smug about tablets and feign disbelief as to why anyone would want one. I see this a lot on Slashdot and it just seems more inflammatory than thoughtful.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[StuartHankins]

A netbook can't run apps from the Apple store.

And before you mod me troll, remember there are a LOT LOT LOT of apps available -- and people are spending considerable amounts of money on them. They wouldn't be doing that if they were all crap.

Many of these apps fulfill a simple purpose, auto-update themselves, back up themselves automatically, back up your data automatically, and can be shared between devices without repurchasing them. How's your "fat client" app on your netbook do that? It doesn't. Oh, you use a web app? So does an iPad.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked in iBooks, but the only book available from him is "The Making of an Elder Culture." I'll have to check if there's a Kindle version available of the book you mentioned.

It sounds interesting, I'd love to read it... on my iPad. It'd be like an explosion of ironic hipster proportions all over my iPad screen.

Re:Shiny Object Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

yes - computers are an oversold hype in education. But an iPad is different. It can directly replace many many pounds of expensive (and limited lifetime) books. There is a very practical reason for doing it

Heres a better idea

[Danieljury3]

Just give the students Netbooks. They cost less, are more open, and you can type faster on them.

Re:Heres a better idea

[Haedrian]

But they won't automatically make you cool as soon as you pick them up.

Anyone who wears a turtleneck defentally knows what cool is.

Re:Heres a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah seriously. Though I've never used one, from what I understand the iPad is totally unsuited to any serious productive work, of which there ought to be plenty in a university environment. I sure hope the engineering and CS departments there (if they have them) aren't doing this. I can program all day long in any language I please on my netbook but not possible on an iPad.

Re:Heres a better idea

[UnknowingFool]

For the most part, cheap netbooks come with Windows 7 Starter which has many limitations. Putting full Windows on netbooks is very problematic and brings additional costs. You can put Linux but that is probably more administration and customization that a school would like to handle. Also the assumption is that the intended purpose is for productivity (laptops). The iPad has limited productivity but is far better at consumption. If iPads are intended to be more on the side of consumption, then the iPad is ideally suited to this. For example, e-textbooks, playing video podcasts of lectures, etc.

It's

[Dunbal]

Nice to know that the Australian government is wealthy enough to afford overpriced hardware and makes its purchasing decisions based on marketing and not, say, system specifications.

Issues with support

[synack77]

As someone who supports devices like these in AU Schools, they're a PIA. Unless content is coming out as apps with discrete logins, the lack of the ability to log a user onto the unit (and accordingly logoff) makes them a pain when they're being used as a shared device (eg a trolley full of ipad's wheeled into a classroom for a lesson). It really seems to be the possibility of what this might achieve as opposed to anything it's actually doing today that's driving these purchases. Give it a year or so when the content is available and the device is properly integrated into the curriculum then I might have a different opinion, until then, they're still toys. Great for home, not good for school.

Re:Issues with support

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the PIA you're speaking of?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PITA

Re:Issues with support

[StuartHankins]

Well the solution is obvious, either encode logins into the apps or use web apps which contain logins. Pretty simple, actually.

It's the software

[BoxedFlame]

Nice to know that the Australian government is wealthy enough to afford overpriced hardware and makes its purchasing decisions based on marketing and not, say, system specifications.

I had a friend who derided my decision to buy an iPhone because it was, according to him, way overpriced for the specs. He bought some phone that had better specs than the iPhone but then was forced to run windows mobile on it which he hated. Oh he could install android on it, but then the phone was unable to _make phonecalls_.

Hardware specs are worth absolutely nothing without good software.

Re:It's the software

[Haedrian]

We're talking about the iPad here. The equivalent of the iPad is a netbook.

Are you suggesting that the iPad has better software support than a netbook?

Re:It's the software

[jo_ham]

No, the iPad is not equivalent to a netbook. It may do some of the same tasks that a netbook is designed to do, in much the same way that a netbook does some of the same tasks as a desktop machine, but the two things are just as disparate and the iPad and netbook.

A netbook would make a terrible electronic textbook compared to the iPad - the form factor of the tablet suits that use better. However, the netbook makes a better email machine if you use it more than casually for that purpose.

The software support he is talking about is how Apple is actually paying attention and developing its ecosystem (love it or hate it), so they have an infrastructure for distributing textbooks, and a platform for delivery. It's almost turnkey, which you won't get "out of the box" from a netbook, but that's not what it's for - they don;t care that you can do x, y and z on the netbook - they want something that is good at being an electronic textbook, and the iPad fits that role in this case.

Re:It's the software

[Anonymous Coward]

To some people, yes, the iPad probably does have better software than a netbook. It may not be the case for you, but your experience may vary from that of other people.

Re:It's the software

[Haedrian]

The thing is, that you could just as easily install e-book readers on a netbook, AND you'd have the added bonus of being able to run office software with a full keyboard and other programs that most people will be used to.

With the money needed to buy iPads for everyone, you could just as easily buy a really cheap netbook for everyone and buy some lisences to the e-book reader of your choice - if you don't pick a free one.

Re:It's the software

[jo_ham]

True, but the ebook reader just wouldn't be as nice on a netbook - there is something to be said for the tablet form factor with touch screen for that task, and it would make it easier to then sit at an actual computer when you wanted to use office software.

The price of a decent netbook (with a good screen) and the wifi-only iPad is not that great if it gets you a better form factor. I appreciate that the netbook will do more for you, but they really just want something that excels at a single task.

It doesn't have to be an iPad - it could be any tablet, it's just that the iPad has the most mature delivery system and setup of any of the offerings out there at the moment. I think I would prefer your idea if it was a netbook style device but in tablet form factor that you could wirelessly dock to a keyboard/mouse/stand as needed if you wanted that office software, but for the bulk of the time was just like the iPad.

This is definitely happening in the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who works in education technology, I guarantee that this is happening widespread across the U.S. as well. Nearly everyone I talk to is all excited about using their work budget to buy an iPad or 5, for whatever ridiculous "pilot" projects they can dream up.

We were just getting past the "iPods are neato" phase, too. It's a shame that we had to buy 100 of them for each school before someone realized that audio recordings aren't as much a good way to absorb information as they are a gimmick that fails as soon as the novelty wears off.

Buy 2 devices cause kindle = 1 trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you write your whole years curriculum into an app that emails the homework to a student account at the end of every period cause you pushed a button? Sure a one trick pony might be better JUST for textbooks, but want to do another thing ? (anything?) can't- go buy another device. Oops wasted money on one trick kindles.

You microsft-android shills (all the same) are SOOOOOOdesperate to make apple look bad- you don't realze you're the ugly girl everyone passed on all night- now the bar is closing, and you're still alone. Even the ugly guys won't talk to you.

and what did they pay

[Anonymous Coward]

ebay and places ow see them as cheap as 30$

Disaster by bad planning

[bluefoxlucid]

This is a shoot-from-the-hip effort. Abolishing textbooks for Kindle books would be great; abolishing textbooks to move to Kindle today would be a disaster due to lack of content. We're not prepared for the iPad to be worthless; they'll all find that electronic devices (not iPad, ALL electronic devices) are worthless by this attempt, and go back to just books. There's no consideration of content availability etc and maturity of the platform, much less consideration of what platform or what goals you have. This is mainly an "OOH SHINY" reaction.

Color and video

[MikeMo]

It's because textbooks really *do* require color. Color is essential when conveying certain complex concepts, let alone the need for pictures.

I have dreamed for years about how rich a learning experience could be if textbooks had motion and video. For example, imagine how easy it would be to explain the difference between frequency and phase if you could have a couple of sine waves on a graph that change as one drags a slider back and forth? How would you even do that on a Kindle?

Then there's the whole app thing, where you can build applications that target specific learning needs.

Kindle is really great as a replacement for printed novels, but it just doesn't cut it for the education market.

durability

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... multihundred dollar iPad vs sub $100 textbook. texbook life is >5 years, ipad? Pencill and notebook vs nifty device which is hard to type and make precise drawings on.
Textbook can take 1000G shock and be thrown in backpack or locker and be not much the worse for wear. iPad maybe can take a 50G shock, if it's in the right orientation and iPads probably aren't backpack/locker/lunchroom tolerant

An interesting experiment, and worth doing, if only to get empirical validation of the inherent practicality of the traditional paper solution.

There are a lot of "affordances" from the book/paper/pencil scheme that the iPad (or Kindle) just doesn't have.

Apples for teachers

[hex0D]

Historically, Apple has done a good job of getting their products in schools. I still remember how annoyed I was at having to learn MS-DOS after using nothing but Apples in school during the late 80's. My attitude then was, and still is to a lesser extent, why teach me on this device when the people doing actual work and making money are much more likely to be using something else?

Re:Apples for teachers

[jo_ham]

Surely this is an argument that has been levelled against Linux in the past - why learn it if everyone uses Windows?

Surely the goal should be to avoid teaching a monoculture, so the more types of computer you are exposed to while learning the better. I know I would have much preferred to learn on Apple or Linux machines when I was at school - I already knew everything being "taught" in the IT classes on Windows because I had a Windows box at home. It would have been less wasted time if I had been exposed to something other than Windows.

Money grab indeed

[zerofoo]

Book publisher money grabs are not new. I remember having to buy the same calculus book 3 times in college - Why?

The publisher moved around the chapters and slightly altered some of the problems. Never mind that calculus hasn't changed in hundreds of years.

These "new editions" instantly made the old books worth zero. If you took a chance on an old used textbook, you ran the risk of not being able to do the assigned work.

Book publishers are money grabbing scum, and they don't give a damn if poor students go broke trying to get an education.

The iPad is just another tool in their toolbox.

-ted

Re:Money grab indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

This is non-sense. It is the school that is money grabbing their students.

The school gets to decide the textbook, so why choose a new textbook when the old was fine?

In the case of iPad textbooks, wouldn't it make sense for the government to create open source text books to use and allow teachers to include new chapters if they wish?

It is the best interest of publishers to produce reclycled old material and make students pay for it. But in it is in the best interest of teachers, students and the governement to create open source textbooks.

Don't tell me this couldn't be done, because then Linux would not exist.

There is no bias here whatsoever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely nothing biased about this article. I'm sure that schools are ONLY trialing the iPad (and there aren't other competitors included in the trials). Also 4 schools != iPad crazy. There are 9500 schools in Australia, and just because the science faculty of a single university is handing them out (probably as incentive to join), doesn't mean they replace books.

I'm not sure if I'm less impressed with the obvious bias in the article, or the Slashdot editors who didn't even confirm that the description matched the story.

Textbooks vs iPad/Kindle

[David_Hart]

I'm taking a couple of online class this fall towards a Masters degree. I just bought a Kindle and decided that it would be a cool experiment to buy the Kindle version of the text books. That way I could have them with me all the time without having to lug 150lbs of textbooks. Plus it would let me do some reading during down-times at work (the classes are work sponsored).

However, after only a week I found that the inability to see a whole page at a time and the inability to flip through the pages to find something quickly within the chapters that are part of the reading assignment for the week makes it much harder to learn. I've taught myself how to scan and read pages and paragraphs. I've also taught myself how to scan through pages to find relevent material. You just can't do that with an e-reader. As a result, I have ordered the physical text books. I'll still use the digital editions when I go on vacation later this fall, but my primary reading material will be in book form.

That being said, it's quite possible that someone starting out with an e-reader in school and continuing on through College would almost do as well as I do with text books. I still think that e-readers (Kindle or iPad) have a long way to go. To finally be usefull, you need to be able to copy and paste, search within a chapter range, etc.

David

Re:Textbooks vs iPad/Kindle

[david_thornley]

As far as reading goes, the iPad and Kindle are two very different things. The Kindle is doubtless very good for reading sequential text, like novels. My Nook is. However, like all eInk displays, it's not possible to page through a book rapidly, and the search facilities are limited.

The iPad is much more of a computer, and has something much more similar to a computer screen. It is possible to change the display much faster, and it comes with copy-and-paste and search capabilities. It's much more of what you need in a textbook reader, although probably no better (quite possibly worse) as a novel reader.

Textbook Scam

[sureshot007]

I worked at a university, in a department that required students to purchase a laptop and a DVD with their books on it. It was a medical school, so you know those books aren't cheap. There was a $3000 annual fee for the DVD license, and it was taken right from their tuition. Students could no longer purchase used books to save a few bucks. On the other hand, it is very nice to be able to search a volume for a specific word or phrase...

Re:Textbook Scam

[RMH101]

I can't imagine reading long textbooks on a laptop screen. Ugh.

Waiting for MeeGo.

[drc003]

This looks to me to be the best Tablet OS alternative to an iPad. I will wait for a few models to be released and get some time in before making a decision. Hopefully there will be some good hardware options.

Trialling?

[David Chappell]

So, when we try something it is a trial and when we do a trial we are trialling? Got it. This has possibilities:

"I am trialling on a new hat."
"The trialling of the accused starts tomorrow."
"Trial this cookie, you'll like it."
"I am trialling to open a bank account."

Parallel example: One who administers is an administrator. What does an administrator do? He administrates.

Re:Trialling?

[scuzzlebutt]

I suppose you can verb any noun you want to, if you trial hard enough.

Re:Trialling?

[neminem]

Yes. You can verb any noun, and you can noun any verb, English is great like that. But generally speaking, when you chain them together, the newly-minted noun-from-verb-from-noun shouldn't mean exactly the same thing. Case in point, "administer" and "administrate" aren't *really* synonyms. "Administrate" makes me think of bureaucracy; "administer" makes me think of being given shots. And "trial", the verb-from-noun only covers the "see whether you like something by trying it" sense. Your third example, I would be willing to accept, though it's somewhat awkwardly constructed. And the first example sounds you're trying out something unspecified, but the new hat is the platform. (I'd accept "I'm trialing a new hat", though again, awkward - it tends to imply a much longer trial period than would generally be run for the sake of a hat, unless it was the new $10,000 mega-techno-hat.)

Hi, I overthink things.

Re:Waste of Money for epSos.de

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, why giving them Kindles, if you can give them old Walkmans with audio books instead.
Who needs broken Video support anyway ?

I guess I'm just too old...

[cvtan]

Being an old retired Electric Engineer dude of 62, I find I am just not jumping up and down salivating over the latest gadgets. The iPad is just the latest thing I don't need. Why is this better than a laptop? Weren't touch screens tried on HP terminals many years ago and failed because the screen gets full of fingerprints etc.? (I have >10 PCs/laptops in my home so I am no Luddite.) Texting is mostly useless since I can't type on a tiny keyboard and it costs 15cents a shot. Yesterday a girl on the news said she had sent 10000 text messages in one month. I don't have that much to say. Facebook is a big time waster and Farmville is like digital valium. I would rather blow up teenagers on Unreal or QuakeLive. I am supposed to watch movies on my tiny cell phone screen. Why would I do this when there are big TVs? Oh, I forgot about the "coolness" factor. I am supposed to surf the web on my small phone. I already pay for RoadRunner (with recent price increase to $55/mo), why would I pay $100 for a cell data plan for the same data? So when I hear that iPad$ will replace books, I am mystified. I guess I am no longer part of the "target demographic". Sniff. Wait, am I now off topic? Sometimes I get confused. PS: I have had PCs since 1983 ($200 to replace a floppy drive!), and so far Windows 7 works wonderfully well, much better than Windows 1.0.

Real World 101: Planning and Coping

[dazedNconfuzed]

Yes, the iPad can be left behind. Yes, the battery may drain. Pretty soon you learn to not do that, and prepare Plan Bs. It's part of coming to grips with reality, where whining doesn't solve the problem - planning and coping does. The charger and cord are small, so carry them everywhere (I do); universities are outfitting ever more desks with power outlets. Those who don't learn to prepare will fail, just like the real world. This isn't high school, nobody will hold your hand thru the day any more.

Yes, the iPad isn't as convenient as a textbook for page flipping or resolution. It's getting there though, with much faster response than Kindle et al, and ability to pinch/zoom for fast scaling. It is more convenient for sheer data volume, where another book doesn't add another gram to device weight. There are tradeoffs between speed/resolution vs. weight/volume - just like the real world.

Nothing is perfect, there are always tradeoffs. The iPad is resolving many issues more than any other high technology has before - not perfect yet, and always some limitations, but may remaining issues are passing. Resolution will soon be a non-issue with the onset of "retina display"; page-flipping will improve with processor speed and better GUIs. Cloud computing deprecates the importance of having a particular device in-hand, reducing replacement (from loss or breakage) to little more than device cost(!). In the meantime, it brings advancement of rapid updates, interaction, video, etc. which processed dead tree carcasses lack.

Sigh...

[Petersko]

"That's better than having Apple tell kids what apps are suited for their iEducation "

Good grief. Yeah, somewhere there's an Apple board fiendishly plotting to control education through app development. Don't be retarded. I have a bunch of programming manuals on my iPad in PDF format. Apple didn't sign off on them. And if they want to build custom apps, all the school needs is a different license type and they can build and deploy apps that don't use the app store to all their iPads, bypassing the whole approval process.

But please don't let reality get in the way of a good android rant.

how, in the world, was that garbage modded up

[JesseDegenerate]

how is this insightful? bad slashdot, bad. How does being open fit into your equation? If Apple ever had a monopoly in schools? are you kidding? Where did you go to school? When i was growing up they had what I would call a monopoly in the schooling system, it never hurt anyone. They eventually put new PC's in the school just because of cost decisions. In this case though, every linux and android tablet costs more. More. They have less dev's and have contracts. That's what we want to give our kids, right? Yeah "harmony" they def should have spent $700 each on android tablets that won't support android market place, where the only apps your going to get with the correct screen resolution are the ones that came from your hardware manufacturer. Clearly that's better.

Not necessarily a waste of money

[phirewind]

Depending on the cost of the e-books, the iPad/tablet/whatever solution may actually be less expensive over the course of 4 years than just textbooks. 6 to 8 books a year, at 40 to 100 dollars each (college books are freaking insane) is a cost of anywhere from about $1000 to $3000 over the course of a 4-year education. At that level, it doesn't take too much of a discount on e-books to cover the cost of a tablet device. Also, as much as I dislike Apple's stone grip on their devices (being a software dev, I like to have options and hate being told I can't build something), the iPad is a better real-world fit because of it's restrictions. Less work for IT when you have technology that won't let you do anything "cool" enough to screw it up. As for it's use in general as a replacement for paper books, I still prefer the physical book for many things, but the possibilities for the device in this context are very interesting.

Don't limit it to the iPad

[bluie-]

It seems to me that the first real step to moving to electronic books would be coming up with a cross-platform framework that is easy, intuitive and powerful for interacting with a text book. Once you have that, then it should be made to work well with whatever platform you're running. It seems really stupid to simply design something to work with an iPad, when nearly everyone already has a laptop of some kind. And other than the touch screen, what benefit does an iPad have anyway? A well designed system could accept mouse gestures to work as well as finger gestures, without getting your monitor all greasy in the process.

Well

[Sycraft-fu]

There are a few specialty areas I can think of where a tablet is a superior device. Document reading would be one of them, when you are just looking at information and browsing through it, a keyboard just gets in the way. However you are right in that most things people want to do with them, a Netbook does better. E-mail is a great example. One of our students is a Mac fanboy and he has an iPad of course., I watch him peck out personal e-mails on it and it works fine, but not near as well as when he uses his work desktop to send an e-mail. A real keyboard is just better.

I would compare it to a toaster oven vs a real oven. There are some things a toaster oven is particularly well suited to. However an oven can also perform all the same tasks, and can also perform more tasks. So while you might choose to get a toaster oven, you aren't going to toss your primary oven for it.

Same shit with a tablet and a computer. Tablets have a few functions they excel at, some more that they can do ok, and others they aren't suited for at all. So they may make a nice toy in addition to your computer, but they aren't a replacement for it.

I will tell you exactly what will happen!

[DarthVain]

1) Tuition will go up.
2) Criminals will target schools.
3) Tablets and iPads and Laptops, etc... will be stolen.
4) Students will be required to have them and be forced to buy more.
5) Repeat steps 1-4 several million times.
6) Parents will try and sue school.
7) School will say tough bananas, you should have kept your dorm room locked.
8) Repeat steps 6-7 several thousand times.
9) In the end Professors will ban them in their classrooms anyway, as all the students will be playing video games, on facebook, or doing something/anything but paying attention to what the professor is teaching.

[Acadia University]

rilly...

[airdrummer]

i guess mikeFM was counting on /.ers' lack of personal experience w/children;-)

otoh, i was babysitting a friend's 1 y.o. granddaughter, and she grabbed my remote, pointed it @ the tv & started pushing buttons...when that didn't work, she just found the big on button right on the front panel;-)

My district might soon...

[nickb64]

My school district is trialing them in Middle School Algebra...

Kno

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing they never heard of the kno when they all rushed out to buy apple's over priced toys, which isn't bad as a general purpose device for someone who doesn't care about apple's restrictions and likes the brand. Personally I prefer android, but for education the kno will be so much better. I wouldn't be surprised if apple restricts the purchasing of ebooks on the iPad to buying them from the itunes store only and charges as much as a regular textbook.

Given that college books cost ~$500 per semester

[crovira]

and a kid is going to be stuck going through eight semesters, its no wonder that everybody's trying to reduce the load.

If students can just get the approved text book through a fast, inexpensive download, instead of screwing around trying NOT to have to buy a textbook made of inert dead trees attached to some textbook publisher's website anyway, they are more likely to do so rather that trying to do without.

One iPad can replace all of those books (1/2/3 books per course [6/12/18 books per semester {24/48/72 books before graduation}]) with just ONE easy to carry piece of plastic and metal.

No wonder EVERYBODY is for them, students, faculty and staff...

Re:No. IPad Vs Android Tablets

[lsatenstein]

It is not which is better, it is which one is in and has gained the market. The market winner will have the majority of software developed for it.

d'oh!...

[airdrummer]

oops, she was just under 2 yrs old, but not talking yet...

Nice slashdot writeup, pity about the article

[Anonymous Coward]

"Schools and universities right around Australia had jumped headfirst into trials of Apple’s hyped iPad"
yeah well, let's see....

"Western Australia’s Department of Education and Training revealed this week that some schools in the state were displaying an increased interest in iPads and tablet devices"
Right around? This country I don't half mind has around 20mil living in it. Sure, that's not much more than New York (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=uspopulation&met=population&idim=state:36000&dl=en&hl=en&q=new+york+population), but Western Australia has just over 2mil people (somewhere between New Mexico and Nevada in population - let's say closer to Nevada as wikipedia only has 2006 census data for Australia and I couldn't be assed trying to get at the Australian Bureau of Statistics data). And the article says that *some* schools are displaying an increased interest in iPads. Sweet. And?

"In Victoria, the Brumby Labor state government got on the bandwagon early, announcing plans to buy 500 iPads for trials throughout the state soon after the iPad launched in Australia in late May. Those devices have made their way into seven schools in the state.".
According to http://www.liveinvictoria.gov.au , there are just under 1600 high schools in Victoria. A state comprising for just over a quarter of the country's population. And (assuming one per school) a third of them are announcing plans, subject of course to cutbacks and reconsiderations, of purchasing one iPad. Or maybe fewer schools are planning on buying more than one? Maybe 250 schools want two each? Excluding of course the civil servants in the Victorian Department of Education that would want/qualify for a freebie - about 50 there, I guess? And so far seven schools (out of just under 1600 in the state) have one/some. Awesome.

"The University of Adelaide jumped into the handheld computer revolution headfirst last week when it was announced last week that students who enroll in science degrees will receive a free iPads." Well this stands up to a little more scrutiny - even if the article does link to another article on its own site before yielding the original statement by a professor at the University of Adelaide. Having said that, when I did my bachelor's degree (yeah, tbh, a fair while ago), fees ran around AU$2500 per semester. AU$700 per iPad vs AU$40000 per degree in fees? Not such a big deal - especially if the university in question doesn't have the same ability to deal with continual slashing of the federal tertiary education budget by drawing in full fee paying international students that some Sydney universities do.

"The Queensland Government confirmed that a dozen “small” schools are involved in a trial where “handheld” computers – and other devices such as computers, data loggers, MP3 recorders and USB microscopes — are used as education tools to compliment and enhance science classes."
Sorry, I didn't catch any "i" words there (Although I did notice the mention of a dozen schools. Queensland having around 80% of Victoria's population (Yes, according to wikipedia, but how wrong could it be?) that would be a dozen out of almost 1300 high schools).

Point being, its a non-story, But props on the lads at delimiter.com.au for trying to make it otherwise - might as well do something while you're bored on a slow news day, and I'm sure they could have done much worse.

i-pad and another completely different subject....

[D-sl4y0r]

i wish our school got a friggen i-pad......parents were thinking about getting one just for e-books! but i think my dad just wants to get one because he can. meanwhile my older brother is so anti apple, he was going to get an i-phone. i asked him do you hate apple anymore? he replied yes i still hate. so now hes going to get a samsung galaxy s

lols..

[Wovel]

Unless they find a carrier to give away those Android tablets, no one will much care when the "wave" hits...

Don't sit so close to the TV.

[noseblunter]

Reading anything backlit causes eye strain. If you don't think so, you don't read very much on the computer. This is the whole point of e-readers, they use an Etch-a-sketch style screen, which is easy on the eyes (not to mention energy efficient). Kids staring into what is effectively a bright lamp all day isn't going to make for happy optometrists, and certainly not happy students. But worst of all, backlit displays don't work well under sunlight, so studying in the park is out, or at least when it's nice outside. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision_syndrome