Slashdot Mirror
Melbourne College May Give iPad To Every Student
daria42 writes "It looks like Apple's hyped iPad tablet may find a functional use beyond the early technology adopter set. In Australia, a Melbourne University college recently completed a trial where a limited number of students were given an iPad to aid in their studies. The outcome? The college has now recommended every student be given one of the Apple devices, following in the footsteps of the University of Adelaide, which is handing out iPads to every first year science student. Sure beats lugging around the old textbooks!"
Don't you mean "Adding to tuition costs"?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Great... sounds like a knew jerk reaction of some stupid MBA...
How nice of the school to spend its students money on trinkets suitable only for consumption of entertainment. I'd be suing, if I attended there.
With the University "giving" one to every student, can we assume that the students are the ones grabbing their own ankles?
(No, I don't go to an Australian University...)
The main problem with the iPad educationally is the fact that the content is not there. Out of the 10 or so texts I purchased this semester, NONE were available for the iPad. Now a few were available through...alternate means, but a good number of them (e.g. the heavy ones) were not available digitally (and I know where to look).
I've had a lot of problems on my University's Wi-Fi that aren't present on Windows/Linux PCs, Macs, or any other devices. Complete inability to multitask is a problem. Lack of Flash/Java support (the latter is used in a number of educational software systems).is a problem. The iPad is nigh useless for taking notes because of the lack of a keyboard; if you get a dock, you might as well be carrying a 14" or smaller laptop around because it's comparable in size and heft.
Positive notes would be the battery life (it really does last 8+ hours) and the simple nature (can't fuck it up). Instant boot is nicet. It's "neat to have", but I'd be pissed if it were added to the tuition - it occupies a strange middle ground between my iPod Touch (which is instant on and pretty much always connected to Wi-Fi for quick lookups) and my Latitude E6400 (which is fairly lightweight, decently powerful, and gets 4 hours of battery life without turning absolutely everything off/to minimums).
My point is, educationally the iPad - or an iPad like device - could be great. My experience suggests that it's little more than a bragging point in real life though - the limitations on practical use would make it a hard sell to me. The limited functionality relegates it to a toy-like device - bigger and more difficult to lug around than a smartphone, but not substantially lighter than a laptop. If the books were there, I could see more of an allure. But they aren't.
“iPads are effective, durable, reliable and achieve their educational aims of going further, faster and with more fun,” the college wrote.
Now there's a line straight from marketing that manages to mean jack shit. Might be this is an Apple subsidized push akin to Microsoft's educational license deals; Get em hooked before they enter the workforce.
Ice Cream has no bones.
"It looks like Apple's hyped iPad tablet may find a functional use beyond the early technology adopter set."
Is it possible to mention Apple or Apple devices on Slashdot without gratuitous and misguided denigration, even if implied?
The iPad is a perfectly workable tablet device. In fact, it is the cheapest tablet device in its class (quality level, feature set) and also the first to market, and also the one with the largest number of applications and the largest installed user base.
It clearly has uses beyond the early technology adopter set given the anecdotal array of adoptions in vertically integrative environments/scenarios.
In my own case, I use it for teaching. The iPad offers a minimal, lightweight platform on which to track attendance, grades, lesson plans, and so on and to connect them to projection devices for showing media of various kinds, from outlines and presentation slides to YouTube videos that supplement the lecture.
Come on. This is supposed to be a technology blog. Instead, it's a bunch of why teenagers with strong, if ill-informed, political-affective poses.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I hope there is an opt out and get a tuition discount option.
Does apple give kickbacks or bulk rate on things like this? Perhaps an apple holy warrior happens to be in charge.
Sent from my PDP-11
If Melbourne College were giving the Motorola Xoom instead of an Apple product, would there be as many butthurt comments here?
These last few years must have really sucked for Apple haters. Guess what fellas, it's gonna keep getting worse if Apple continues to out-execute everyone else. I'd recommend unbunching those panties before it's too late.
as Linux slid into obsolescence and/or irrelevance alongside the Windows-vs-Linux debate. Basically, it's one more community that time has left behind and that doesn't realize it, a network of enthusiasts-of-the-anachronistic.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It sure does beat lugging around those old textbooks. Unless you fancy being able to mark them up, re-sell them, or refer to them in 2020...
The professors will probably adore the levels of class participation and attention enabled by everyone having a school-approved internet browsing/PMP device...
My criticism of this scheme isn't iPad specific(though the education sector often does leap on Apple-related tech crazes); but more general:
We still don't have something that can replace a notepad and a mechanical pencil when it comes to ease and unobtrusiveness of taking notes(keyboards are faster for straight text, and produce better final copy; but are a bit clicky for class and, unless you are a LaTeX god, slower for equations, diagrams, and similar). Somewhat similarly, your basic dead tree actually works pretty well for textbook-style distribution. Durable, can be marked according to personal preference, can be held onto or resold at will, printing them doesn't actually cost all that much.
Ebooks have some compelling convenience advantages, particularly for light reading(casually pick up a novel over whispernet, etc.) or for technical reference(grep obscure_command_foo...); but they aren't going to do much about the central complaints with textbooks: Absurd prices and constant version churn(in fact, with DRM, they likely make those worse). Unless this "Hooray! Tablets!!!!" scheme is integrated into some way of actually re-making how the course is taught, I predict no savings, major distraction, and people accustomed to scribbling in marginal notes learning exactly why UI elements in capacitive touchscreen systems are as large as they are...
On the plus side, Melbourne College's Angry Birds team will be a Division 1 powerhouse....
Great hardware, stable software, and features that actually work as advertised are what these people are hating on.
If only all of those Windows CE devices had functioned according to advertised specs, or the Palm devices, or the Symbian devices, the landscape would be radically different right now. But instead all of them bullet-pointed a whole bunch of features without asterisks that carried Empire-State-Building-sized asterisks in practice, while Apple continues to deliver on their promises (good and bad) more or less exactly.
Lesson: Apple knows how to build things that work. Others know how to advertise things that work that don't actually work. Slashdotters don't care whether something works, as long as it appears as unrefined and kludgy enough to emphasize their "geek" credentials as they stand next to it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Meanwhile, Slashdot continues to brush the neckbeard hairs out of their $350 Linux netbooks.
Spot on.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
My kids are 5 - I hope textbooks have gone the way of the DoDo by the time they hit high school.
The problem in the US is the textbooks themselves. Can you even buy most of them as ebooks yet? Most of them are way overpriced, averaging $150 each in grad classes (from personal experience). We really need some sort of open source textbooks for common classes.
$200 textbook are better then $160 locked down e-books that some times have a Expiration date.
On the bright side this isn't like what Idaho is facing where some unqualified idiot was mistakenly elected and then turns around and drops a plan that his republican cronies support but the rest of the population doesn't that involves firing teachers and replacing them with laptops and online classes.
Yeah, they want to give the laptops to 9th graders and expect them to survive 4 years.
And the businesses who would directly benefit by supplying the online classes gave donations to help him get elected.
What would be better is if the colleges offered their texts normally bound at local printers through open standards that could be used with any tablet. This is like only allowing Trapper Keepers, lame.
But even according to the article, this is supplementary. Meaning that it doesn't replace the laptop that the student probably already owns and likely won't do much for the cost of text books. Additionally, if you're looking for savings, the only savings that I see is the savings on chiropractic visits when your back gets bent out of shape from carrying books around.
At this stage, I don't personally see any reason why a school should go out and buy the iPads for the students. Seems to me to be a waste of student fees and/or taxpayer dollars. Now, in the future when they cost less, can do more and there's a legitimate need, then perhaps it will be time to consider the matter. Right now though it's a waste of money that could be spent on more important things.
Q: How can you tell if a blonde been using you iPad?
A: There are highlighter marks all over the screen.
IF buying an iPad were actually a replacement for buying texbooks, then this really would be a good idea. I would gladly pay out of pocket for an iPad if it allowed me to exclusively use ebook versions of my textbooks. In fact, I would even refrain from pirating those ebooks if they were sold for a reasonable price
In reality though, I doubt it would work that way. Because ebooks are easily pirated, textbook publishers would have a hard time sustaining their racket if universities started switching over. For some reason, universities seem to actually care about what happens to publishers, so I can't imagine that many universities would be willing to require professors to choose only textbooks that have an ebook version available.
Even if it did happen, professors would just say "exams are open-book, but no computers are allowed." This would force students to spend $200+ on a physical copy even though they already paid for iPads with PDFs of the textbooks.
Basically, nothing that makes education cheeper or more convenient for students will ever work. Universities don't care about students.
it's cheap enough now!
*rimshot*
The eee tablet line includes multiple products.
The capacitive touch product that is in the same class as the iPad runs Android. Fewer apps.
The Windows product that has more apps has a Wacom digitizer, not capacitive touch. Different product class. Not comparable.
You are, in short, wrong.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I own an iPad and think it's great, but in order to use one effectively in an environment like a large institution, it needs to be integrated. Textbooks on an iPad? Great... do they have them yet? Does the College have apps written that take the place of, say, campus info guides etc. Until things like that can be addressed, it's not really going to add anything.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Way to fucking go!
Especially when you can get the last edition or a used copy for 10-40% of the price of a new textbook. I spend less on textbooks than people who buy only electronic copies.
Great Intellect...
Uhm, methinks you're talking out your ass, and it shows.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It's a shiny gadget*, of course they'll say yes. The fact that 20% said "no" really means that more like 90% would have said no if they were paying for it themselves (and of the 10% who say "yes", 90% of them will be getting a big allowance from rich parents).
{*} Too shiny in fact. Is it really just me who can't see anything but reflected lights on iPod screens?
No sig today...
"Too shiny in fact. Is it really just me who can't see anything but reflected lights on iPod screens?"
It seems like only yesterday people were complaining about the "low contrast matte" screens that Macs used to sport. For some people it does not matter what Apple does, they will always have an emotional reaction against it.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
It's a shiny gadget*, of course they'll say yes. The fact that 20% said "no" really means that more like 90% would have said no if they were paying for it themselves (and of the 10% who say "yes", 90% of them will be getting a big allowance from rich parents).
I think it depends upon how much of the difference would be made up by the cost of textbooks. Most textbooks are somewhat cheaper in electronic form. Over the course of four years, I bet at least half of the cost could be made up.
Moreover, I think your estimates are a bit low. Given the number of macs I see on campus every day, there are plenty of people with money to burn.
There's also convenience--which wouldn't be realized by most of the students if the program were voluntary, but which will likely benefit the majority of students. Heck, making the program mandatory means that other massive things can be done--completely eliminating paper books (eventually) which has benefits beyond the school.
{*} Too shiny in fact. Is it really just me who can't see anything but reflected lights on iPod screens?
I have an iPad, and I couldn't agree more. I bought a matte screen protector--not to protect the screen, but to cut the glare.
Except you don't spend less than the people who have 5,000 ebooks which they spent $0 on.
Which is probably the biggest advantage for college students.
"but not substantially lighter than a laptop."
Perhaps you have a different definition of "substantially" than I do. The iPad2 will weigh in at 1.3 pounds. That seems quite a bit lighter than most laptops.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
textbook form factors, are actually not so differently priced (Kindle DX ~$300, iPad WiFi ~$500) when you consider the differences in capabilities.
And are you seriously suggesting that the /. crowd of today would behave any differently if the story were about Kindle purchases for students?
I would be just as critical of the Slashdot response to Kindle, which—if you go back and look—has been very similar to the Slashdot response to iPad, despite both devices' obvious utility and popularity. In fact, the Slashdot crowd takes popularity amongst actual users to be a bad thing, taking the role of the Basil Fawlties of IT: "The world of technology would be perfect if it wasn't for all of these damned users!"
Disclaimer: I own both devices. But I also have plastic disk file full of about 130 Slackware Linux floppies and a set of SunOS media on DC600 tapes. That gives me a little bit of cred. Yes, the much (not all) of the Slashdot crowd has taken on ludditic and technoemo characteristics in recent years. And the story quality has gone down as well. The general public is now more geeky and technological than the Slashdot crowd.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'd rather waste my tax money in public education (even if you might consider some of the spending irrelevant, which should be debated) than use it to fatten military contractor's wallets.
Not trying to create a false dichotomy, my point is that complaining about taxpayers money going towards education as a bad thing might just be one of the most reckless attitudes I can imagine for a society as a whole.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
shrill, but it's not like I just got here. And despite the decline in quality, I've continued to try to like Slashdot.
But now this dynamic has emerged by which the editors post a slanted Apple story and the crowd responds by rabidly tearing Apple and Apple products to bits... once again... often in factually incorrect ways.
It all reeks of the propaganda and mob response, turned toward profit. Apple-bait from eds, Apple-decry en masse from posters and mods. Two stories later, Apple-bait from eds, immediate Apple-decry en masse from posters and mods. And of course the content of their discourse is (ironically) the sheeple-ness of Apple users.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
You're an idiot. Complaints against both matte and glossy screens are numerous for every television, laptop, monitor, phone, and tablet in existence.
Shocker: people use their devices differently than others (like reading in the fucking sunlight for instance).
People like you are why there are so many Apple haters. If you'd just shut up they'd go away.
When I was in Uni (not too long ago) I was swept up by the promise posted on many a form (Linux ones mostly) that in the not-too-distant-future, we'd be living in a technological paradise where open source, open platforms reigned supreme, where proprietary standards and closed systems were the minority. This was going to occur because people wanted and were eventually going to DEMAND openness in their technology, and hence anyone who didn't capitulate would find themselves without market share.
Goddamnit. We're going backwards. Either that or we were all damn naive then. But I was in Uni I suppose, and didn't understand exactly how the human mind works.
As an aside - iPads really are quite nice, and I can definitely see the benefit in a well designed tablet. I just wish someone made a well designed Linux-based tablet at a reasonable price which could kick Apple's arse for a change. The Xoom's cost and current limitation to the US means it's not.
You seem to think (unlike nearly everyone else) that the primary competitor to iOS isn't Android on touchscreen but Windows on Wacom. I presume the primary competitor to Android, therefore, is OSX-on-iMac?
Meanwhile, your link points to a device with a 5 hour battery life. Enough said.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Whatever was the point in making 30 children/young adults/adults write down what someone else had written for an hour per class?
Surely with internal networks, Applications, podcasts, classes can move past "right, write down all this to kill time"? I hated it when I was in high school, who wants to write for 30 minutes+ straight?
Why not allow students to copy/save/download/whatever resources to their tablet computers (iPad first of course, but with provisions for any standard format to work), and then spend class time on working WITH the information they have, rather than gathering it? More "tests", "quizes" etc, you know, seeing if the stuff has stuck in their minds?
About bloody time. A local school (located "in the ghetto" too!) was giving all students iPads, and JUST before iPad 2 came out too! Too funny! If I were the principal I'd be in tears, thats a hundred grand, made obsolete in a matter of days!
For people of all ages, its hard to beat learning on an iPad. Yes, its most noticeable with younger children, who can fall in love with touching their fingers to a screen that reacts, and engages their mind. But its "cool" for teenagers, and very capable.
EVERYONE is going to have a computer, going to have a tablet. Why not embrace that? If the schools cannot afford to give them, or students to own them, sure, why not still allow paper? Lets not fight progress.
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Why would people complain about a matte, sunlight readable screen?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
They don't. That's when they complain about glossy screens. Matte screens generally receive flak for blur or brightness/contrast. It's simple preference.
i'm still waiting for the paperless office. just adds useless weight rather than reducing it. the uni probly gets cheap ipads (which it can profit from with higher fees) and steveo gets some pr just wait till they start moving their academic management system to ipad... they wont need admin staff then so even more money saved (don't worry about the catastrophic data loss and it nighmare that ensues... students are smart enough to get by)
I love the idea of ebooks for university. I think it is an idea who's time has not only come but we are now late on. Have a device (my suggestion would be something more like a Kindle) that automatically can get all the books, all the course notes, etc. Does mean you can't take notes on them, but then nobody is stopping you from using a normal pen and paper, or for that matter smart pens can be used to tie the notes to context, like what page you are on.
Regardless if done right it would be much easier for students, and cheaper too. While the device would have an upfront cost, the reduced costs in printing and distributing books and notes would make up for it easily.
However the problem is that you have to take on the textbook publishing industry first. Right now, you can't get most, if any, textbooks on a digital reader. That means you aren't in fact saving money or hassle. Students will still have to carry physical books around for most things.
So if universities want to do this step one is to fix textbook publishing. No I'm not saying it'll be simple, but that is where you gotta start. No point in handing out expensive hardware until the content is there for it.
This is just a stunt.
I guarantee this whole thing was spearheaded by an Apple fanboy, or more than one of them. Stuff like this, particularly when it involves a company like Apple that is expensive, happens because of fanboys. A person in the position to make the decision in the university likes the shiny technology and buys in to the hype, and thus pushes it, regardless of actual utility. Since they don't have actual reasons for it, marketing terms are used. It is a case of "I think these are cool and so we should use them even though there's no good reason."
University is a long time ago for me, but I learned by writing my notes, rewriting them, condensing them, further condensing them, until eventually I got down to 3-4 sheets of paper for a semester's worth of info. It was the very act of thinking about the notes and rewriting them that taught me the material.
I've no doubt my grades would have suffered if I had been able to get copies of the lecture notes at the push of a button.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
did you even TRY to get the textbooks on TPB?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
And what do you think happens when people save money (they don't put it under their mattresses)? It goes in the bank. The bank can make more loans, a huge problem ATM. And investment? Oh noes, more investment in stocks and bonds, which turn into R&D and expansion and jobs.
I guess it's much better when the government "stimulates" (more like sedates) the economy by stealing from the private sector and sending out one-time checks. It's like giving yourself a transfusion from your right arm to your left arm, and spilling half the blood on the floor.
And BTW, Reagan and Clinton cut cap gains, and the economy flourished each time. How anyone can look at the Reagan era and say "trickle down" didn't work is laughable. 19 straight years of Dow growth (1981-1999), after 20 flat years.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Now farm subsidies are a Republican fetish? Since when? It's both sides of the aisle pandering to the Iowa caucuses that keep farm subsidies alive.
As for DoD, well that's what the Constitution actually says Congress is supposed to spend money on. I'd prefer not to imagine the world without 11 Nimitz-class carriers floating about.
And tax breaks for the rich? They pay all the taxes (the top-5% pays almost 68% of the taxes!), so they are likely candidates for tax breaks.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Sounds very antiquated, I'd imagine for *most* students, a sort of "learning by rote", never to be revisited.
Whats the point in just taking up the required time, when students could be *learning* in class? Hence more tests etc, applications could easily handle this, and for all age groups on the same hardware. Multiple choice, answers to be typed in and marked by teachers. Imagine how fast teachers could grade each individual answer if all they needed to do was say "turn in your papers", if necessary the Teachers app could actually see what any student had on their version of the App, and they could either "tick or cross" (if you wanted to be "cute"), or choose boxes, was that sentence right, or was it wrong? None of this "turning in your papers, I'll stay up until midnight marking" malarky!
If you havnt seen the iPad 2 event video, I highly enjoyed it. The sections about doctors and teachers using iPads was very emotional. Its probably easiest to download the video as a podcast, I dragged it out of iTunes, renamed "m4v" to "mp4", and watched it in Quicktime.
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html
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Those students are being forced to pay for something they don't want. It's not their right to decide for their students what they should pay for, nobody should be forced to buy Apple poducts.
Truly horrible times we live in!
I wonder how much of Apple's gloated iPad sales are from situations like this? Aka, companies, schools, and other institutions buying them in bulk and handing them out instead of individuals choosing to purchase them. By the way, I like that they ignore the fact that "the best" doesn't necessarily mean "worth while". Just because it is the best option among that group doesn't mean the entire endeavor is justified. How about cut tuition and let students decide if they want to purchase one? Maybe even hire more teachers instead?
> It seems like only yesterday people were complaining about the
> "low contrast matte" screens that Macs used to sport.
Matte screens were not specific to Apple. They were common on all LCDs until around three years ago.
They can still be specified from some vendors such as Dell and HP for "business" laptops. You know, vendors which still offer choice to their customers.
It's simple preference.
Not any more it isn't. When was the last time you saw a non-shiny screen in a store, Apple or otherwise?
These days it's just marketing for magpies, not people who have use the things for hours every day.
No sig today...
And how does having an iPad prevent you from writing your notes?
I've known lots of students who after a semester had not a single handwritten note in their textbook, but still had tons of notes for the books.
I've known lots of students who used their laptops for most note taking and using handwritten pages for stuff they couldn't write in text.
Being given an electric screwdriver does not immediately turn every single problem you face into a screw. It just makes it easier to screw stuff in place, and I think most competent people know that at times they'll need pliers, saws, hammers and lots of other tools.
What is it with you clowns? The money comes directly out of the pockets of the students or their families and for that they get a place to live while studying and now also an iPad. From misunderstanding that very badly you get a launching pad for a political rant?
I suppose it doesn't help that "University" is too long a word so you can't tell the difference between that and the College where the students are staying. As you gangsters in suits keep saying but never listen to - It's ENGLISH - learn to speak it!
> As another student who was given one to trial...
Sadly it didn't seem to help your education. You were actually given one to try on trial.
Trial is a noun. You can't "do" a noun.
Great
http://badboy-2012.blogspot.com
At my university some of the students would buy a book, break the bindings and feed it through an automatic document scanner. Between the group of them it ended up costing them ~$10 each for the textbook and they had an OCR'ed digital copy of the book they could lug around on their laptops. Much more convenient for note taking than lugging around paper books.
Reality: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
that's all
Experiments and other stuff
That IS how it was originally called.
Those Australians really seem to have a superb understanding of computing technology... Not only is it the most expensive, it's most likely the least functional... I'm betting with in 1 year digital textbook downloads will be over $100 per ebook, since students will only be able to get them through the publisher at the app store.
But do they get to run whatever software they want/need or do they have to count on there 'being an app for that'?
I guess for the most part students used it as mobile internet and to kill time between lessons, that's probably what I'd do anyway.
They say themselves there's no easy quick way to transfer information between apps and unless there's a properly good word processing app with all the bells and whistles then who's even going to do work on it? Netbooks FTW! Just as mobile as an iPad and pretty much the same functionality as a notebook/PC.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
The main problem with the iPad educationally is the fact that the content is not there.
The iPad is too new for all the content to be there. Of course, once more colleges start to use them, the content will follow.
I study at Adelaide University, and have seen what these introduced species do in the wild. Guess what the number one use for iPads in lectures is? Facebook. The wireless that used to be rather fast is now rather slow, due to the large influx of these new devices. This may just be the university not giving the network department more money for infrastructure updates though (they run quite a decent system, so you can't blame them).
Expensive residential on-campus dorms exist at many Australian unis to cater for (a) internationals (b) interstaters (c) country kids (d) rich city kids whose parents want them out of home (e) not so rich city kids whose parents want them to fully experience campus life.
Trinity is merely offering a carrot for students - the cost of lodging would dwarf the price of an iPad. With free wifi, it makes sense to subsidise everyone with a free iPad. To en masse 'think different' here means looking down on your "povo" living-at-home classmates who are stuck with a used 3yo toshiba satellite, if they carry a laptop at all.
Any bet half these pads get stolen, broken or mislaid by the end of first semester?
For people of all ages, its hard to beat learning on an iPad. Yes, its most noticeable with younger children, who can fall in love with touching their fingers to a screen that reacts, and engages their mind. But its "cool" for teenagers, and very capable.
I completely disagree. It's easy to wast a bunch of time scrolling around on an iPad, but learning? Sure, it's probably OK for reading and
I teach engineering. The only real way to learn is by doing. That means doing hard problems on paper. It means doing tricky things in labs and having to figure them out. Perhaps the iPad could take place of some labs with simulations. Perhaps. Ironically, it could never take place of the computer based labs, since it's far less suitable (no screen, keyboard, compiler, JTAG interface) than an actual real computer.
Additionally, you've just increased the workload of the teaching staff enormously. It is actually very hard and very time consuming to design new courses and update existing ones. It takes a lot of planning, testing, resource management, more testing and so on before you can feel comfortable deploying it to 40 to 400 students. But with the iPad, assuming it's more than just a textbook reader, you have to design ,implement and debug a whole bunch of programs to suppsot the course as well, which is expensive and difficult.
But seriosuly, I'm having a hard job imagining where one would use an iPad (or any tablet) for learning on a university engineering course. Perhaps I'm lacking imagination, but I can't see the use.
And, in case you're interested, I don't expect students to write down a whole bunch of stuff in lectures. As is common in my university, I hand out reasonably extensive lecture notes. The notes have gaps in to be filled in by the students, where I feel the need to emphasize that they should record a bit of what I'm saying, or where ordering matters, for instance building up a diagram in stages. Oh, and apparently noone wants to use a laptop in my lectures. But then, the lectures (but not the classes or final exam) are strictly optional.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I wouldnt dream of telling you how to run your engineering classes.
You mention the only way to learn engineering is "by doing". Your next sentence mentions "doing hard problems on paper". Surely there was a time when the John C Dvorak's of the world would have scoffed at THAT technical aid, "bah, you have to cut down all the trees, and loggers die all the time felling them, not to mention processing the pulp into flat sheets, oh, and I spose you'll want them bleached the same exact shade of white, sold in packs of 500 at a time..."
I'll repeat this part of my second comment:
If you havnt seen the iPad 2 event video, I highly enjoyed it. The sections about doctors and teachers using iPads was very emotional. Its probably easiest to download the video as a podcast, I dragged it out of iTunes, renamed "m4v" to "mp4", and watched it in Quicktime. http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html [iPad 2 event]
One video shown at the presentation has teachers giving out iPads to young children, they are having a great time learning basic skills. It also shows autistic children learning, and one mothers story about how her son really engages with the iPad, that hes learnt to be more self sufficient through working on it. Its very heart warming, and it shows how tablets really are the present and future of accessible computing.
Of course the video also shows older children, and students at work too. I liked the medical sections, with doctors conversing with patients, it would be great for bed side manner, as they show scans, results, explain procedures through apps.... The list is endless, anything that could be done through that beloved paper, all fifty bits of it to shuffle through, and more.
I live in Invercargill, New Zealand, near the very bottom of the world. A recent edition of a local newspaper mentioned one school "not able to afford a laptop per student". It also had mention of another school where EVERY child received an iPad (first gen, days before the iPad 2 announcement!), about how trial programs at this school in a rough area were so encouraging that they went ahead with a full rollout of the tablets. Its working in Apple PR videos, its working here, at the other side of the world in my rural city of 50,000.
We'll see in time how things go for all students. I'm optimistic.
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A local school (located "in the ghetto" too!) was giving all students iPads, and JUST before iPad 2 came out too! Too funny! If I were the principal I'd be in tears, thats a hundred grand, made obsolete in a matter of days!
Well obsolete seems to be the wrong word. There is nothing the thing can do which is now suddenly stopping to work, is there? The enhancements for iPad 2 strike me as unimpressive anyway. (Nothing wrong with that, it makes sense to simply upgrade, sometimes.) The new features should not matter much for a school. It might even make sense to supply them with older devices now - they should be cheaper to get. Also, didn't Apple offer a rebate for recent purchasers of the iPad?
I would have figured Swinburne (the tech oriented uni in Hawthorne, at least when I was attending in the late 90s) would have picked up on this....but Melbourne University did have a baseball team (rather important for a Yank who needed something familar to do...)
Oh wait, we're talking about Apple products ... never mind...
It was a noun until he verbed it.
I've heard the schools roll is about 300, at 700 NZD each that's $210,000 NZD...
I would personally expect the person who said to buy iPads right before a hardware update needs sorting out! True, possibly they were somehow told what was going to be different in advance...yeah right! :-)
No doubt having an entire school with iPads for each student comes with bragging rights, specially when other, "richer" and "better" schools are "having trouble" offering laptops. Laptops are crap compared to iPads, yet it's sort of a frig up to have spent 200K on stale product, at least for PR, obviously looking old.
They can also be had from Apple. Troll harder...
Given the strange way you capitalised dodo one has to wonder how much you actually learnt at school.
I would think that something like the MySpark Tablet would be a better choice.
Lower cost and a stylus.
Still think that the stylus if a major missing feature.
Note taking for math and science classes is not easy on the keyboard alone.
If it was really about textbooks why wouldn't they use a nook or a kindle for half the cost? Assuming the university gets government funding, somebody should look into what can be cut, since they obviously have more money than they know what to do with.
Much cheaper - at scale I daresay you could get it below 100 USD given that it's price is already heading down. For reading purposes, the epaper display is simply unbeatable. On the other hand if you wanted to use it for various other (note taking, spreadsheets,etc.) purposes, then why not an Android tablet ? Australia has the Millenius Android tablet for about 200 USD. The specific advantage of this approach is that, if the school wants to develop custom apps (which in high likelihood it will), it is much cheaper and less cumbersome (app store policies) than the Apple SDK.
Are you kidding? I would have said yes even if I had to pay a subsidised cost for it, assuming textbooks are available on it - which I have to assume is the primary reason they are giving them to science students.
My copy of Warren is well over a thousand pages and is a pain in the arse to carry around with me, and the index is pretty poor for a texbook (1%, and poorly written) - having an electronic version of it, along with electronic versions of Atkins, and a couple of other inorganic texts I use all the time would be totally worth it for me for the size and weight issues as well as being able to quickly search through it.
This would be a totally different story if this was about giving out free Xooms or Nooks running Android, and you know it. But because it;s Apple, suddenly it's a bad thing. Consider for one second that *just maybe* there are benefits for university students in having a bunch of textbooks with negligable mass that are easier to search through than their paper equivalents.
Perhaps for balance they should offer Xooms alongside iPads, and just have the students pay the increased cost, just so this sits better with slashdot.
Would be a better headline. Not just the $500 or wahtever these things cost, but also the overhead to support them, the overhead to pay a hefty bonus to whoever thought this was a good idea (regardless of it it works well or not), etc.
I don't know if a touch screen should be matte ever.
I like that I can wipe the finger grease off my android without any liquids. Can you imagine the nasty black buildup a matte touch screen would gather?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
> As another student who was given one to trial...
Sadly it didn't seem to help your education. You were actually given one to try on trial.
Trial is a noun. You can't "do" a noun.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trial#Verb
Moreover, I think your estimates are a bit low. Given the number of macs I see on campus every day, there are plenty of people with money to burn.
Moreover, I think your estimates are a bit low. Given the number of macs I see on campus every day, there are plenty of students who have parents with money to burn.
FTFY
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
"Money from the government is free! Yay!"
It is if you get out more than you paid in.
This can't hold in general; if someone is getting more than what they paid in, someone wlse is getting less. There might be an argument for allowing this in the case of healthcare and the like, but I think you start to stretch your moral currency thin if you try to argue the same for free iPads...
You forgot about deficit spending. Governments in many countries spend more than they take in, selling the debt to overseas suckers with more money than sense.
That means that in any particular country, it is possible for all taxpayers to receive government benefits in excess of their tax.
Putting moderation advice in your
Lately it seems like we have people in business and education who want to use the latest and greatest technology and they'll typically find a way to justify it. Notice that I said want, not need.
I've seen too many organizations purchase these tablet devices (regardless of brand), send the boxes to I.T. and say "find a way to make these work". Then when I.T. says "Ok, what do you want to use it for?" we'll get an answer like "everything" or "I don't know, we just bought them because it's the latest shinny thing". Sure, tablets are convenient for a handful of activities like viewing documents, checking messages, viewing some websites, but that's about it right now. Creating content on these things is very cumbersome compared to a device with a real hardware keyboard. Data entry and composition are difficult, plus there are many applications on the desktop/notebook that just aren't available on tablets yet.
It seems to me that organizations should have a need for the devices before they purchase them. Tablets have great potential, but to require them for education or expect it to be a useful business tool and replace existing technology that does work seems to be shortsighted.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
"Too shiny in fact. Is it really just me who can't see anything but reflected lights on iPod screens?"
It seems like only yesterday people were complaining about the "low contrast matte" screens that Macs used to sport. For some people it does not matter what Apple does, they will always have an emotional reaction against it.
How is not being able to see the fucking screen properly an "emotional reaction"?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's been a good 10 years, but I don't remember having to lug around text books in college. I'm pretty sure we took notes in class and kept the books at home.
Also, I own (and love) my iPad, but it's hard to pay attention to ANYTHING when you have one because right in your hands you have the internet and 1,000s of apps at your disposal. I can't read something for 5 minutes before switching to something else. I can't imagine how little I'd get done if I had one of these in class.
Download free e-books, lectures, and tutorials at bookgoldmine.com
...they have universities in Australia.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Is anti-apple zealotry to the point of outright refuting facts and supplanting them with fantasy?
More like credit to burn, and that's no reason to assume a forced purchase/course fee is acceptable or appropriate. Also, GP's earlier point that people already pay for many things they don't want doesn't make clear why people should be forced to pay for yet another thing they don't necessarily want. A lot of people still prefer the good old fashioned tactile book. Why isn't an optional program appropriate?
assuming textbooks are available on it
Why would you assume that? And even were it the case, why an ipad? it's far from the most convenient ebook reader, and a terrible note-taker, so a laptop would still be superior.
This is marketing, trying to get interest in the school generated. It's been done many times before, "giving away" macbooks, ipods, etc to new students. Apple heavily subsidizes educational purchases, so it's just usually apple products.
Yes, and has been for quite some time. This is true of any zealotry, and is certainly not limited to the anti-Apple camp. Welcome to Earth.
I'd assume that because I have seen it used as an ebook reader for lovely colour content like textbooks and it works very well.
Like it said, my copy of Warren (the big, standard organic chem text) is gigantic, but excellent, and yet is crippled by a poor index and large mass (it's 1500 pages). An electronic version on tablet (it need not necessarily be an iPad, but it does need to be a better screen than a Kindle) just reprinted as it is would be wonderful. It would be even better if it could take advantage of the other features of the medium (animations) and the ability to annotate the pages as you wanted, and things like in-page calculations or varying of reaction conditions/other calculations, and that's just one of my textbooks that I use almost daily, but only at my desk because it weighs several pounds. Add the other three or so books I use on a regular basis and it's starting to look like an awesome little powerhouse to carry around with me for reference wherever I fancy sitting down to do some work. A laptop would be terrible replacement for a textbook (also, do you not think that it would have already taken off with abandon in the previous decade of laptops if they made excellent textbook replacements?) This is a trial designed to see if the iPad (or other tablet) works in this context. It might be next to hopeless, or it might be useful but not worth the cost (but hey, at least they didn;t have to fork out for Xooms), or it might work really well. That's the point. To dismiss it as a gimmick is very shortsighted. Apple's discount for education purchases is between 8 and 15% depending on the product you buy.
No one on slashdot would be complaining if this was announced with free Xooms - it would be lauded as forward thinking and the benefits an interactive medium could bring to a normally static medium as technology improves. But no, because the iPad is mentioned, it must somehow be twisted into something "evil" or "gimmicky". Just leaf back through any "$some-organisation uses $some-technology to do $something" stories. Where it's Linux, or open source it's "a good idea" - where it's Apple, or Microsoft or anyone else it's "a gimmick and clearly some evil scheme to force people to buy iPods/Office/iPads".
Can you really not see the benefit of an electronic version of a textbook on a tablet with an excellent screen and the ability to display video, animations and do maths? Just for a second put down the Apple hate, or assume other tablets might be used (the iPad is the cheapest and most well supported option at the moment) and consider that there just might be a reason why this scheme is being piloted.
That is a different story about a completely different thing.
Why don't you stupid fuckers just read the article and the comments by people associated with the project?
it's the best manifestation of Linux that's ever likely to exist, and a viable alternative to iOS—no small feat—though I'm not sure it measures up yet socially (apps count, user interface polish, and so on).
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"How is not being able to see the fucking screen properly an "emotional reaction"?"
I rest my case.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
A good number aren't out there for 0$ - I would know. It's an unfortunate state of affairs which I hope will be soon fixed, but at present is not.