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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.
You've got it all wrong. They're going with style (easy, sexy, and makes for good admissions brochures) over substance (tedious, frustrating, difficult to market).
“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
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....
There are quite a few luddites, but I think there's an equal measure of people who are simply more cautious. I'm far from a luddite, and I think my posting history will attest to that -- the sheer number of posts I've made will attest to that -- but I don't have a Facebook account. Not because I'm afraid of technology -- on the contrary, I know enough about technology to really, really hate what Facebook is doing to the Internet.
So, take these iPads. Sure, etexts are a hell of a lot better than forcing students to carry around a textbook. I'll be the first to admit that I would prefer them, that I would be the first to buy them, that I'd spend several times the price... ...except for the DRM.
It's not just that the iPad is a great idea as a general-purpose computing device that's been shat on by Apple's need to control everything, that the very first thing people in the know do with it is "jailbreak" it -- contrast to Android, where a free SDK is available for any OS, any student could just start developing apps, and share them with their friends without needing Apple's approval.
It's not just that I worry about the iPad "app" becoming the only option for a textbook, with other platforms shunned, even print. That's a long way off, but it is already happening -- there are apps with exclusive content for iStuff, and there are more than a few which would work fine as websites, but have been app-ified to cash in.
It's certainly not just that I worry about this being done horribly wrong, like the iPad-only publications which are, not even PDFs, but raster images of pages, because the entire process is still driven by a print-oriented workflow -- the lack of text thus completely destroying the biggest advantages of it being electronic, such as bookmarking, hyperlinks, and search.
No, the biggest thing stopping me from buying electronic textbooks, and being very skeptical of any school district which forces students to not only buy electronic, but to buy specifically from Apple, is the thought that right now, I can lend my book to a friend. I can either sell it for a decent price -- buying used and selling at the end of the semester is almost, but not quite, as cheap as renting -- or, if it ends up being useful, I can keep it. I can use it where I can't get power, let alone an Internet connection, and while I think these concerns are minor and becoming less relevant all the time, the few ebooks I buy, I have as DRM-free PDFs that work wherever I am, on any device I get my hands on, because I can make them work.
I'd be the first to suggest this sort of thing, if there were any hope of it being done right. Give students an open device, and if you can't get Creative-Commons texts, at least make them DRM-free -- it's not like there's an incentive to pirate if the school just blanket-licenses the books they need. Force the teachers to adapt to students who simultaneously have access to every distraction imaginable, and to the sum of all human knowledge, all at their fingertips and during class -- better make that lecture more interesting than who's dating who on Facebook, better make sure you teach something more than an aggregation of facts, better learn to hold their attention. Don't just give students thirty seconds on a multiple-choice quiz, give them an interesting problem to solve that can't be done with just a Google search, but can gain some advantage from the strengths of such a device.
Problem is, as soon as I hear the word iPad, that's my first clue it's not even going to be close to right.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Not really. University tuition fees (for Australian residents) are heavily subsidised by the government (to the tune of 75%+ of the real fee) and regulated/standardised across the country. So what the students pay is predictable and set in stone by legislation for several years into the future. They can't be arbitrarily adjusted.
Having said this, TFA mentions that this particular university is mostly for foreign students, not Australian residents. These students are unsubsidised. They are referred to as 'full fee-paying students', due to the fact that they get into the university simply by paying the (huge) fees to do so, rather than based on academic merit and high school performance (like subsidised Australian residents would be). Statistically speaking, most will be from fairly well-off families in places like China, Singapore, India, and other Asian countries. They are already paying (or more likely, their parents are already paying) huge amounts of money to study abroad in Australia. A few hundred extra for an iPad wouldn't be noticed (if it's even actually coming out of their tutition fees in the first place, which I doubt). Indeed, it may even be perceived as a desirable reason for these students to pick this university over others: competition for these students among the universities is high, as they are full fee-paying and hence pure profit as far as the universities are concerned.
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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
"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
Is anti-apple zealotry to the point of outright refuting facts and supplanting them with fantasy?