BlogU

  • An iPad for (My) Students?

    By Joshua Kim January 28, 2010 9:53 pm EST

    Jim Groom is dead on - I'm pandering to the iPad. Why stop now?

    (But seriously….stay tuned for a full blog post responding to Jim's comments yesterday - I think he is on to something and I have the links of open learning resources at UMW to prove it).

    Back to the iPad pandering.

    Will the iPad let me get away with not buying Mac laptops for my students? And when I say "my students", I mean the 5th and 7th grade students that live in my house. My daughters are desperate for their own MacBooks. They have a good case, as a great deal of their homework has migrated to the Web and Apple applications. At school they work on Macs and use Apple applications such as Pages and Keynote. All of their homework and school assignments go through Moodle.

    So far, we have been forcing them to use the family iMac. They take turns, waiting for our kitchen based computer to be available. When really desperate they borrow Dad's MacBook Pro (which I'd like to avoid). Using Mom's computer is basically a non-option, as neither her work Dell (Windows XP) or her Dell Netbook (ubuntu) can work with their school apps.

    Our students' parents have up to this point been too cheap to buy another Mac. We keep thinking we will need to get a MacBook, but we are not sure how any new coveted laptop will be shared. Dropping a thousand bucks on a kids' computer seems excessive, but increasingly necessary.

    Which brings me back to the iPad. Could the $500 iPad serve as a "good enough" computer? My understanding is that it has a version of iWork (what we need) that can also read and transfer files to the regular iWork. Is this accurate? Could my kids sync with the kitchen "mothership" iMac to an iPad, updating files to be worked on.

    If the iPad can serve as a computer to work on Pages or Keynote documents than I could see it working very well. My girls spend only some time on the iMac working in their Apple applications. They spend lots of time watching YouTube videos, surfing the web, chatting with friends, etc. etc. The iPad seems ideal for those functions. The iPad could also become their media hub, the place they watch videos and listen to music. Downloading and reading books on the iPad would be a bonus.

    So what do you think? Can the iPad substitute for a laptop give the conditions I've described? Is this a bad idea? Can the iPad replace a laptop and a Touch, as long as a family has at least one desktop to do the syncing?

    To make the higher ed. connection, do you foresee the day when students come to campus having had their main computing experiences on something other than a full OS equipped laptop? For our future students will the browser and the app be the only computing experience they really know?

Go to comments (11) »
Advertisement
Open Job?

Comments on An iPad for (My) Students?

  • Do The Experiment
  • Posted by Brian Reid at Dartmouth Medical School on January 28, 2010 at 11:00pm EST

  • Josh, you've got the perfect opportunity for an experiment. Buy a Mac Book and an iPad. Let your daughters share and see which is more used/useful. Report back to us. Maybe you can get funding.

  • Posted by Anon on January 29, 2010 at 5:00am EST

  • Can't one suffer on the imac while the other uses a laptop? Can't your kids develop project files in formats that can be pulled into programs cross-platform? Saving as .rtf is a solution that comes to mind in terms of creating papers or saving as a .pdf when a project is 100% done.

    As for the questions about the iPad, and the limited uses described, sure getting two iPads would do the trick for fostering continued excellent consumer behavior (limited production, maximum consumption). It's a strange premise for a learning blog, but why not?

  • The future of the backpack?
  • Posted by Magoo on January 29, 2010 at 9:15am EST

  • A few things will hamper the iPad from being anything more than a novelty - first, no multitasking (i.e. you can't listen to music and surf the web at the same time, or chat and surf) and second the lack of some essentials (camera, Flash, phone?). However, knowing Apple and the marketing, the second generation and third generation will grow. I imagine that by 2012 the iPad will be fully capable of supporting Skype with a built in camera for video conferencing.

    And if educators can embrace the change and find ways to use this new device, you could see students with light backpacks using this device from 6th grade on. Imagine having all of your textbooks, papers, essays, presentations from 6th grade until graduate work - all on one device at your finger tips as oppose to collecting dust in binders in the basement or in the ceder chest.

    It is a fascinating option and possibility. The choice is ours, do we embrace it and change the way educational content is delivered or do we call it a novelty for the pop chic crowd and stick with our old fashioned textbooks.

    I like Mr. Reid's idea - you could have an interesting blog for a month or two if you were able to conduct that experiment..

  • Posted by Steve Foerster on January 29, 2010 at 9:45am EST

  • Wait a second, your kids' school system is effectively requiring families specifically to have Macs at home? If mine tried to pull a stunt like that I'd go ballistic!

  • Macs vs. PCs--can't we all just get along?
  • Posted by Cherie Dargan , Associate Professor, Communications at Hawkeye Community College on January 29, 2010 at 11:00am EST

  • My husband and I jumped on the Apple bandwagon last summer, when we got our I-Phones. However, both of our work environments are mostly PC dominated. While I have used both Macs and PCs, really, after 25 years of using computers in higher education, I am a little tired of the whole debate. With Google docs, cloud computing, and software that runs across platforms, why should we still be so focused on only using Macs or only using PCs?

    There is little question that Apple did a great sales job back in the day in K-12. However, I have had students whose only experiences with computers were using older Macs, because their schools couldn't afford to update the technology. My first computer lab was a set of hand me down Macs from a local business who was switching to PCs. I've used both. However, I am really concerned when I read about children using only Macs in elementary and middle school. Once they are in high school, many will need to be able to use PCs and unless they are in graphic design or photography, many of their higher education courses and labs will be using PCs. They need to be able to use basic software that is available on both Macs and PCs.

    While I am curious to see Apple's new tablet, I think it may have more potential as an e-book reader, and wonder how quickly textbook publishers will be exploring ways to package their products now that we have several e-book readers on the market. In the meantime, however, I am not going to throw away my Dell netbook--or my I-Phone..

  • Posted by B Bagby , Head Media Geek at Virginia Western Community College on January 29, 2010 at 11:15am EST

  • We've been having a similar discussion here about how the iPad will impact student purchases and learning. My personal feeling is that $499 (or more) is a bit much to pay for a computer that only does one thing at a time if you are using it like a laptop. It's common to see students working on documents while listening to music, podcasts, or movies as well as searching the Internet for reference data, etc.
    Unless you "must" have a Mac, I'd push them towards using the mother's computer and have them do school work on a cloud platform like Google Docs, then download & submit to Moodle. Frankly, I think that will better prepare them for the future. If you're really just looking for a good excuse to buy another Mac, then I think you have to suck it up and go Macbook. By the time you buy a keyboard and enough memory in your iPad, you'll be close to the Macbook price and get a lot more functionality.

  • another angle
  • Posted by peter naegele on January 29, 2010 at 2:15pm EST

  • Think about it this way.....could you get away with doing all of your work on an iPhone if it had iWorks?

  • $199 in 2-3 years!
  • Posted by Marianne on January 29, 2010 at 3:00pm EST

  • Joshua, I think you'll like this scenario...

    http://bit.ly/9KLqsZ

    Apologies, the live link feature on this blog not working so well. Just cut/paste.

  • you guys have convinced me...oh well
  • Posted by Josh Kim at Dartmouth College on January 29, 2010 at 4:30pm EST

  • Sounds like we are going to have the bite the ($1,000) bullet and get the Macbook (or two). I guess in the context of all the dollars we will spend on tuition maybe the cost can be rationalized.

    Enjoyed the comments and discussion - we will see if my family can wait until the price drops and the features increase.

  • Posted by Jason on January 30, 2010 at 12:45pm EST

  • I think for the long-term having a full laptop will be the best for your students. There are still things like media editing and some multitasking the iPad is not suited for. I think the iPad has potential, though, to replace the netbooks as a secondary system and might serve well for students who only do the basic things - word processing, presentations, web apps. I'll be interested to know what the typing experience is like without the keyboard add-on. Several people have noted that it does not multitask which is a true issue. One to to know is that this does not apply to music/audio podcasts. Those can play while using other apps. I'm still not 100% convinced to buy an iPad but I have a feeling I will so I don't have to sit at my laptop/workstation to do causal things.

  • re: ipad
  • Posted by beth , msw at mmc on May 17, 2010 at 5:00am EDT

  • I have a macbook pro and just recently purchased an ipad. I think the ipad can take the place of of a regular mac book but it does have its limitations. The ipad is definetely a more affordable option. The ipad has aim and ichat capability without video chat which my nine year old uses almost every day. Safari is available on the ipad but no firefox and iwork is available but is microsoft word?Not sure. Its funny for hanukah/chrismas we bought my oldest daughter a new computer, a toshiba laptop without considering that the vast population of grade school kids prefer the macs and it has become a problem in our house because she is constantly borrowing my computer because her friends tell her the toshiba has a bad quality camera/video. So now we have decided to give the toshiba to my 4 year old who is proficient and buy my 9 year old a brand spanking new mac. Had I known that every one of her friends would be using macs and that the school she attends is outfitted with new macs i would have never purchased the toshiba. Not saying that its because we have to give her everything her friends have but we feel that she has been responsible and has abided by the rules we have enforced to ensure a safe and appropriate experience and when she has been led to believe that ibm computers are a less than viable option to the Mac its hard to come up with a good argument to use the toshiba.

Print
© Copyright 2011 Inside Higher Ed