UK School Replaces All Textbooks with iPads

Post by steverb » Mon, Jan 07, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #25

steverb wrote: post #8

My kids' high school ( http://knoxcountystemac.knoxschools.org/ ) has done this as well. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, the kids aren't hauling 30 pounds of books to and from school everyday, school lockers are pretty much superfluous, and the iPad is a great tool. On the other hand, it's very hard for me as their parent to tell (at a glance) whether or not the kids are actually doing school…

Do they use it for reading, or also for tests? I'm really curious about the testing they demonstrate in the video, because it seems inherently rigid and less indicative of a student's understanding than writing something down. Do they write all their tests on iPads, and are the tests multiple choice, or short-answer?

Post by meaty » Mon, Jan 07, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

betterunix wrote: post #59

ceejayoz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We covered them Buy an iPad case. > scribbled on them, wrote errata in Most reading apps have annotations. > copied pages for people Not necessary with digital copies. > ripped out pages, occasionally watched nitric acid dissolve them, accidentally set them on fire Fundamental to your learning experience, I take it? > sold them and swapped them I don't believe these are student-owned textbooks. > occasionally clunt…

"Not necessary with digital copies." Unless some student loses access to their books because they violated some third-party library's policy about reading their books. I see all sorts of conditions on using electronic books at my university's library -- conditions that are enforced by a service provider, not the university. Sometimes, RMS can be prophetic: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Post by snogglethorpe » Mon, Jan 07, 2013, 7:57 PM UTC

sopooneo wrote: post #27

Someone close to me works at a very good public high school in Massachusetts. The district is in the middle of the enormous task of planning/budgeting/funding a new school building. At one point they showed some preliminary plans to various interested parties, and the teachers were immediately prompted to ask where the bookshelves were, or where freestanding ones could even be placed. The answer from the superintende…

Post by nicholassmith » Tue, Jan 08, 2013, 8:29 AM UTC

Macha wrote: post #66

nicholassmith wrote: post #20

£65k saved off photocopying is huge . I've seen copier bills so I know what they can be like, but that's crazy savings from introducing it. Wonder if they're just emailing everything out now, which makes significantly more sense. I'm in favour of iPads in school. I've ran through a few of the educational programs on the iPad (including iTunes and Udemy as well as textbooks), it's a great resource and helps to consoli…

An iPad is currently £330. We'll be generous and assume Apple gave the school a 50% discount (which is huge and probably unlikely as I'd imagine even Apple aren't charging 100% markup). So £165 per iPad * 840 students (according to the video) = £138,600. They've spent more than double what they saved on photocopying, not to mention that 840 iPads take a lot more maintenance than five or six photocopiers.