Australian Schools Go iPad-Crazy 293
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."
No. (Score:5, Funny)
No.. Not really.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Waste of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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 serio
Re:Waste of Money (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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The company that actually makes them is Intel, because the Magalhães are just a rebranding of the second edition of the Classmate PC [wikipedia.org].
The Portuguese company just puts it in a rebranded box and receives major profits.
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Re:Waste of Money (Score:5, Informative)
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. [lifescientist.com.au] 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.
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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,
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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
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
Color and video (Score:3, Insightful)
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 a
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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.
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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.
Price of textbooks... (Score:2, Informative)
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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/ [ck12.org]
Re:Price of textbooks... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
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That'll take five years and a lot of money to do. What happens in the meantime?
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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
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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 ma
iPad Lost Generation (Score:2)
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.
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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 (Score:4, Funny)
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!
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Who needs a laptop? I sat at the back doodling in the back of my exercise book and playing squares and word games.
Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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, especiall
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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 !)!
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Re:Interactive Can Be an Awesome Teacher. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
interacting is a much better teacher (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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See above [slashdot.org]
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)
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You just want a speak and trig...
Robotic voice:" What is the cosine of the hypotenuse?..... that is incorrect!"
Define "abolishing" (Score:5, Informative)
Students and Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope the students never need any help from Apple.
http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student [gawker.com]
Re:Students and Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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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.
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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
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I hope the students never need any help from Apple.
http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student [gawker.com]
Right, because needing tech support from Apple and harassing the CEO for a quote are the same thing.
WHAT UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?! (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Free?
No, it's very much paid for, either by your tuition, or by your taxes (not sure how things work there)
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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.
competing with the roaches (Score:3, Interesting)
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Get off my lawn?
Shiny Object Syndrome (Score:5, Informative)
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"
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Re:Shiny Object Syndrome (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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It's (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
It's the software (Score:2)
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.
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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?
Disaster by bad planning (Score:3, Insightful)
Apples for teachers (Score:2)
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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Somebody needs to make ebook readers so cheap, that only rich people will read dead trees.
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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 read
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Re:Remember, folks: (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile school administrators and your wife's employer are delighted at the restrictiveness of the device.
Re:Remember, folks: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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 competit
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Yup. They are restricted to 80 different types of fart apps.
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They've got to compete with New Zealand somehow.
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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
Re:Remember, folks: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Re:Apple ate my homework (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 _LE
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> 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 littl
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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.
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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
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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.
A
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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.
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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.