In “What Should we be Imitating?” by David Warlick, the author talks about the iPad being integrated into several universities, some of which are handing out free iPads to students. The author then lists some benefits of having iPads in the classroom:
• Faculty will be able to use more of a variety of textbooks, since digital versions will be less expensive.
Even though Apple has yet to announce any deals with textbook publishers (only popular ebooks), a third-party company currently offers 10,000 e-textbooks, which include titles from the five biggest textbook publishers. A subscription-based service, registered students can access the e-textbooks of their choice for a limited amount of time. The company has already announced an iPad app.
• The iPad will likely not have the limitations that disappointed students who were involved in an e-textbook pilot at Princeton, using the Amazon Kindle DX.
But I think that it is somewhat ridicules to remove textbooks, only to replace them with digital textbooks. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having iPads, if they are just used as textbooks? This is what matters to me in David Warlick’s “What Should we be Imitating?”
No comments:
Post a Comment