For the last 11 years I have taught classes in higher education and have seen the way that students interact on campus, what they bring to class, how much they pay for textbooks, and how they use their textbooks.\u00a0 This topic is quite a hot one on college campuses around the country and with the tremendous popularity of the iPad, naturally many people are looking to the iPad as the solution to all their problems, so I thought I would offer my 2 cents.<\/p>\n
Let me first say that it is pretty disgusting what students have to pay for textbooks nowadays.\u00a0 I know, I know… the publishers would say how expensive it is to actually create content for a textbook and the length of the process it takes to bring it to market… blah blah blah.\u00a0 That is even more evidence to me that the way things have been done in the past isn’t the future.\u00a0 Things are going to have to change, the question is… change to what?\u00a0 I sure wish I had the definitive answer to that, because I would be in pretty hot demand right now for sure if I did!\u00a0 But what I do have an opinion on is the recent love affair with the iPad.<\/p>\n
Let me confess that I do have an iPad in my office.\u00a0 I didn’t buy it with my personal money, and after spending some time with it I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t ever pay that kind of money for what you get.\u00a0 But I digress.\u00a0 I asked all my staff members to use the iPad and report back to me what they thought about it… pros and cons, etc.\u00a0 It was interesting to see the perspectives of my staff, who are both male and female, young and not-so-young, PC fans and Mac fans.\u00a0 This isn’t a post about the pros and cons of the iPad, so I won’t get into that.\u00a0 But all my staff did have opinions, as did I, about what it would be like to use the iPad as a textbook.<\/p>\n
I think it is valuable to talk about how students use textbooks.\u00a0 I don’t know if you have ever seen the textbooks that are turned back in at the end of the semester, but it gives you a glimpse about how students use them.\u00a0 Being able to highlight and mark important parts of the chapters is critical.\u00a0 It is important to be able to make a note in the margin about the story that your prof just told you that relates to something in the chapter.\u00a0 And it is important to be able to flip back and forth really quickly through the chapter to find something you need, like that note you made.<\/p>\n
I don’t care which e-Reader you pick (including the iPad), you can’t do any of those things.\u00a0 Sure, you can search and you have some limited note-taking ability, but nothing that approaches having a textbook.\u00a0 Flipping pages on the iPad may not be ‘magical’ like Steve Jobs purports, but it is pretty nice.\u00a0 But regardless of how nice it is, it ain’t fast enough… at least not for a student during crunch time before finals who is trying to find that elusive note he wrote in the margin of some page.\u00a0 You have to hold these e-readers in your hand or lay them flat on the desk.\u00a0 It is awkward.\u00a0 The keyboard on the iPad is ok, but it is too big for many people to use as a thumb keyboard.\u00a0 So you have to lay it in your lap, or flat on a desk.\u00a0 Again, awkward.<\/p>\n