These comments seem to make sense, but kids are already going to school with $700 cellphones. Every day. And I'm not talking about the rich neighborhoods.
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Apple Poised to Benefit from U.S. Government's Five-Year Push for Digital Textbooks
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What they need is a 'ruggedized' classroom proof ipad case. Whomever invents it first stands to reap millions. Imagine, they could be customized with School logos and everything!
Why is that a bad thing?
You now no longer have to go through the hassle of thinking how to sell or dispose of your old textbooks. Plus the money you get back will just make the textbooks equivalent in cost to the digital textbooks at best.
Why is that a bad thing?
You now no longer have to go through the hassle of thinking how to sell or dispose of your old textbooks. Plus the money you get back will just make the textbooks equivalent in cost to the digital textbooks at best.
It's not a scam to continually update new textbooks, new knowledge is always being added, modified, and edited. The power of digital is that it is endlessly editable and fluid. It is the next frontier. Clearly, the pedagogy will take a few years to catch up to the new medium. That is for curriculum, teacher, and software developers to work on.
Why is that a bad thing?
You now no longer have to go through the hassle of thinking how to sell or dispose of your old textbooks. Plus the money you get back will just make the textbooks equivalent in cost to the digital textbooks at best.
What makes you think that if digital textbooks become norm, that there prices won't rival that of traditional books? I mean id ebooks are any indication...
Sounds cheaper now but I am not convinced it will remain that way
Why is that a bad thing?
You now no longer have to go through the hassle of thinking how to sell or dispose of your old textbooks. Plus the money you get back will just make the textbooks equivalent in cost to the digital textbooks at best.
Some hassle yes but digital textbooks are generally 70-80% the cost of a new textbook. (meaning right off the bat they cost more than a used book)
Top it off I generally get around 50-60% back when I paid for books. That is after I the commission Amazon is getting off of being the middle man.
So again digital textbook are not a better deal. Yes I often times have to buy new books but considering I am selling them for 50%-60% when it is all said an done.
Less see 40-50% cost of a new book is less than 70-80% the cost. So for that extra 20-30% of of savings it worth the little extra work. It works out to be around say $60 extra saving for me per semester. Not bad for less than 1 hour of my time.
Not really. It's a pretty well-documented problem, going back to when I was a kid. Carrying an iPad (as I do everyday now) instead of 3 or 4 text books would have been fantastic, and far less painful.
Wow. Just wow...
But, anyway, all your arguments are moot points. The iPad is certaining not a MacBook. 1/2 of its surface is glass. Not so with the MB. The MB can be closed to a clamshell. Not so with the MB. 99% of the time you are using a MB it's resting on a solid surface, not being held in the air. Next, it's a whole lot harder to steal a laptop than an iPad.
Plus, do your students carry the MBs from class to class? Are they ever kept in their lockers? Are they brought home everyday?
Next, would it be dumb of me to assume "your" school caters to a poor inner city population? Of course, no.
Lastly, chill. No one pissed in your Cheerios.
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Hum... not really. Anyone is free to make a history book. If a school adopts Apple's textbook format, they're stuck buying Apple tablets.
What should happen if they want standardized digital textbooks is adopt an open standard textbook that is platform agnostic. That way I can read it on my Mac, on my Windows PC, on my Linux PC, on my Android tablet, on my iPad, on my Kindle, on my Sony tablet, etc... etc...
I'm struggling to find an example of this sort of document... oh wait we're posting on it right now, the Web. If the industry can manage to make such a beast as the web, they can make an open standard for digital textbooks.
I'm all for pro-technology to replace the lacking tools, but what type of technology are we talking about? For just reading I would consider E-Ink displays to be a much better choice do to the almost non-existant power drain and the fact that it is easier on the eyes. More interactive subjects would benefit from full-colored LCD/LED screens, though.
By "industry", I assume you mean government and academia.
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Are you suggesting he is a mime?
I work in a school district, 7th larges in CA and 35th-ish largest in the US. We are trying to deploy iPads just for enrichment and engaging learning. I can tell all of you from experience the problem with iPads is the back end management. Having an iPad in each students had will be a night mare. All we have is regular iTunes to micromanage, update, add content etc. It's a complete joke. Before I take Apple seriously they need to develop an enterprise version of iOS with a back end management system that allows us to batch manage the iPads. Not touch each one individually or recover from a backup through iTunes.
Apple needs to understand that iPads will be used a community devices in schools not individual devices. trying to use an iPad with several end users is also a freagin nightmare. These things are HOME devices not EDU or Enterprise. This won't be successful until they change the way we can manage them.
What we need is:
A way to send rules to multiple iPads at once
Wipe multiple at once
Back up all devices at once
Ability to send books and date to multiple iPads at once
Ability to lock out the iPads so users cannot change it's data or login to iTunes, but not in the profile config way in a way that does not also lock out the admin.
I could go on for days.....
You need to do a little more homework about using iPads in schools. All of these features exist today in cart systems designed to manage large numbers of iPads in school environments.
I own hundreds of books and I do agree that it is a hassle to carry them around, so I was excited to repurchase them as ebooks to read on-the-go, but after a few tries to read with the Ipad I've decided I can't stand it. Yes it is portable, but definitely doesn't promote a long read. Though the search function in iBooks is really sweet.
Then what about the earlier posts talking about digital textbooks selling for $15 when the original is $100+?
Not factoring in the cost of an ipad (which again, you can use for other purposes in addition to it being a textbook reader, so it is not entirely a pointless purchase), it does seem fairly inexpensive. Only problem is that you cannot pass it on to your friend (we do that in uni, exchange textbooks we know we are using next semester).
I see quite a few other benefits as well. You can read it readily with one hand in a crowded bus, something I find hard to do with a thick tome of a finance textbook.
However, I do agree that safety can be an issue, especially when I have been reading about cases in the news where the iphones of children as young as 11 were snatched by thieves the moment these kids walk out of their school.
By "industry", I assume you mean government and academia.
No, I meant the industry. What part of the WWW was made by the government and academia ? Note I did not say Internet, I'm strictly speaking of the WWW protocols (HTTP/HTTPS) and its underlying document formats (HTML/CSS/DOM).
You do realise the web was a research institute project that was later on progressed and standardized by a body of industry players right ?
While it is cheaper, it's definitely not more robust, and completely misses a good percentage of the point of going to digital textbooks: interactivity.
I think E-ink tablets are the future. They will have interactivity in the coming years. And better screens. Also, it's lighter, uses less battery that can last up for a month.
Whereas, the iPad is just a screen and it's uses old technology, weighs more and only lasts up to a day or so.
That's highly speculative, to say the least. As it stands now, all eInk is good at is static text consumption. We've been hearing about "color eInk" and other multimedia stuff with it for years, and none of it has materialized.
Wish I could say I'm surprised. Just another disgusting example of statist intervention with completive market forces. Makes me frustrated more than anything.
There is already at least one color eInk device in the market already. There has been video playing on eInk. Now we know Technology gets better. So I predict eInk will get better.
If I was Apple I would make an "iPad educational edition" Imagine the coin they would cash in if a huge amount of schools decided to buy iPads from the apple store and textbooks from iTunes. They would be laughing all the way to the bank.
Remove all the unnecessary components, make it with cheap but long lasting material etc
Remove all the unnecessary components, make it with cheap but long lasting material etc
