FYI
Lillian

The iPad is about to have its academic chops put to the test this fall in a
number of programs around the country. Colleges and universities are looking
to adopt the iPad as a collaborative tool, a standardized mobile device to
integrate into curriculums, and, in some cases, even a cost-saving device.

Oklahoma State University plans to begin a pilot iPad program this fall,
with students in certain courses offered by the School of Media and
Strategic Communications and the Spears School of Business receiving iPads
to use with those courses. The program will be used to determine how
effective iPads can be as tools to enhance learning as well as how such
mobile devices can be integrated into the workplace.

"This limited pilot will be focused on fields of study where we believe we
can best determine the higher education value of the iPad," Bill Handy,
visiting assistant professor in OSU's School of Media and Strategic
Communications, told Macsimum News. "We will evaluate the academic
enhancement to the courses, how the iPad and its specific apps and web-based
tools can be integrated in this capacity, and perhaps most importantly, how
the integration of these mobile tools can expand the tactical abilities of
students as they enter the workforce."

Though an iPad starts at $499 and can cost as much as $829 for the top-end
model, there is potential for cost savings, as well. The university has
already identified one class where the textbook in ePub format costs $100
less than the dead-tree version. With a typical class load of five courses,
it could be possible to completely offset the cost of a device like an iPad
in textbook savings alone. (At least, this is true if you're comparing the
iPad against a stack of brand new textbooks; the savings may disappear if
used books are brought into the comparison.)

The Illinois Institute of Technology has even more ambitious plans to
integrate iPads into academics. A technology initiative will give all
incoming freshman undergraduates-about 550 students-an iPad to use as a
technological enhancement to the curriculum. Because all freshman are
required to take several introductory courses, such as "Introduction to the
Professions," software, e-texts, and other resources will be uniform for
those courses.

With a typical class load of five courses, it could be possible to
completely offset the cost of a device like an iPad in textbook savings
alone
"We can ensure everyone has the same hardware and software, and it makes it
easier to integrate into the curriculum," Evan Venie, associate director of
media relations for IIT, told Ars. "But we also want to open it up to other
faculty that want to integrate iPad support into their courses-most of the
faculty are very interested in leveraging the potential the iPad offers in
the academic environment."

The Kindle already underwent similar pilot testing at seven universities
last fall, as many schools are interested in replacing textbooks and mounds
of printouts of journal articles and other assigned readings with eReaders.
Amazon provided Kindle DXs to Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve
University, Pace University, Princeton University, Reed College, the
University of Washington, and Darden School of Business at the University of
Virginia for the evaluation program.

Though students were very receptive to participating in the tests, both
faculty and students found numerous technological hurdles that in the end
outweighed the potential benefits. Students at Reed College complained of
the slow refresh rate of e-Ink displays, problematic input, inability to
load PDFs over the network, and inability to view more than one text at a
time as major sticking points. Reed faculty found converting documents to
work well on the Kindle to be particularly difficult in most cases.

Students participating in the test at Darden School of Business, while
loving the Kindle for personal reading, overwhelmingly felt the Kindle
didn't
pass muster in its current state for academic use-about 4 out of 5 would not
recommend a Kindle DX to incoming MBA students. The test also faced a
lawsuit from the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council
of the Blind over the Kindle's lack of accessibility features, though Amazon
has pledged to address that shortcoming sometime this year.

Despite the disappointing results of the tests with the Kindle DX, schools
have high hopes for the iPad. OSU and IIT aren't alone in exploring ways to
use an iPad to enhance education-other programs around the country include:

  a.. Seton Hill University's "An iPad for Everyone" is part of the
university's Griffin Technology Advantage Program. Announced just as the
first iPads were beginning to ship, the program will put an iPad in the
hands of every full-time student starting this fall.
  b.. Students at George Fox University, which has given a MacBook to
incoming freshman for several years, will now offer students a choice
between a MacBook or an iPad. "With this, we're basically asking students
'What computing system will work best for you?'" the university's chief
information officer, Grag Smith, said at the time the program was announced.
  c.. North Carolina State University Libraries announced this past spring
that it acquired 30 iPads to offer students and faculty for four-hour loans
as part of the school's Technology Lending Service. That service offers a
variety of devices for loan to students, including laptops, digital cameras,
eBook readers, graphing calculators, and more. In addition to browsing the
web and "evaluating whether this latest platform is something you want to
invest in for the future," the iPads can be used to read some of the 9,000
eBooks NC State recently acquired.
  d.. Students in a master's course in global health research at Duke
University's Global Health Institute will be given iPads to use for field
work. "Our primary goal is to equip our students with a toolset that allows
them to make the most of their time in the field," said Associate Professor
of Sociology Jen'nan Read, who will be teaching the class. The students will
have models with 3G networking as well as pre-installed apps for collecting
data, importing media files, and graphing results.
  e.. The University of Maryland will be giving 75 honors students enrolled
in the Digital Cultures and Creativity "living and learning program" an iPad
this fall. Students will use the iPads for pulling down multimedia content
related to their coursework, and will also be developing their own apps for
the device. The iPad program is part of a larger Mobility Initiative
designed to integrate mobile devices into the curriculum at UM.
  f.. Reed College will repeat an experiment that tested student preference
of textbooks loaded on a Kindle versus traditional paper textbooks this
fall, this time using iPads. Students in the previous experiment preferred
the dead-tree edition to using a Kindle DX, despite the obvious advantage of
not hauling heavy books all over campus. Expectations are that the iPad will
fare better with students than the Kindle did. "If I were to predict, I
would say that the results are going to be dramatically different and much
better," Martin D. Ringle, chief technology officer at Reed College, told
The Chronicle of Higher Education, "and they're going to point the way to
what role this technology is going to play in higher education."
The iPad can certainly address the speed and input issues that students
complained about, and offers accessibility features for vision-impaired
users. However, the device may suffer from similar problems with loading
documents over the air and viewing more than one text at a time. But by
combining its speed with the multitasking capabilities that will come in a
fall update to iOS 4, the iPad may still prove to be a workable solution. If
it works as well as expected, carrying an iPad would sure beat lugging 40lbs
of books and a laptop all over campus.

Follow us for disruptive tech news: John C. Abell and Epicenter on Twitter.

See Also:

  a.. Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education
  b.. Apple iPad Reaches '1 Million Sold' Twice as Fast as iPhone .
  c.. Apple's iPad Will Read Books Out Loud, Support Free E-Books .
  d.. iPad Fuels Magazine Disruption
  e.. Is the iPad Driving E-Book Piracy, and Does It Matter?
  f.. Dual-Screen Tablet Maker Hopes to Reinvent the Textbook
  g.. Open Source Textbook Company Now BMOC at 400 Colleges
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