Expect ALL schoolchildren to be using iPads in the near future

[biobunny]

My school has Macs and Pcs. The PCs are terrible and only NetBoot leaving a unused Windows license. The macs have no: Directory.app, Terminal.app, most of the utilities.app, system preferences.app, dashboard.app, and is absolutely locked. Those Macs that use 1% of their power all cost over 1000. Now let me guess the iPad only contain educational apps and are presumably running iOS v3.0.

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[luckyleo]

That is a terrible idea for many different reasons. The costs would be astronomical. They would be dropped and broken. They would need to be completely locked down so that kids aren't playing angry birds on them instead of using the textbooks. There would be a giant backlash once people like me find out the school district is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on iPads for children.

Why would a kid need an iPad for a textbook? Its a ridiculous waste of money. If a tablet was needed, it could be made a HELL of a lot cheaper than the iPad and still be fine for textbooks.

They call it a kindle

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[autumnbaby]

I get a little apprehensive when my 10 year old uses my iPad; there is no way I would be letting a 5 or 6 year old have one of their own

Of course our school district doesn't even pay for the kids to have art in class anymore (parents have to pay for it and volunteer to teach it) so I don't see them buying the kids iPads anytime soon.

 

[SheerLuckHolmes]

I am amazed by the lack of vision being displayed on this thread.

I am sure the admisters are weighing the investment in the iPads against the savings from not having to provide text books. I am also sure that the book publishers are watching this VERY closely and looking for ways to increase profits by selling the digital liscening instead of the costly physical publishing.

Why are the costs of apps so cheap? No marketing costs to speak of, no manufacturing cost to speak of. No packaging costs at all.

Paper books are going to vanish in the not too distant future and will all be digital. Paper books, all paper books, will become vintage, very high dollar collectors items. Start saving them in your attic now for your grandchildren to make big bucks selling them to collectors.

 

[Ayrshire]

I think you are right on the button with this one.

More and more school districts will be implementing iPads to the classroom.
The young ones today are so tech savvy now it is almost second nature to them.
Plus the saving of trees and storage of all these text books in the classroom.

 

[Thphilli]

Why would any school implement an ipad over something like the newly announced chrome os laptops with a monthly payment fee and full warranty and support for the life of the contract? The ipad is a single user device while chrome os is made for multiple users. Also, an ipad would break all of the time around children, simply due to how you have to hold it vs a laptop.

 

[JDFlood]

iPad vs Chrome

Lots of reasons to use iPads verus something else. Ease of use, especially for the younger kids, and they are amazingly durable. Kids, still need to learn to write. It depends on the grade. I would imagining an iPad / notebook... combo can't be too far off, so when you want to curl up in a chair an read, or play a game, or work together with others it's an iPad, you slap it into the base, and type away when you need to do heads down stuff... the value of this device in a school would be enormous. Remember, these kids are starting Off in the iPad era... they will have known nothing more primitive as they get older. In there lives, paper books be like coal furnaces at home and crank telephones to me (something I vaguely remember when I was young). I am jealous, can I go back to kindegarden? JD

 

[Thphilli]

They would drop them on the floor and destroy them. The iPad has no multi user mode so you would have to either buy one per child or be doing some ridiculously generic things with it. They would need to lock them down a LOT more than they are now. They would need IT support for when things go wrong.

All i am hearing from people who think something this crazy would actually happen are things like that it's the era of the ipad and a how cool the ipad is. Also, any school that was buying iPads for schoolchildren better not be a public school, because people like me would be absolutely enraged at the waste of money.

 

[Mountainbikermark]

There is a school district in Texas that has replaced text books with Kindles.
That makes much more sense to me than an iPad if they are going to be using them as TEXT BOOK replacements.
As far as Kindergarten, my 3 year old has already mastered my iPad.



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[mobi1]

Rather ludicrous idea I'd say.

Millions of school children in Africa/China/India will continue to use pencil and paper notepad and will still learn everything to take jobs away from iPad carrying kids from America and Western Europe.

 

[sjleworthy]

Not in the uk. Maybe the odd shared unit in the odd richer borough, but generally? No chance in the foreseeable future.

We're still struggling to get schools kitted out with basic computers let alone the luxury of expensive tablets.

 

[DaveSt]

I am amazed by the lack of vision being displayed on this thread.

I am sure the admisters are weighing the investment in the iPads against the savings from not having to provide text books. I am also sure that the book publishers are watching this VERY closely and looking for ways to increase profits by selling the digital liscening instead of the costly physical publishing.

Why are the costs of apps so cheap? No marketing costs to speak of, no manufacturing cost to speak of. No packaging costs at all.

Paper books are going to vanish in the not too distant future and will all be digital. Paper books, all paper books, will become vintage, very high dollar collectors items. Start saving them in your attic now for your grandchildren to make big bucks selling them to collectors.

So, do you think that electronic versions of those textbooks are going to magically be free once every child has an iPad? The high cost of textbooks has little to do with manufacturing. You can see it right now with the cost of consumer ebooks versus their paper versions. The cost of actually creating a book is a very small amount of what you pay for it. What you will end up with is licensing that costs about what a textbook does now plus $500 for the device to read it on.

 

[Wookiee2cu]

For kindergartners? That seems way too young and I can just imagine how many will get dropped and broken. Now for maybe middle school/ jr high I can see it. Yes it is an expensive investment but imagine no more having to order books or lug them around. Publishers in turn would be able to save a ton of money by not actually having to print them and could therefore offer the books in an e-book fashion at a fraction of the price. Updates to the books could be done on the fly and new editions could get to their customers much faster. I think it would take about 2 years for the school district to break even on the initial investment but after that it's all savings and they will be going green so to speak.

Also, you can set the restrictions to hide the app store so they can't load anything on it.

 

[DaveSt]

I don't know why people keep assuming that electronic textbooks are going to be so much cheaper than the paper versions. From what I have read, the actual cost of printing and shipping a paper book is about 12 percent of the list price. Part of that 12 percent saved will be eaten up by having to create and maintain the electronic version of that book, most likely for multiple platforms. I think people look at Kindle prices and assume that ebooks are so much cheaper, but that is somewhat misleading. For a typical hardcover book that retails for $26, Amazon pays the publisher $13. Amazon tries to target $9.99 for the ebook version of new books, but they still pay the publisher that same $13. Right now Amazon is willing to take that loss to sell Kindles and to solidify their hold on the market. That will not last forever, and already some authors' books are commanding close to retail price for the electronic versions.

With textbooks, the price is high because of the content and lower sales volumes. A calculus text book that costs $100 still has a relatively low creation cost compared to what is charged for it, yet has a high content cost. That isn't going to change just because the format is now electronic. The only way I see electronic texts being a huge economic savings to schools is if they start requiring the students to pay the licensing fees for the books.

 

[Thphilli]

Also, the first thing I would do if I was in high school and this happened, is go and find the ebook online for the teachers version of whatever textbook it was that I was using for the class, and instantly I have all of the answers and problems pre-solved. And don't even think for a second that their won't be a torrent site with those ebooks available.