Traditional Textbooks vs. The iPad

While reading the news this morning, I discovered details about a plan between several Virginia schools and Pearson to launch an iPad-based social studies program.

As participants in the first program of this type, seventh and ninth graders will rely solely on Apple’s iPad instead of traditional textbooks throughout a 12-week period. According to a Mac Observer article, students will be able to use four U.S. and world history apps designed by Pearson to create their own customized textbooks, play interactive games related to class lessons, and take tests.

What do you think about this plan? Would you have enjoyed using an iPad instead of a traditional textbook? I was always a complete history nerd to begin with, but I do think that using the iPad, supplementing the written material with games and quizzes along the way, would have made the experience much more engaging and memorable.  

As this project progresses, it will be interesting to track the results in terms of how learning is impacted, but also to see how other more logistical concerns are addressed. For example, given the high cost of the iPad, is it really feasible for a school district to consider providing one to each student? What types of accountability issues does this create, in terms of students damaging or losing the devices, not to mention cheating? How will their peers, who don’t necessarily have access to iPads and have to go on using traditional textbooks, react? Will there come a time when students are required to purchase iPads for class, the way many of us were once required to purchase graphing calculators?

I guess only time will tell.

-- Heather Walrath

(Photo Credit: Pearson)

Little Anecdote For You Guys...

Something happened the other night that I thought I'd share with you guys, since it's relevant to our recurring overarching conversation about e-books v p-books (not a huge fan of that term, by the way. Is it too entrenched to coin a new one? Something to think about).

So my boyfriend is a computer programmer and a graphic designer, and if it ain't code or a book about code, he ain't readin' it. I've tried lots of approaches to changing this. I got him a copy of Candide with a really cool comic-book type cover, I got him a Murakami novel since he'd translated some Murakami for a class once, I got him a book about the same subject as his undergrad thesis...etc. But he never made it past the first few pages of anything I got him, preferring instead to build his O'Reilly library and read PHP guides online.

Recently, he bought an iPad, and so far it's been quite the love affair - he brought it home after his first day with it at his office and said he already couldn't imagine doing his job without it. I was so focused on playing with the beat-making apps that I didn't even notice he'd downloaded a Kindle app, as well as a couple of other e-readers.

The other night I was sitting out on our porch when he came outside holding his iPad, looking very solemn. I asked him what was up, and he said, "Here, I wanted you to read this," and handed me his iPad.

What I was looking at was his Kindle reader, opened to Dave Eggers's first book, And You Shall Know Our Velocity. He had highlighted this little passage that he wanted me to read. I read it, and said, "This sounds pretty good."

"It really touched me," he said, sounding kind of surprised at himself.

So, here we are, y'all. Hard evidence that not only can a person be truly touched and affected by something they've read on an e-reader, but that e-readers allow a person be touched by a novel that hasn't cracked one open since college. Food for thought!