iPad as a SOLE device for students?

[KiltedTim]

rorschach23, I'd advise against trying to use this as your primary computer. It's not going to be able to run things like Photoshop and other applications you're undoubtedly going to need as an art student.

It would be fantastic to have, though as your primary piece of tech to carry to classes. Light, fast and 10 hours of battery life. If you can't type fast enough on the soft keyboard to take notes, get yourself an Apple bluetooth keyboard. It's small and light and would work with both the iPad and a full blown Mac.

I'd consider getting an iMac and an iPad instead of a MacBook or MacBook Pro... More bang for your buck and the iPad will let you carry 90% of what you need to do for most classes much easier.

 

[Dorje]

From an education use stand point for K-12(or k-8) there some other issues that keep the iPad from being "Yes Please!" item. First, like all Student issues (and really really bad for Apple sorry to say) is no support for Flash and the older Shockwave. K-12 does tend to be behind the tech curve and many old education sites are not maintained or not forced to ever upgrade. This makes the iPad DoA for many sites I'm sad to say.

Another issue is App control. At least under 3.1.2, it does't seem like you can lock out spesific 3rd party apps. Only Restrict by age rating. This does not help if we want to say create an iPad based testing program and lock out all fuctionality besides the testing software during that period. Even to just restrict it to say a VNC client spesificly setup to connect to a multi-user terminal setup (a some testing software would likely never make it to any mobile device).

If Jobs wants this as a kids teaching tool platform there are going to need to be some adjustments before it can be taken seriously.

 

[Ninja]

Before you respond with "OMG! FAIL! I NEED MORE!" hear me out.
This obviously isn't a thread geared towards students who are IT majors or engineers who use CAD or anything like that. This is more towards your non-tech majors like myself (Psychology/Pre-Med) or social science, English, History, etc, etc, majors. So let's hear a little story:

There's a student, let's call him Billy. Billy doesn't have a computer at all, his family couldn't afford to buy him one, but he's a good student and got a scholarship to cover his tuition and housing. Good job Billy!

Billy got some money for graduation gifts from his family and friends, he's got a little bit of money to spend, so he buys a bicycle, and needs a computer, but on impulse decides to buy an iPad. "UH OH!" you say, "Billy can't only have an iPad! He needs more functionality for school!" Billy also buys a network capable printer, an iPad dock, and a bluetooth keyboard and headset. Now billy can print what he needs for his research, buy e-books for school, type his term papers, and listen to music, movies, and games all without disturbing his roommate.

Billy starts school and is doing very well, he's a Biology major with hopes of going to Dental School.......


Ok, so you take the story from here, what problems is Billy going to run into? Multi-tasking? Maybe he'll need to print out his references and type them, or copy/paste (which supposedly the updated OS will support) from Safari to the word processor.

That's really the only problem I'm seeing, but maybe I'm not seeing everything, so how about some input please? I'm not asking if a laptop or netbook would be better or cheaper, I'm asking what problems you think Billy would run into in this hypothetical situation.

Again Billy is NOT an IT major, he barely knows how to use a computer, he won't be networking, programming, or doing any of that stuff, he can take basic computer lit courses like every other non-IT major.

Please discuss, show me what I'm missing, show me why Billy made a bad decision.

As a sole device the iPad would be a terrible choice. It's restricted internet access because of the lack of Flash should be a deal breaker. You need not look further. Get a real computer.

If is is not a sole device, the various shortcomings of the iPad may or may not be deal breakers for any given purchaser, but it is still not a general purpose device.

 

[Superbike81]

Before you respond with "OMG! FAIL! I NEED MORE!" hear me out.
This obviously isn't a thread geared towards students who are IT majors or engineers who use CAD or anything like that. This is more towards your non-tech majors like myself (Psychology/Pre-Med) or social science, English, History, etc, etc, majors. So let's hear a little story:

There's a student, let's call him Billy. Billy doesn't have a computer at all, his family couldn't afford to buy him one, but he's a good student and got a scholarship to cover his tuition and housing. Good job Billy!

Billy got some money for graduation gifts from his family and friends, he's got a little bit of money to spend, so he buys a bicycle, and needs a computer, but on impulse decides to buy an iPad. "UH OH!" you say, "Billy can't only have an iPad! He needs more functionality for school!" Billy also buys a network capable printer, an iPad dock, and a bluetooth keyboard and headset. Now billy can print what he needs for his research, buy e-books for school, type his term papers, and listen to music, movies, and games all without disturbing his roommate.

Billy starts school and is doing very well, he's a Biology major with hopes of going to Dental School.......


Ok, so you take the story from here, what problems is Billy going to run into? Multi-tasking? Maybe he'll need to print out his references and type them, or copy/paste (which supposedly the updated OS will support) from Safari to the word processor.

That's really the only problem I'm seeing, but maybe I'm not seeing everything, so how about some input please? I'm not asking if a laptop or netbook would be better or cheaper, I'm asking what problems you think Billy would run into in this hypothetical situation.

Again Billy is NOT an IT major, he barely knows how to use a computer, he won't be networking, programming, or doing any of that stuff, he can take basic computer lit courses like every other non-IT major.

Please discuss, show me what I'm missing, show me why Billy made a bad decision.

As a sole device the iPad would be a terrible choice. It's restricted internet access because of the lack of Flash should be a deal breaker. You need not look further. Get a real computer.

If is is not a sole device, the various shortcomings of the iPad may or may not be deal breakers for any given purchaser, but it is still not a general purpose device.

My school doesn't require FLASH in any way. Neither do any of the research sites that I use. So, ummmmm, why is Flash a deal breaker again?

 

[KiltedTim]

By the time little Billy bought the 64GB 3G model and keyboard dock, he could have bought himself an iBook. Not as portable or as ooohhh, cool!, but much better suited to what he needs to do.

 

[Ninja]

Before you respond with "OMG! FAIL! I NEED MORE!" hear me out.
This obviously isn't a thread geared towards students who are IT majors or engineers who use CAD or anything like that. This is more towards your non-tech majors like myself (Psychology/Pre-Med) or social science, English, History, etc, etc, majors. So let's hear a little story:

There's a student, let's call him Billy. Billy doesn't have a computer at all, his family couldn't afford to buy him one, but he's a good student and got a scholarship to cover his tuition and housing. Good job Billy!

Billy got some money for graduation gifts from his family and friends, he's got a little bit of money to spend, so he buys a bicycle, and needs a computer, but on impulse decides to buy an iPad. "UH OH!" you say, "Billy can't only have an iPad! He needs more functionality for school!" Billy also buys a network capable printer, an iPad dock, and a bluetooth keyboard and headset. Now billy can print what he needs for his research, buy e-books for school, type his term papers, and listen to music, movies, and games all without disturbing his roommate.

Billy starts school and is doing very well, he's a Biology major with hopes of going to Dental School.......


Ok, so you take the story from here, what problems is Billy going to run into? Multi-tasking? Maybe he'll need to print out his references and type them, or copy/paste (which supposedly the updated OS will support) from Safari to the word processor.

That's really the only problem I'm seeing, but maybe I'm not seeing everything, so how about some input please? I'm not asking if a laptop or netbook would be better or cheaper, I'm asking what problems you think Billy would run into in this hypothetical situation.

Again Billy is NOT an IT major, he barely knows how to use a computer, he won't be networking, programming, or doing any of that stuff, he can take basic computer lit courses like every other non-IT major.

Please discuss, show me what I'm missing, show me why Billy made a bad decision.

As a sole device the iPad would be a terrible choice. It's restricted internet access because of the lack of Flash should be a deal breaker. You need not look further. Get a real computer.

If is is not a sole device, the various shortcomings of the iPad may or may not be deal breakers for any given purchaser, but it is still not a general purpose device.

My school doesn't require FLASH in any way. Neither do any of the research sites that I use. So, ummmmm, why is Flash a deal breaker again?

The schools don't require Flash. The internet does. There is nothing that another competing device can not do for an edu utilization. I rather doubt you actually know how much Flash you actually use. If you actually do not access anything that needs Flash you are in an incredibly small minority.

Steve promised "all the internet" for the iPhone. Without Flash you can not access "all the internet". Steve lied.

 

[Dorje]

Actually when I was going through college there was very little in the way of purely academic material (in the non-computing science fields) that had Flash as a front end interface.

The problem, in my experiance, isn't with the news of the new flash based sites but the oldest of the old Shockwave content. From back when Macromedia was it's own company and Director was being pushed as the "new way" to deliver education content.

This is where it falls down for K-8 use, perhaps even K-12. At a university level I guess it will depend on the major and curriculum.

*edit*
Actually come to think of it Java may be more of an issue the Flash for iPad (and likely other mobile devices)

 

[Finnedog]

I guess the way I would use this as a student is use Google Documents and print every thing off in the computer lab. None of your 64 gbs used up and always backed up and available on whatever computer you are using, but you could go out and get a $299 netbook and use this as your backup for your music and movies.

Some people may be able to use this as a main computer but in my opinion that is not the purpose of a device like this; it is to walk around your life and be checking out the news and email and to read a book or a magazine.

Everyone is going to use it their own way.

 

[Superbike81]

I now understand that for the most part, due to synching issues, that this couldn't be a primary device. But I do believe it could still be a very vital one, even without Flash support. Like I said, I haven't run across a single site I *need* to access for school that requires Flash to extract content.