No one ever said getting good grades was easy. Amazon.com found that out the hard way at Reed College. Reed was one of seven schools in 2008 to give out Amazon Kindles to a large swath of its student body…and the students gave the device a failing grade (pdf).
Will the iPad get some extra credit?
Reed College says, despite the Kindle experiment, it is planning to distribute iPads on campus. The school plans to load the devices with class readings and compare how students feel about the iPad versus standard print textbooks.
“We are going to—to the extent that we can—make the iPad study as parallel to the Kindle DX study as possible,” said Martin D. Ringle, chief technology officer at Reed College, in an interview. “If I were to predict, I would say that the results are going to be dramatically different and much better—and they’re going to point the way to what role this technology is going to play in higher education.”
But what if print beats even Apple’s tablet for ease of use in note taking and highlighting? The Kindle project was expected to be a huge success, but the devices proved to be an unexpected flop. Students, it turns out, are tough customers when it comes to e-books, so many professors, administrators, and industry leaders will be eagerly awaiting reports from the iPad studies.
There’s already some problems
Many schools, along with Reed, have had some issues with the iPad. They don’t stay connected at Princeton, The Washington Post reports even Seton Hill University, which announced every student would receive a free iPad, has had to quadruple its bandwidth as a result. Students are also being charged a $500 technology fee per semester.
What schools are iPad-happy?
We’ve put together a list of the schools taking the big leap, despite the economy, and getting involved with Apple’s iPad:
- Reed College
- Seton Hall University
- The University of Maryland at College Park (part of its Mobility Initiative)
- North Carolina State University (iPads being lent to students)
- George Fox Univeristy (source)
- Know of another? Let us know!
[...] despite negative reactions from the students, Reed was back at it with an iPad initiative. The results of the study were published last February. The next quote is from the iPad report. It [...]