With last week’s education event from Apple, the big news was the addition of textbooks to the iBookstore. Apple has teamed up with some of the largest suppliers of traditional textbooks to bring digital interactive learning tools to students in K-12 education. With this new way of teaching children, one glaring question still stands out, who will pay for it?
Today was like Christmas morning all over again as geeks across the globe tuned in to see just what Apple had up their sleeves to announce at their much anticipated January event. As promised, the educational theme was front and center with Apple promising to reinvent textbooks.
Back when I went to university I had to walk 15 miles barefoot in the snow and it was uphill both ways! Not only that we had to stand in line to get paper forms that we filled out with things we called ballpoint pens and put them in these things called envelopes that went into mailboxes… and it took weeks to get a response! (Don’t even get me started on how we had to register for classes out of a paper catalog -in person-!)
Things have come a long way since then. By the time I graduated there was a revolutionary new system where you could register by TELEPHONE and we thought that was pretty great. So you can imagine how envious I am when I read news that indicates MIT is using iPads for administrative tasks such as reviewing applications.
At the Shanghai Maritime University in China, a university teacher, Henry Liang, caused pandemonium when he informed his students that they would need an iPad for his class, and that those without an iPad should find another class to attend.
According to Chinese newspaper People’s Daily Online, Liang told students that all power point lectures, tests, and resources will be available only in iPad format during his next semester at the university. This, as you can imagine, has caused quite an uproar among students. Read More »
We’ve written several articles and stories on the rising popularity of electronic textbooks, and overwhelmingly, students have been willing and eager to use digital versions of class texts, to save money and space.
Many companies have been eager to get into the digital textbook market, but so far, e-textbooks have failed to catch on and are not yet widely used. However, Amazon has decided to step into the market, launching Kindle Textbook Rental, a program designed to let students rent their books from the Kindle Store. Read More »
Textbooks by Kno, Inc. is a new textbook download app that offers over 70,000 titles at discounted prices from 30-50 percent off. Plus, the app’s website, kno.com offers even more titles that include textbook rentals. Oh, to have had this technology when I was in college. So many days of sore muscles from carrying 15 pounds of books around all day. So much money spent on books that I have since donated to my local used bookstore. I would have killed for an iPad back then. Admittedly as a starving student, I probably would not have been able to afford it, but that’s what student loans are for, right?
Oklahoma State University just released the results of their pilot program from the Fall 2010 semester in which the iPad was used by students and faculty alike, in support of every aspect of two courses, across five sections, two colleges and two campuses.
The goal of this project was total integration and the results were overwhelmingly positive.
When the program began, careful consideration was given to ensure that the courses were modified such that use of the iPad was not limited and that the full impact of the change could be properly evaluated.
While Google’s fleet of self-driving Prius Hybrids might be getting all the press recently, they’re not the only robot cars on the road. A team from the Freie Universität (Free University) in Berlin, Germany has been working on thier own set of autonomous vehicles and their latest project is a self-driving taxi that you can call up from your iPad.
To show off the potential of autonomous vehicles, The AutoNOMOS team from the University developed a taxi ordering app called “Pick me up!” With the app, a user can order a taxi from their iPad and have it automatically find their location using GPS. Once ordered, the user can track the taxi and see where it is and how long it will take before the taxi arrives. Once the taxi arrives to pickup the passenger, the user can enter their desired destination directly from their iPad.
Three years ago Apple began offering colleges and universities free access to the iTunes platform to distribute their educational content in a program called iTunes U. The program has proven quite successful with over 300 million downloads of audio and video classes in the past three years.
The program now has over 800 universities from across the globe and offers users access to over 350,000 audio and video files. iTunes U continues to grow with Apple recently adding new content from universities in China, Singapore, Japan, Mexico and Hong Kong.
“iTunes U makes it easy for people to discover and learn with content from many of the world’s top institutions,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “With such a wide selection of educational material, we’re providing iTunes users with an incredible way to learn on their computer, iPhone, iPod or iPad.”
Users are able to download audio and video content directly from iTunes to their iPad, iPhone or computer and best of all, access is free. With the growing number of colleges and universities including iPads in their curriculum, we expect to see Apple’s iTunes U program grow significantly in the coming years.
My days of hanging out at the Student Union Building are long gone but the idea of using an iPad to replace the expensive (and often heavy) textbooks I carried around during my college days really intrigues me. When I read a CourseSmart press release about their new eTextbooks for the iPad app this week, I decided to check out the price differences between the new high tech eTextbooks and the tried-and-true traditional hardcovers.
I started my comparison by entering basic subjects (biology, economics, calculus, etc.) into the eTextbook app and received a list of titles. I then used that list to find the equivalent hardcover or paperback books on Amazon. For the most part, the majority of the prices from CourseSmart’s eTextbook were significantly lower (see chart below). My initial thought was, students (and parents) are going to save a lot of money on textbooks with apps like this one.
With the 2010-2011 school year just around the corner, I’m busy preparing my kids with all the back-to-school necessities. While checking out my standard list of websites this evening, I ran across a post on TechCrunch about Bill Gates and the future of higher education. I found Gates’ theory about the future of higher education interesting and I started thinking, what will the college experience be like when my kids get to that age? Are significant changes on the horizon for education and universities as we know them?
According to Gates, educational institutions for K-12 will still be vital future but “place-based college educations will be five times less important than they are today.” Gates believes students will be less likely to go to one place to receive their education and should receive credit for knowledge regardless of how they came about it.
With the continuous increase of content available online and the introduction of the iPad, eReaders and other tablet devices, technology will play an even larger role in education in the future than it does today. “Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomyconference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,” he continued.
Shortly after the iPad was launched this past April, Rutgers University announced they would be integrating the iPad into their upcoming “Mini MBA” series. The series kicked off this summer with the Digital Marketing Executive Certificate Program and integrated the iPad into the course work to enhance the executive education program.
Rutgers had three goals for incorporating the iPad into its new program:
The first Summer series just wrapped up and based on the results, it looks like Rutgers will continue to push the iPad in the classroom as a new e-learning and communications tool.
If you’re going to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) next semester, you’ll be the lucky recipient of a new iPad. As part of a new initiative, the University is giving first-year undergraduate students an Apple iPad to help bring exciting technologies to students and faculty.
“University education is much different today as compared to even ten years ago,” said IIT Provost Alan Cramb. ”Students live in a world where technology is seamlessly integrated into virtually every aspect of their lives, where information and collaboration are available anywhere, anytime. IIT is committed to providing students with the tools and support to thrive in a constantly evolving technological landscape.”
IIT is fully embracing the new iPad platform and plans to release an iPad University app which will provide students access to news, events, maps, and course listings. The University will also use the iPad to enhance student safety by pushing emergency alerts directly to iPhone & iPad devices in the case of a campus emergency. Safety is a hot topic for parents and students who want to know how universities will alert students and faculty to campus emergencies and violent crimes.
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