While the iPad is entertaining people with its technological charm, students and teachers at UF are finding it unsuccessful in the classroom.
The iBookstore app, Apple’s downloadable bookstore, provides students and teachers with books ranging across all genres, including textbooks. However, students are still opting for real, user-friendly textbooks rather than the downloadable variant.
UF student LeAsia Lundy is one of the students who would rather purchase textbooks from the bookstore versus the iBookstore.
“I probably wouldn’t [use the iPad] for textbooks,” Lundy said. “They aren’t efficient for me because I have to highlight, underline and write notes in a book.”
UF marketing student Chelsea Schonhoff owns several Apple products but doesn’t see herself using the iPad for reading textbooks either. Schonhoff sees herself using the iPad more as a computer.
“I like to have the book in person; I prefer that,” Schonhoff said. “If I got [the iPad] I wouldn’t use it to read on.”
While some are pessimistic about the iPad’s chances in the classroom, others, such as UF College of Education professor Dorene Ross, believe the iPad may have a place in academia.
While it is difficult to measure the iPad’ s current usefulness in the classroom because so few students own them, Ross believes it has the potential to be incorporated into the classroom.
Ross also said the iPad holds more value in the classroom for its interactive nature, such as apps, versus being used for text-based readings.
Potential success, Ross said, could depend on the instructor and how he or she engages the class with it.
But Ross also pointed out how using the iPad in the classroom may come with a few drawbacks. The iPad, she said, could prove to be as distracting as a computer for students.
“The issue is what students are being asked to do with them,” Ross said. “If the basic mode of instruction is completely teacher-dominated, text-based, passive on the part of students, then iPads will be used as a distraction because school isn’t very engaging.”
Students may also have difficulty taking notes on the touch keypad, something Ross acknowledged she has had problems with.
Despite its shortcomings, she believes students and teachers could really find the iPad beneficial in the classroom.
“The potential of the iPad is collaboratively investigating things with students within the context of a classroom, getting them really engaged, seeking information and making them more independent within the structure of a classroom,” she said.
