ipads free for school kids?

[Gob]

A Cornish academy has spent £100,000 on iPads for its pupils.

Mounts Bay Academy in Penzance is the first school in Cornwall to invest such an amount in computer tablets. It hopes it will save money in the long term.

All 900 pupils at the school will have one of the handheld computers, which are due to arrive at the school within the next fortnight.

Campaign group the Taxpayers' Alliance has argued the move does not offer "value for money".

The academy hopes the investment will save cash by eventually replacing text books.

Sara Davey, the principal of Mounts Bay Academy, said: "We think the iPads will be a way of making literacy, numeracy and all the other subjects so much more exciting.

"It is so much more relevant to the young people who are digital natives, as opposed to our generation who are digital immigrants."

Emma Boon from the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "We're all for technology, but let's just remember an iPad is a premium product with a premium price.

"You can get cheaper laptops which are more hard-wearing.

"If you think of the battering school equipment takes, do you think there's any chance that most of these iPads are going to make it through the next couple of years without some being broken or lost? That comes as an additional cost."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-15590024

Good investment or waste of money?

[The Hen]

I go along with the laptop brigade. Typing on a tablet is shitty, and a lap-top is hardier.

[Scooter]

Emma Boon from the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "We're all for technology, but let's just remember an iPad is a premium product with a premium price.

"You can get cheaper laptops which are more hard-wearing.

I calculate £111 per iPad. They must have gotten some sort of volume discount. Hardly a "premium price", and not much more than the price of a couple of textbooks.

[dales]

What's wrong with books?

They can take a lot more abuse than an iPad.

The first time one of these gizomos is dropped or tossed......?

I dunno, if books were good enough for me and my kids......my grandmother used chalk and a slate board!

[rubato]

$177.78 per kid is an incredible deal.* Dirt cheap, and well worth the money. The huge database that is online makes it more than worth it. All of the classic literature that is now public domain they can access for free. USGS, ACS, Science, NASA, APS, History websites. You could not equal that if you spent $100,000.00 on books per kid. And you can access information about real cutting-edge science which won't be in textbooks for a decade or more.

Good for them. I'd get them external keyboards if they have to do a lot of typing, and a mouse, but those are cheap.

yrs,
rubato

*Are these real iPads or knockoffs?

[BoSoxGal]

Hen, do you have a keyboard/mouse for your iPad?

I am considering getting one. It runs a word processing program, no?

[The Hen]

I haven't bought or considered one.

I'm really not thinking of getting one as, although I complain bitterly about pecking out words, I don't need this slate for anything other than pleasure. In its present form, I can use it in whatever position I am comfortable in at the time (as long there is somewhere to balance it or prop it up) its all good?

But I am not sure that this kind of positioning is really the concussive to the best studying you can do?