“A CO Mayo secondary school is getting rid of schoolbooks and replacing them with iPads,” John Fallon reports for The Irish Times.
St Coleman’s College in Claremorris, Co Mayo will phase Apple’s revolutionary iPads “into use from September, when all 90 first year students at the college will be given the option of using the Apple machine instead of a bag full of school books,” Fallon reports.
Fallon reports, “The value for money cannot be ignored, according to the school principal Jimmy Finn… ‘We received huge support from the teachers and parents for the idea – we had 96 per cent support – but in no way is this obligatory. Parents have the choice to go with the iPad or schoolbooks like it was always done.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: TUAW. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Smart move.
Technology is changing EVERYTHING… maybe the reason for the global recession, entire industries are facing a new reality. I’m not sure text book manufactures are going to be happy with reduced revenue. Any ideas on how they are facing this issue? I think the printing industry may end up receiving gov bailouts soon.
The text book publishing industry plays the same role as the music publishing industry and the iPad will deliver the same fate to them that the iPod delivered to music publishing. Increased revenues and a larger payout to the content creator for good products. Except for one difference, that being there is no limit on song and film creation, but there is only one set of facts, despite the imaginations of the Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas Boards of Education. Some of what they see as educational material may have to be sold as entertainment.
Will they come in green with a touch of the leprechaun?
Of course. And they will be marketed as the iRish iPad…
I would be interested to learn about how the textbook material is made available on the iPad. Did St. Coleman’s College make a deal with the textbook publishers? Are the professors generating their own class materials in PDF format? Or a combination of the two?
I’m very interested in this issue too. There is a huge number (>1 million) of e-books available in usenet but how to ensure that the specific text books needed, are available?
It’s the iPaddy.