Oh, iPad – how silly and ridiculous you are.
“A magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”
The only thing I find “revolutionary” about iPad is iCan put the iLetter “i” in front of everything iType and iGet away with it.
Fortunately for Apple, not everyone shares my cynicism towards Steve Jobs’ new toy.
When St. Catherine’s High School in Racine, Wis., a school normally full of 8th-12th graders, begins classes in the fall, there will be a small addition to its halls. The school will begin its new middle school program, adding sixth and seventh graders to the student body.
These new middle schoolers will also be the first to test out a new initiative taking place at St. Catherine’s — instead of traditional, heavy textbooks these sixth and seventh graders will be outfitted with a shiny, new iPad.
All students (read: parents) have to do to receive their “magical” iDevice is pay the school a $400 technology fee and they’re set to go.
“We think it’s time to do something to take advantage of technology,” School President Christopher Olley said. “This is a small step for this age group.”
While I do agree with Olley that taking advantage of today’s technology can be beneficial not only to students’ wallets, but also their future back problems, it’s completely absurd this program is being introduced to 11 to 13-year-olds.
The school’s technology director explains how this will be beneficial to the students because they will be taught about the care and maintenance of computers. He also says each iPad is insured.
I hope they got the biggest accidental and physical damage protection plan offered. I wish I could fly up to Wisconsin and count how many of these precious new iPads hit the floor.
Working at Best Buy, I wish I could count how many customers I’ve seen come in with their iPod Touches and iPhones with completely smashed screens asking what they could do with it.
Not only are there physical damages to worry about, there are also theft issues. This is a $500 piece of machinery being held by a 12-year-old — it’s almost like taking candy from a baby. Even if it’s not thieves, jealous students in high school might feel the need to bully some of these middle schoolers to get to their iPad.
Also, I’d assume the school would know this, but you can play games on iPad too. What’s to keep one of these kids from playing Plants vs. Zombies when they should be studying biology instead?
I know I sure played the hell out of all the games on my TI-83 graphing calculator in my eighth grade algebra class – and those weren’t even in color!
This has to be a publicity or marketing stunt by the school and Apple. Sure, iPads are new and have touchscreens (and I’m a sucker for touchscreens) but they’re also fragile and overpriced.
Everything the school is looking to get done can easily be done on a laptop or even a netbook for a fraction of the price.
While I would love to not have to carry 40 pounds of weight in my backpack every day, this is not the answer.
Schools should be focusing more on some sort of dedicated eTextbook allowing students to rent or purchase digital copies of books. This would save students a considerable amount of money — not only because they would be cheaper to produce, but students also wouldn’t have to worry about their books becoming outdated by newer (and sometimes unnecessary) versions of the text.
But hey, Apple is what’s “cool” right now, so we can’t leave students high and dry with some lame netbook.
Even if that means all those middle school boys are walking around rocking a man purse to carry their iPad.
—-Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected].