Thoughts on the iPad

By Thomas Kainz

Courtesy of the CMC’s Office of Innovations, I’ve had the privilege of giving the Apple iPad a test spin for a couple of months.  The intent of this “test drive” was to gander my opinion of the applicability and usefulness of this tablet in our classroom environment.   Before we get to my comments I just thought I’d remind those of you whom might not know me too well (or at all for that matter) of my background as it relates to information technology.

I started “playing” with computers just after they hit the shelves as readily available over the counter purchases.  This was back in the late '70s and an entry level PC was a little over $1,000.  As a college student, I had to take a loan out to buy one.  Not having any college courses available for anything PC, I had to buy books and I taught myself how to program.  For the next 35(ish) years I bought, built, sold, programmed and did virtually everything else PC’s.  I currently have a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, a Masters in Information Sciences.  My full time position is as a Software Engineer and I operate a PC Service business in Howard.  Oh….. I also teach Information Technology courses for CMC as well as give private lessons. So, on to the review…

It seems that there is a big push as of late to promote the use of tablets in our day to day lives to the point of an ever-growing segment seemingly indicating that this is the death of the typical desktop computer and even the typical laptop.  While that may be the end result in the somewhat distant future, I don’t see getting anywhere close to that point in the near future.  Not that Apple isn’t working very hard to achieving that goal, mind you.  Apple has a long history of leveraging themselves into the educational sector through "juicy" programs for institutions and instructors with the ultimate goal of selling boat loads of systems to the students based off the recommendations and in some cases (God forbid) requirements of their instructors or institutions. Get the educational “system” hooked and that tends to funnel down through the student level. 

The “kit” I was handed consisted of the iPad, a protective case with an attached keyboard to make typing easier, and some accessories.  Handling the iPad when it was out of the protective case / keyboard, I found it to be difficult to hold on to.  Apple did a very good job of making the iPad very sleek looking with the aluminum back plate and the very beveled edges but in my hands it always felt like it was going to squirt out and onto the floor and in fact, that did happen a number of times.  After the first time it happened – luckily I was sitting on the couch at the time so it had a very cushioned landing – I was ever afraid of using it while walking around on anything except soft surfaces.  In actually using the tablet, I found it to be unacceptably slow with more than a decent lag time when starting a new program.

While there are an overabundance of available apps for the iPad, in searching around specifically for apps related to education and even more specifically to an instructors use, I didn’t really come across any particular app that had functionality which couldn’t be found in a program meant for the typical Windows-based desktop or laptop computer and which, in most cases, outperform the iPad app as well.

I realize that iPads and other tablets are the latest "thing" but I as well as other IT professionals feel that for what they have to offer to the typical student, they are too limited in their functionality and they are overpriced for what they do.  If you follow the industry, you'd find that there's about to be an explosion with various tablet like devices which, based upon their functionality alone, put the iPad to shame.  I would hold out that for the student who can afford an iPad, they would be best to hold off for a few more months and put their investment into something more practical and better performing.  

I watched a video recently where a number of IT professionals and a few higher education administrators had a round-table discussion about this very topic.  The colleges first tried the iPad in their respective environments believing the hype that it would be a great tool with assisting their student’s day to day academic lives.  After the first test period, they found while the students were able to make "some" use of the tablets, many found the tablets to be very restrictive in the functionality they offered.  During the second round of tests, they tried a less expensive Android based tablet but once again found the students complaining that when they needed to do "real" work, they found it couldn't be done on the tablets.  The end result of the college’s experimentation was that the students preferred to have a less expensive yet better performing laptop than the tablets.  While they felt the tablets ended up being great for social networking and internet surfing, etc. they were not so good for actually doing the work they needed to do... spreadsheets, presentations, data base functionality and so on.

So, the bottom line on my take of the iPad in education:  As long as Windows-based programs dominate the business sector (for better or worse), we as instructors need to be teaching using the tools which are reflective of that domination.  Additionally we should, as much as possible, work diligently towards assisting students in keeping their educational costs to a minimum.  When a student can spend less than $300 on a laptop which would functionally be leaps and bounds ahead of what the iPad would allow them to do, we should consider that to be the more logical choice, especially given the ever-growing segment of laptop/tablet convertible units not only available now but those coming in the very near future.