OS and Software > All Things Macintosh > Text Book Announcement for iPad ..

reply to DeeC

Re: Text Book Announcement for iPad ..

Thanks for the link Stacy.
I am surprised but not surprised that they could be that big. For someone with a smaller capacity device that could be an issue.

reply to Stacy
Not sure if they're all going to be like the one I downloaded and tested out, but every page has a video. I appreciate the benefit of video to certain ideas, but to put it on every page will, most likely, further along the dumbing down of the education system.
Some complex concepts might best be displayed in video fashion, but if reading is transformed into watching a Disney video...will they learn? Again, maybe the book I got is a sample of 'what an etextbook can be', but I think kids might learn best if they were required to read (and think)...as opposed to sit back and watch...IMHO

reply to DeeC
That sample crashes randomly on my iPad2.

The file on my desktop is 965MB. When I look on my iPad under usage and then under iBooks, it says Documents and Data 15.8MB. I don't understand that as it has to be larger and it did take a very long time to D/L. A look at the space info in iTunes for my iPad shows something supporting the 965MB file size (I only have a few books on my iPad).
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If anyone tries the sample ("Life on Earth")...and gets stuck at the gray thatched screen of death GTSOD (I'll take credit for inventing this one)...sometimes quitting the app will allow you to try iBooks again. However, some of the times when it crashes and you try iBooks again, iBooks attempts to open the text book again and goes right into the GTSOD.
Quit the app and reboot (power down) the iPad. Next time you start iBooks it will take you to your library (instead of it trying to open the book again)

I had to restart my original iPad just to get past the gray thatched screen. All in all, out of four attempts, I've only been able to browse Life on Earth once.

Same, and once is enough. "been there, done that"....delete!

How many times do I have to fall for the Apple 1.0 Beta Test before I realize it's best to wait.
Got fooled again...

reply to DeeC
Ugh... yet another thing students have to BUY without contributing anything useful to their education, and this is a good thing? Higher education in this country is a mess!

Plus, they must be replaced every couple of years, they get stolen, screens fail, batteries die... Great for Apple, great for rich students, not so great for everyone else.

Agreed. It may catch on in private schools or even rich suburbs but I can't imagine iPads being used in New York City schools where we have over a million students. Even if teachers receive some kind of grant from Apple many of them would probably wind up stolen or broken. I don't think its legal for public schools to require parents to buy them.

My grand daughter has an iPad but she's not allowed to take it out of the house for fear that someone will try to take it away from her. I doubt many parents will be willing to take that risk.

I wasn't even thinking about it from a K-12 perspective, just from a college student's perspective. I can't even imagine a public K-12 district being able to do this. With 40 students per class, and two students per textbook, where are they going to find the money for this? And is this a useful way of spending money?

I do know some K-12 districts provide laptops to their students. I think this could be a good thing for those schools to use instead of laptops. It can reinforce the need to still be using pen and paper to take notes because it's harder to multitask on a tablet. I see way too many young people thinking they can take science notes or do math problems on a laptop or a tablet - you can't!

reply to DeeC
I think with a writing/highlighting stylus, and a 7in cheaper version, the iPad could really take over educational books, but again, that's jmho

I use a 6 inch kindle for my college textbooks and it's turning out to way too small. I'm thinking 7 inches would probably be a little too small too.

reply to haroldo

reply to steven s

reply to steven s

reply to DeeC
Just a side note: I tried a search on Amazon for some of the hard-to-find books I was required to read in college and grad school. Much to my surprise some are now available in the Kindle store.

reply to haroldo

quote:

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...Apple today updated iBooks [App Store] to version 2.0.1, bringing a fix for an issue that resulted in some iBooks Textbooks not opening in the application.

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I've also noticed my iPad seems to be crashing a lot since updating to iBooks 2 and downloading the text. While crashes were rare previously I sometimes have to restart Safari and Twitteriffic several times a day. Maybe the update will help?