When I began this semester I started weighing the benefits of going to etextbooks. I looked at the cost of the Ipad + books and then the cost of books alone. I also looked at things like weight of the ipad versus carrying around all the books as well as the ease of using it versus hand writing. After doing some research I found that mostly every book for my classes were avaliable on the Ipad and at nearly 50-75% off each text book. Now with the Ipad costing $500-$600 dollars you aren't really hitting home just yet with it but I was able to get within a hundred to two hundred dollars of what printed textbooks would have cost me. So with the upcoming semesters, in time it will pay for itself as well as save me a great deal of money.
I'd like to mention the weight of the Ipad. The Ipad is only 1.5 Lbs! Thats less than 1 textbook. So I've taken a huge amount of weight in books, and put it all into 1.5 Lbs. It's made it a lot more comfortable getting from class to class without the big load of books and binders in my backpack. So where are all the notes going? Well there are numerous note taking applications avaliable to you and they keep everything very neat. Your able to create virtual binders and keep chapter notes organized. I've never been more organized with note taking. I never have to worry about where my paper is or thumbing through all of my notebooks to find a particular lecture. Most applications have a search box and you can type in a keyword and it will take you straight to it. So with that in mind, you can imagine studying is easier also. I'm using a small bluetooth keyboard with it to make note taking a breeze. The keyboard is large enough to be comfortable to deal with, yet small enough to not add a lot of weight either. With the keyboard I'm also able to take notes twice as fast as when I was writing them. I'm sure most of you have had that one professor who speaks extremely fast and doesn't wait on you to copy the slides. Well if your good at typing, this problem is eliminated most of the time. With A lot of the professors putting notes on blackboard you are also able to have the internet at your finger tips with just a few clicks and you're able to follow along online. There are apps that allow you to edit and highlight on notes such as blackboard slides which makes note taking on this device even that much better. Also battery life is not an issue. I've had it last a few days at some times. If you charge it at night you will make it through even the longest days without an issue.
For future thoughts from talking to the apple corporation Ive found that they will with time make the etextbooks interactive. For example for science you could have something about a chemical reaction and you can click on it and it will work through the problem and show you step by step how it works. Or another is with math it will be able to show you how to work through math problems. This could show some real benifit in the future and could be a great learning tool on its own.
With this being my first semester using the Ipad as an alternative to textbooks and notebooks I'd have to say i'm extremly pleased and can't see going back to paper textbooks. If you're able to afford the extra hundred dollars initally it will eventually save you money and be a great deal easier to deal with than regular textbooks. The Ipad allows me to always have my notes, binders, and textbooks all at my fingertips. I guess it couldn't have come at a better time as everyone is promoting "going green."
Well done, Tom.
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