Boksburg school swaps books for tablets

According to The Star, a tablet would cost about R2500 and was expected to last three or four years.
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Would be interesting to see that.
 
There's two sides to this coin. In other countries they've done this and people are forking out at least as much and sometimes more for the books in the end. Chances are they'll also prevent you from sharing or selling the book once it's no longer needed so there's no recouping any money spent on them or passing it onto a younger child. I don't remember all the details but using an exclusively ebook system for schools can and has been abused in other places.

cbrunsdonza said:
You make it sound ground breaking. Private schools in my area started it last year already, iPads are mandatory for most junior grades.
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"Last year already" and that puts your area ahead of the curve? Hate to break it to you but that's no more worthwhile to brag about than you think this news is since this has been done for a long time in many places so I don't see the point in saying that.

Also making iPads mandatory is stupid.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
You make it sound ground breaking. Private schools in my area started it last year already, iPads are mandatory for most junior grades.
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I know of a few schools that have had this policy.

I also know that most of those schools have met opposition from parents who have basically told them to get knotted.

I know that I would NOT give my kid under the age of 14 an iPad or Laptop for school... it would get destroyed in short order.
 
With DRM the electronic books cannot be shared/resold etc. When you buy the hard-copy book it has value after the school year but with e-books it has none so you end up just borrowing the book for the same price as owning one (hard-copy). This is the problem I only recently realised I now have with my Kindle books. I own 100's of Kindle book already that I bought legally. Can those books be transferred to my two kids when I pass away? Seemingly not as it is tied to my e-mail address and password.
 
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Its just a distraction.How can you use the same device to play games on to do schoolwork.
Apart from internet based projects we should stick to textbooks for now.
 
BeVonk! said:
With DRM the electronic books cannot be shared/resold etc. When you buy the hard-copy book it has value after the school year but with e-books it has none so you end up just borrowing the book for the same price as owning one (hard-copy). This is the problem I only recently realised I now have with my Kindle books. I own 100's of Kindle book already that I bought legally. Can those books be transferred to my two kids when I pass away? Seemingly not as it is tied to my e-mail address and password.
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Best would be to use non drm/free books and content. Something like http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-driven-learning/web-books/ or http://www.themathsportal.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29&Itemid=21 and perhaps something like http://www.khanacademy.org/ could help. Could also be an idea to host Wikipedia on a local server at school for research...
 
A private school will more likely go for something more flashy than the projects mentioned. The Wikipedia idea sounds good.
 
BeVonk! said:
With DRM the electronic books cannot be shared/resold etc. When you buy the hard-copy book it has value after the school year but with e-books it has none so you end up just borrowing the book for the same price as owning one (hard-copy). This is the problem I only recently realised I now have with my Kindle books. I own 100's of Kindle book already that I bought legally. Can those books be transferred to my two kids when I pass away? Seemingly not as it is tied to my e-mail address and password.
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Hardcopy books sometimes cannot be resold (but can be shared).
For instance, I had 2nd edition book, next year they made 3rd edition. The differences? Some chapters got shifted and exercises changed completely.
Another thing they do, they place CD-key for online access for files or downloadable software to do exercises with, and it is once-off use.
 
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