Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I’d say it’s one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse.
TUAW has a tip from a Seton Hill student who sent in a memo that said: “Students will be able to download their textbooks to their iPads from the iBook Store. In addition, iPads can be used as phones and for air and file sharing, as well as note-taking.” Gone will be the days of lugging a huge calculus book from room to room and I can only imagine the mixture of joy and dread as textbook publishers realize the grey market for used textbooks is dead but, in its place, a new pirate market will appear overnight.
Check out Seton Hill’s website. It states, in no uncertain terms, that “Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at Seton Hill will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad.” Can you imagine? I remember I was about to go to Clarkson University in New York back in 1993 because they were giving out laptops. But a MacBook and an iPad? That’s like getting a pony and a unicorn.
I’m honestly amazed and really excited by this. Whereas I see little value in the “one laptop per child” rigamarole, I think one laptop per young adult with the foresight and intelligence to use technology for schoolwork is just swell.