I dont think the ipad can be characterised as an ‘ereader’ very well either, since it’s not an e-ink display.
For $1000 bucks apeice they could’ve gotten pretty decent chromebooks and an actual ereader for the same price.
I lol’d when they bought these, and I lol even harder now. Even if the software was delivered as promised they are still idiotically overpriced, underpowered things.
I read books on my ipad. I do have a kindle, but I use it so little that I forget to charge it. The key is the high resolution display.
It’s possible and not too bad an experience, but it’s not ideal imo. Screen time is the #1 battery consumer in mobile devices, and when the screen is on the thing gets hot.
You have a point on the resolution, but I’m not convinced it’s necessary or practically beneficial for anything text based. People read for hours on normal laptops. A 12.1" at typical ‘standard’ laptop res is less than 120ppi. Web graphics are typically 72.
Yes, the letters are undeniably not visibly pixellated, but was anyone noticing the pixels before we went to high resolution screens? The difference is difficult for most to perceive, unless comparing side by side.
I graduated from high school decades ago. But I seem to remember that the books were large, heavy, multicolumn, and color. I don’t read those kinds of books anymore. The closest I come is occassionally reading scientific journal articles-- multicolumn, color figures, the works.
Those don’t work well on low resolution devices. They don’t work well on kindles. They don’t work well on eink readers. They don’t work all that well on computers with low resolution monitors. On something like an ipad, though, they work great. Zoom out to the full view of the page, and the text is still readable. If you need to look closer, pinch to zoom, is pretty organically ergonomic.
But I haven’t used a secondary school textbook in a good long time. You’d think that static layouts would have gone out of fashion.
Actually, it’s a fairly practical reason: the new California state standardized testing can be completed on iPads, but only if they have a physical keyboard attached. It’s a state requirement. So if they buy the iPads without keyboards, the school also need to provide access to some sort of a computer with a hardware keyboard.
If anyone of any appreciable rank at a school district believes that a Curriculum is a thing you buy like a peice of software, a crime of unimaginable proportions has already been committed. This belief alone turns the entire education system into a fish in a barrel so lethargic and bloated that not amount of federal anti-corruption legislation could save it’s slovenly, emdangered ass from being poached off the face of the earth.
I still remember the day that Kaplan representatives brought our new english “curriculum*” in to a “professional development**” to show us the fucking crime against humanity that our 3rd-5th graders would be subjected to for an entire year. I burn with regret to this day that i didn’t stand up and spit in their faces and cry out “shame on you!! Shame on alll of you!!”
Again. If anyone thinks a curriculum is something you buy, rather than something your build, develop and cultivate across a variety of original sources, real life resources, independent texts, puzzles problems and experiences GTFO of fucking education.
I hope Montessouri assassins take out every last one of these bastards while they sleep off their fucking victory feast.
*test prep book full of short, contextless passages amd multiple choise answers
**sales pitch/victory dance
So the new Pearson-made multi-state PARCC test (which is not what California is using, apparently) required keyboards to take the test on iPads. So schools bought lots of (expensive) keyboards to go with the iPads they already had. And the students hated them so much they unplugged them much of the time. And now Pearson calls keyboards “optional.”
So there’s that.
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