Review Number One

Throughout the pilot program for the iPad in thr classroom, I have noticed a great number of pros, and a small number of minor, slightly inconveniencing flaws and problems in the use of the machines. As a whole, the iPads allow us quick, convenient access to the internet, when we are not sure of what a certain phrase means in a lecture. We do not have to fight against other classes to gain control of the library lab or the mobile lab for a day, because we already have the iPads with us. They are much lighter than notebooks, and the NOTEPAD app allows us to take our notes on them. Personally, and this is just my opinion, I prefer to take my notes with conventional pencil and paper, though if I wanted to, I could just as easily take to the iPad. However, I have seen some critical flaws with it. Foremost, they are a distraction during class, and should be restricted to specific times of use. I come in to class, and I already see five or six people using them. Also, the inability to print from them is a real problem, as once we finish a project, using one of the many programs available to us, we are required to import it to the Cloud, or email it to ourselves, and we all have to wait for a chance to use one of the two desktops to print. The lack of Adobe Flash is a nuisance, as well, because some videos, like those we are REQUIRED to watch for some assignments in class, cannot be run without it. This requires us to have to go to the lab, or borrow the laptops, just so we can watch these videos. Multiple windows are not able to be simultaneously active, so we can't load one page while we are reading something on another. It would be niceto be able to have more than one open at once, with two or more on the same screen, but this is a problem with the iPad itself, and cannot be fixed by us. We'll have to wait for Apple to fix that themselves. As a note, I would like to pount out that apps are prone to randomly shutting down, and not openong back up. Usually they are apps that we do not require, but not always. Also, I was rather annoyed when I had just finished a project on it, and as I was going to save it, it DELETED it. More than an hour of work, gone in a second. And, more recently, this blog. I had typed about half of it, and when I went to fix a spelling error, I accidentally hit the X up in the corner, and everything I had just done was gone. I don't like them, straight out. The apps are evil, the spellcheck is demonic, and the constant errors just drive me mad. As I recall, I was one of the few in the class who lobbied for the use of the netbooks...