Campus Ambivalent to iPad Requirement Proposal

All students may be required to have an iPad starting next fall, should a proposal from the faculty Curriculum Committee and Principal Tom Hassan gain widespread approval.Members of the Curriculum Committee suggested in their proposal that the iPads would be helpful tools for learning, similar to the TI-89 graphing calculators which students are currently required to use.According to Hassan, the proposal of the Curriculum Committee is currently in the discussion stage among faculty and Student Council members. "I am gathering information and opinions from many varied sources, including students through my meeting with them at Student Council last night," Hassan said."The iPad is a tool that would be available to be used in any class, although there is not an expectation that all teachers will choose to have students use this tool," Curriculum Committee Chair Laura Marshall said. "In fact, we anticipate that much of the use will occur for work done outside of class. Persuaded by the experiences of many teachers and students who worked with the classroom sets of iPads and guided by the technology vision statement, we believe that only when every student has access to an iPad can we take advantage of the full potential of this tool."The school would provide iPads to financial aid students, but those who do not receive financial aid would have to purchase their own iPads or iPad minis—which cost from $329 for an iPad mini to $399 for an iPad 2. According to a student survey held by the Curriculum Committee, 20 percent of students currently have iPads or iPad minis."Curriculum Committee imagined the innovation that would be encouraged and the ease of communication with people from around the globe. Conversations with two teachers helped us to understand how the iPad can be transformative to the learning process in some areas," Marshall said. "They explained how the apps highlighted an interconnectedness of the course materials. The particular apps the students used deepened their access to the texts they were studying, and so the iPad became a tool which enhanced their ability to converse with each other about critical questions and insights around the Harkness table."Japanese Instructor Kayoko Tazawa was highly in favor of the idea of iPads in all classrooms. "The iPad is a great tool, and many colleges already use them in the classroom," Tazawa said. "When you go to the business world, and you’re supposed to use all the tools that are available to you, including modern technology, familiarizing yourself with these tools will bring you a step ahead."Ipads in classes had a low physical profile and were used as a tool to aid the conversation, according to Marshall. Students were able to easily look up words during a conversation in any language and to use Skype to communicate with people in other countries, and experimented with Apple TV in the classroom. One teacher found that students could project their essays from their iPads easily in order to allow for peer editing. "Many of the uses of the iPads in class could have been done on laptops," Marshall said. "However, teachers did not feel comfortable with the idea of students having vertical screens in the classroom. In addition, laptops take more time to start up. The low profile and instant on features of the iPad feel much less obtrusive at the table than a laptop."Tazawa agreed, citing the importance of the iPad and its apps for learning and teaching East Asian languages, such as Chinese or Japanese. "Writing Chinese and Japanese characters can be intimidating and cumbersome. You have to write correctly, each stroke. Each stroke, you have to do in a certain direction and order. Learning those steps is very important, and iPad apps are a great way to learn it," Tazawa said. "The dictionary is excellent, too. When you’re reading Japanese books, there are often sentences that you don’t understand. With an iPad, you can copy the character, and it pulls up the definition for you. You can easily learn and memorize vocabulary using an iPad."Biology instructor Sydnee Goddard, however, believed that iPads were not technologically ready yet to replace computers and that cost was going to be an issue for families, if the Curriculum Committee’s proposal were to pass. "I taught an iPad class last term, and there were limitations. There are certainly some things that the iPad can do easily and that can make class more exciting, but there were many more limitations," she said."The main things are that you cannot word process or print well on an iPad. This means that students will have to have both a laptop and an iPad, and that’s going to increase the number of electronic machines on campus, which will increase costs for families of students," Goddard said. "So until iPads can replace the computer and assume all the functions of the computer, maybe there could be some iPads available for some classes, but we should certainly not make iPads required for all students."Students had mixed feelings about the idea of requiring all students at Exeter to have an iPad for class. Some thought it was not a very realistic idea, for issues of distraction, cost and less group interaction in Harkness discussions."I think the idea is unrealistic and ridiculously expensive," upper Nina Meyers said. "They might as well get a Genius Bar on campus if they'll give 1000 students and hundreds more faculty iPads. I think that looking down at your iPad could constantly be a distraction. The iPad is easy to fidget with because it’s not a notebook. It's not necessarily academically oriented."Prep Jason Won agreed. "Ipads aren't necessary in most classes. As a note-taking tool, one has the option of using a notebook or a laptop, and as a reference tool, one can also use a laptop or refer to a textbook. I think making iPads mandatory is not a good way to make use of money," Won said.Upper Milton Syed brought up the issue of the cost of the iPad. "This will be a waste of money because the benefit to cost ratio is bad. The value gained from it, like faster integration processes, is not enough justification to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars for these machines," Syed said."I really see it as a cost-benefit matter," senior Aaron Suduiko, who was ambivalent about this proposal, said. "The student would have to save money from the iPad purchase as opposed to buying physical books – something which would have to be true across the board, were they to be mandated. I'm not convinced by an environmental argument because, as far as I know, research is as of yet indeterminate as to whether they are green. Even though they replace books, the turnover of technology makes manufacturing considerations of equal weight."Suduiko added that Harkness interaction would decrease with the introduction of iPads into the classroom."I also worry that this would be another step away from direct person-to-person interaction at the table. I recognize that, practically speaking, students may already be distracted at the table with their phones, but I find it difficult to find an argument that can justify raising the wall of technology between Harkness students even higher," he said.Meyers, however, mentioned some possible benefits from the iPads in classrooms. "There will be less paper printing for sure, and it will probably be cheaper in the long run than buying books each term at the bookstore. We wouldn't have to sell them back or have them pile up in our rooms," Meyers said. "It might also be good communication wise for the entire class when we're outside of class, because we can iMessage the class with a question and use social media."Despite the concerns brought by some students and faculty, however, Curriculum Committee strongly believed in the potential of the iPad in the classroom."The committee believes that we have yet to discover the impact that this could have," Marshall said. "Each student must have an iPad in order for teachers to fully explore the potential benefit for use with an entire class."