At 12:51 PM 11/19/2012, Roger wrote:
Apparently one of the problems for schools that I know of, quite apart from the high cost of purchase of the ipad, are the apps. It's never just one app, losts are needed.
I'm way too old to have to deal with schools (and not having kids), I don't have to cross that bridge. However, I have run an iPad in a TAFE environment with a lot of success.
Students have to have wads of money to install all the apps on top of every other school cost. There will never be a final list of apps and that's it, it will be ongoing, as will the purchase of the next ipad, through the 6-10 years of school.
Depending on the apps, the cost may be little or a lot.
Does an ipad run all day without recharging? Schools cannot provide charging or power leads to each desk or recharge facilities for massive numbers of ipads at lunchtimes.
Yes, that's one of the strengths of the ipad. I used mine in the field, where battery charging simply wasn't possible. They will easily last a typical school or TAFE day, and with some attention to power management (putting to sleep when not actually using it, etc), it is possible to get through 2 days. In my case, I'm talking about a 3G iPad, so I had the extra consumption overheads of 3G and GPS. In short, battery life is not an issue. I will check out the Linux tools, that looks like a better way to manage these devices than iTunes, which can be a pain in the proverbial. 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com