• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Any student iPad users here?

C

Coldkilla

Diamond Member
Have any students (particularly college students) found a way to make the iPad useful in an educational environment? Even if you do not have an answer to any of the questions I may ask, would you care to lend some tips on things you've learned throughout your time with it? I know Netbooks and Laptops serve as a better alternative in a practical sense but my questions are aimed for those who tried to make the ipad work in this environment.

I was thinking of picking up an iPad 2, assuming the prices go down soon after the iPad 3 is announced. Was also thinking of picking up a nice and small keyboard from Logitech and the $10 "Pages" app from the app store for note-taking.

I have trouble listening to professors if I am furiously writing notes (I take a lot of notes). Does the microphone record at a good quality? How about the camera? If I took a quick picture of the board from the front row so I could review and finalize the notes at a later time.

Thanks!
 
I've seen buttloads of kids with ipads and ipad 2's and while they are nice toys, they dont facilitate learning at all. In fact they are more of a distraction than anything else. You cant type as quickly as a laptop and most kiddies dont have the discipline to avoid games if the thing is on in class.

When classrooms go all digital and there is a teaching system made with tablets in mind, that will change.
Until then they are just like a smartphone, only even bigger and therefore more of a nuisance.
 
While I understand your opinion, I am sure a few will argue that they can facilitate learning. I am not here to ether indulge or advocate any such conversation, I really am just interested to know if there are any iPad users out that have at least tried to make a go of it and what their experience(s) have been.
 
Honestly, you're going to struggle to make it work. Note taking with a pen and paper is arguably better for speed and precision. And really? You're going to be that guy who takes pictures with a tablet in the middle of class? Do it with a cell phone if you need to. Unless you are in a dead quiet lecture room and sitting < 10 feet away from the professor, the microphone will be useless.
 
Borrowed a friends Touchpad to try out for the studying route.

Wasn't worth it. At best I could throw up a pdf or something, but using a pdf on my laptop was so much easier and faster. File browser meant I could juggle dozens of PDF's easily. I didn't see a reason why you would need one
 
I have been using an app called Notability and it was sufficient for note taking in class. I also have a bluetooth keyboard but I have been typing on just the iPad screen. Notability also allows free hand drawing and if you'd like, audio recording tied to the notes you take. Let me know if you have any questions as I have used a plethora of different apps and am sticking with this one for now.
 
I would say that I wouldn't use a tablet in a college environment. When I had the iPad, there was no sound recording app like on the iphone. The camera quality is too poor to be able to take pictures of the blackboard.

I think however it would make an excellent distraction tool as well as a "HEY LOOK AT ME I HAVE AN IPAD LOL" tool.

Typing on it is actually pretty nice if you have the smart cover for it. Not awkward to type at all. If you can stand typing without tactile feedback.

Also there's a chance that the ipad could slip off your desk and crash onto the concrete floor. Because it's the microfiber that's on the outside, I could see it easily slipping.
 
I've not used an iPad, but I've used an Android tablet and most definitely used it to good effect in my studies. If you are in a lecture theatre however, I think a notebook would be more effective.

You can definitely take notes as fast as a notebook if you become proficient with Swype (as far as I know, not available on iOS products). But in general a notebook is better for a lecture theatre. I switched to a tablet because it was more practical on the wards than an unwieldy notebook (not really a relevant reason for courses other than medicine/physiotherapy/nursing/dentistry etc).

As far as audio recording, I don't care how good your equipment is, it's not going to cut it for recording the lecture from your seat. It is common practise (or at least it used to be before universities began recording all lectures and making them available online with screen capture) to place a digital audio recorder (or in the old days, a tape recorder) at the front of the room near the lecturer, or at the very least near one of the speakers (though these are usually mounted high in the air). You are better off grabbing the official recording of the lecture, as this is taken from the professor's microphone.
 
Interesting perspectives guys. Thanks for the feedback so far. I think I will most likely just keep my Netbook for class and once it comes time to start studying, swap over to an iPad.

Does anyone know of a Notetaking app for the iPad that would allow me to take saved .pdf's/jpg's and highlight over them? I've got OCD when it comes to taking precise, accurate, and visually appealing notes (colored high-lighters & pens, sticky-tags for quick-find access, etc) and I was thinking about scanning a few pages of my hand-written notes and putting them into the iPad. To make corrections on the fly.

Adramalech that keyboard seems really cool, it sure looks like it would save some space! The iPen looks cool too, but the thing about tablets and electronic pens - I always notice a slight delay, which always throws me off and I never think I can get used to it.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1225098940/ipen-the-first-active-stylus-for-ipad
 
I have to say this is one area I am hoping to see Windows 8 make a push in tablets. Nothing beats onenote when it comes to this.
 
If you have books available electronically, it might be useful there.

For notes, I would STRONGLY suggest the old fashioned route - a legal pad and pencil. When I was in law school, I pretty much tried every method, and my grades were the best when I brought no electronics to class and just took notes with paper and pencil. The act of listening, processing, and writing down what you were told basically gave you another spin through the material right then and there. I'd also suggest that if you tend to take more of a transcript of what the prof says than notes, that you go back and summarize everything conceptually. Typing didn't have the same effect on my learning, but YMMV.

What I do wish was that I had my book available in PDF form, so that I could do a quick keyword search in class to find something being referenced in the lecture. An iPad would be a nice tool for that if you have a means to scan and create searchable PDFs, or if your books are available natively in electronic form.

For large volume scanning, please of course check to see if this is okay with your school's honor code, but the office that supports disabled students may already be scanning books for the visually impaired students. You might ask there if they would provide you with a copy if you own the book already.
 
shortylickens said:
I've seen buttloads of kids with ipads and ipad 2's and while they are nice toys, they dont facilitate learning at all. In fact they are more of a distraction than anything else. You cant type as quickly as a laptop and most kiddies dont have the discipline to avoid games if the thing is on in class.
Click to expand...

Really, the same arguments could be made about notebooks. They're not as good as handwritten notes, especially when it comes to diagrams, figures, drawings, and you can just as easily screw around on a notebook as you can a tablet.

Like other posters have pointed out, handwritten notes will probably work the best, but a tablet won't disadvantage you assuming you can find the right software for it.
 
Mopetar said:
Really, the same arguments could be made about notebooks. They're not as good as handwritten notes, especially when it comes to diagrams, figures, drawings, and you can just as easily screw around on a notebook as you can a tablet.

Like other posters have pointed out, handwritten notes will probably work the best, but a tablet won't disadvantage you assuming you can find the right software for it.
Click to expand...

Easier to type on laptop than tablet.


Doesnt matter. Most of my teachers dont allow anything. Again, too much of a distraction.
 
Let's see... to avoid going into whether using an iPad for college is a good idea or not:

1) Take notes while recording audio: this should be perfectly fine. While it doesn't look like it, the iPad's microphone is actually pretty good. If you are about 10 ft away from the presenter, the recorded audio clip should be good enough for some extended listening. I would suggest that you use the official Pages app, as it has more tools for formatting, and it can output to PDF effortlessly. The only problem is that the PDF output isn't visible to other apps. You can email the PDF to yourself, and open it up in another app. Which... brings us to the next point.

2) PDF with annotations. Goodreader was recently updated to include annotations to PDF. You can doodle, create shapes, and type texts, or do whatever you want to any page of a PDF document in there. It's also one of the nicest PDF readers on the iPad, second only to iBooks, but with the annotation feature, it's immensely more powerful than iBooks.

3) Camera quality on the iPad 2 is really not that good. You are going to have to lug along a point and shoot camera for that task. You can import photos from the PaS camera into your iPad 2 with the camera connection kit, and the iPad can then do whatever the hell it wants with the image. I think that's the better route than you having to hold up a big flat square to take a photo.

4) For scanning documents, and... to some extents, books, use the same route as #3. Use the PaS camera to take a picture of the pages you want to scan, put them into the iPad, and if you want to make them look pretty, there are tons of image scanning apps available on the App Store for $0.99 or even FREE. They can take a skewered image of a document, eliminate the background, and fix the perspective of the document perfectly fine.

So in my opinions, lug along a PaS camera. You can get one for about $100 now, and it doesn't have to be a top of the line model, but it'll help immensely if you decide to go the iPad route.
 
sjwaste said:
For notes, I would STRONGLY suggest the old fashioned route - a legal pad and pencil. When I was in law school, I pretty much tried every method, and my grades were the best when I brought no electronics to class and just took notes with paper and pencil. The act of listening, processing, and writing down what you were told basically gave you another spin through the material right then and there. I'd also suggest that if you tend to take more of a transcript of what the prof says than notes, that you go back and summarize everything conceptually. Typing didn't have the same effect on my learning, but YMMV.
Click to expand...

In grad school, I tried laptop and pen & paper. I found that I just transcribed what was said in lecture word for word when I used a laptop, but actually processed and summarized when using pen & paper. Also, even though I had paper with me when I brought my laptop, everything was disjointed because one was a file and one was written (even when printed) - this and laziness deterred me from drawing/writing anyything most of the time.

At work, I bring a Playbook to meetings just in case I need to take some pictures and look less retarded. If there's a diagram or something that is available but not immediately ready for distribution. Other than that, pen & paper plus asking people for soft copies works fine.
 
Everyone's different, I NEVER took any notes when I tried pen + paper.

Then again, with a notebook, I was usually on AnandTech instead of listening to the lecturer.

In a nutshell: class is boring.
 
Adramalech said:
I have been using an app called Notability and it was sufficient for note taking in class. I also have a bluetooth keyboard but I have been typing on just the iPad screen. Notability also allows free hand drawing and if you'd like, audio recording tied to the notes you take. Let me know if you have any questions as I have used a plethora of different apps and am sticking with this one for now.
Click to expand...

Came here to post about Notability. Excellent app for classes.
 
On a related note does anyone use tablets to take notes during business meetings? It's can rude to have a laptop out depending on the context.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top