Five reasons Niners should think twice before buying a tablet for college
Comparing cost of print textbooks to ones on an iPad
Five months after purchasing it, I am already selling my Nook Color.
It is not that it is not an impressive piece of technology; it is that it is not as functional as an organizer or e-reader to justify the price tag.
According to a recent study by Pearson Foundation, tablet ownership has more than tripled among college students since this time last year.
Currently over one-quarter of students now own a standard tablet.
The same study found that most high school and college students believe that e-readers will eventually replace books. Most students also agree that these e-readers make reading “more fun” and enhance their learning experience.
Nevertheless, my personal experience with these devices has led me to believe that tablets are not the ultimate college student tools that advertisers may have you believe.
At least not yet.
They do not run the programs students need
Can tablets run full-version Microsoft Office programs, Photoshop, inDesign or programming compilers? Can you create high-quality voice recordings and edit them?
Not yet. You may be able to get some of these programs on your tablet, but they will be watered-down versions of them.
If you are a student who is looking to be more productive, forking up five hundred plus dollars for a device that cannot run the basics is counter-productive.
What tablets are designed for is primarily third-world entertainment, not productivity.
Maybe someday tablets will be able to replace laptops in terms of functionality.
But not today.
Electronic textbooks cannot replace textbooks
For one, electronic textbooks have no resale value. At the end of the semester, many students look forward to cashing in their old textbooks for some extra cash.
But if you bought your textbooks on your e-reader tablet, all your left with is a small digital remnant of a class that you have already taken, taunting you with its uselessness.
Do you keep the textbook on your device? Of course not, you will never read it again.
Do you delete it? Of course not, it was a hundred dollars.
Secondly, electronic textbooks are harder to study. While, they boast highlighting and bookmarking capabilities, that does not come close to actually holding the textbook, marking in it and folding the pages.
It does not do anything that an iPhone already does better and faster (and it is not nearly as portable)
If you do not already own a smart phone, chances are you have considered purchasing one.
And if you have ever held the iPhone up to the iPad to compare, you have probably already dimissed owning both as a socio-economic redundancy.
Tablets (primarily the iPad) are one of those technological devices that have shifted from the “want” category to “need” with too few people questioning it.
The more critically I have analyzed tablets, the more likely I am to categorize them as “neat,” not “necessary.”
Too often have I heard friends and colleagues who own both iPhones and a tablet complain that their tablet is just a larger version of their iPhone or Andriod device.
This may be because, in many ways, tablets are just larger versions of smart phones. The primary difference is still the devices’ portability.
One point for the iPhone. Zero for tablets.
Tablets are gateways to other sources of wasteful spending
Congratulations, you just bought a tablet. The first thing you are going to want to do is purchase applications within the device.
The day I bought my Nook Color, I bought several books, games and other useless tools.
User mentality when you first buy a tablet is not unlike getting your first iPhone. Yes, it is an incredible device. But it does not really feel like your device is reaching its full potential until you load it up with useless applications that you buy on impulse.
And believe me, it adds up.
Ultimately, it is a distraction
Sure, you could make the argument that it is a matter of who owns the device. But ask yourself- how many times have you seen a student in class using their iPad, Nook or Kindle to read their textbook or take notes?
Now ask yourself how many times you’ve seen another student using their device to play Angry Birds or browse 9gag?
Chances are that there are far more in the latter group. Students who are motivated to do their class work and study probably don’t need a fancy piece of electronics to help them do it.
Category: Arts and Entertainment, Niner Times
About the Author (Author Profile)
Barry Falls Jr is the managing editor of Niner Times. He is working to graduate with a major in sociology and a minor in journalism from UNC Charlotte. His writing and photography has been featured in Niner Times, Yahoo! News, Radio Free Charlotte and Shutter 16 Magazine.Subscribe
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My Lord, this is the best article I have read this whole week. I am definitely not getting my son an Ipad anymore, I don’t care how loud he whines about it. I knew he was feeding me bologna about how “educational” it is and how much his grades would improve. I’m going to show Billy this article as proof that he is full of it.
Great stuff
This a very good article. The author really drove his point home. I already got a smartphone and I was intending to purchase an ipad for school purpose. I was wondering whether it was worth it. By reading this article I realized that my 4.3-inches smartphone does enough. I’m gonna keep it along with my laptop.
Thank you for your advice Good Sir
I must say this is an article about ablets and college studies. This is true for what it is speaking about but it is not so for other purposes. Me and my husband has a 4 years old and a one year old. We do not have other relatives living anywhere near us and so we have just ourselves and preschool to educate our children so to enhance learning for my 4 year old we bought a NABI TABLET. It is fantastic, I find lots and lots of educational programs to install some for free and others for small amounts like ninty-nine cents. I love it because I can control what she uses on it and lock with passwords where she shouldn’t go. This tablet helps me a lot as I want my child to always be learning and developing the right skills. School alone cannot do it. Me and my husband prepare and display a lot of material around our house for teaching purposes just like at a daycare or preschool but we believe this tablet and the educational softwares our daughter uses are our friend too. It’s just like a team member in our family.
This article is totally out to lunch with the figures. The majority of the students will already have a tablet of some sort, whether it is an iPad or not. The Samsung Galaxy tablet is $179 right now for the 7″ version, and it had expandable SD Memory slots, and SD cards are cheap. The Kindle App is free, and Amazon has about the best prices for textbooks, whether digital or paper.
So with already having a tablet, or buying for less then $200, that part is covered. I don’t know why 32 students per class was used, as I will only be paying for 1 students, my daughter and not for 32, so there goes huge part of the money on both sides of the equation.
And 6 years for a text book is understandable, but how many times after the course are you going to be using that text book? But again, I have text books here that I used 20 years ago that are still is great condition.
Oh, and can a printed text book access email, social media, schedules, keep in touch with my family, or anything else. No, so I still need the tablet. And the printed book does not have internet access for any research that may be needed, where the tablet does. SO again I would need a tablet, or laptop.
So based on this information, as compared to the information in the article, I think I will go with a tablet for my daughter. She will have the textbooks electronically, and when completed with the course be able to remove them form her tablet and store them in Amazon’s cloud, until needed again, then just download them to her device.
The decision as to which way to go is up to the individual, but I think if one way to actually weigh all the pros and cons of tablet vs printed, instead of just reading/listening to one opinion, I think the tablet would win out.