Odaine Franklyn

The Benefits of ipads at Proctor Academy

Ever had a big debate about how an apple macbook is better than an ipad or vice versa? Would proctor students at school be more focused and in tack with getting their work done on an ipad, macbook, or go old school and just write on paper. The transition from laptops to ipads are going to be very interesting, I haven’t been here long enough to know how things use to be or what the reactions of students were when they first found out they were receiving Apple macbooks for the whole school year. The things to watch out for would be benefits it would have in the classroom, satisfaction with the teachers and students, and the focus in class but also the disadvantages and problems it would bring.

I interviewed dean of academics, Dougoo, the other day and got some feedback from him about the ipads. His plan was to make sure that every student has an ipad on campus next year. He hopes that it will benefit both the teachers and students in the long run with all the new stuff that is available at on the ipad. The coolest thing about the ipad is that it will now come with textbooks you can download on them. Instead of packing your book bag with heavy textbooks you can just download the books you need for your classes and won’t have to worry about leaving any book in your dorm. This will also make the teachers happy. Dougoo also said that “students would read interactively because they like it more and because they learned 20% more.

So everything has its disadvantages and problems, the ipad may be the best thing out right now next to a bunch of other technology inventions. The disadvantages that occur is on the ipads are that it doesn’t store or print documents as well as laptop notebooks, a dropped ipad can be very hard to repair, plus the books you downloaded on it would be lost. Some say the ipad would replace a laptop for everyday use. Students at proctor would probably have to pay for their ipads but it depends on the cost of the books to download, most likely the funds would be available through

scholarship money for those who are here on it full. Dougoo said something that made a lot of sense, he stated that “70-80% would prefer the ipad but the other % would rather a laptop or a plane piece of paper to write on.

The advantages kind of weigh out the disadvantages only because the ipad has so much to offer. I took the time out to interview Jim Cox, the Tech guy in the Fowler center; He also hopes that the transition from laptops to ipads is going to go smoothly to. The good things about the ipads is that there is a way to transfer information and media info and all textbooks needed possible. Jim says with joy and enthusiasm that the ipads are “Very Interactive, that books would be integrated with quizzes and tests and also interactive maps”. Not all technology can take notes, use flash cards and also highlight and define words on the spot for you, it would be nice to have the ipads on campus next year, it would be a dramatic change in the style of learning. One thing will always be a problem though and thats the students being distracted by social networking, that will be just impossible to stop.