It had to happen eventually. The University of Adelaide Faculty of Science is leading the charge towards eliminating physical textbooks and replacing them with eBooks accessible via an iPad. This is a great win on many fronts:
- Economic – normally these textbooks would set students back over $1,000.
Image via CrunchBase
- Portability – an iPad with a whole library of information is a lot easier to lug around than a few heavy textbooks.
- Environmental impact – if every student in every University went 100% online it would make a significant impact on the demand for paper in textbooks
- Relevance. It’s a lot easier to update an online version of a textbook than its paper counterpart
The University is expecting to roll out fully online versions of its first year science courses after 2012.
Related Articles
- iPads Instead of Textbooks – Trial Underway in California Middle Schools (video) (singularityhub.com)
- How the iPad is Changing Med School (cultofmac.com)
- E-readers or Traditional Books: Which Is Better for Education? (distance-education.org)
- Notre Dame Calls Early Results Of IPad Study Encouraging (blogs.forbes.com)
- School Swaps Math Textbooks For iPads (apple.slashdot.org)
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