Turning in the iPad

As I may have mentioned before, my school has been issuing iPads to high schoolers to augment traditional classroom teaching with technology. Tomorrow, they are taking them back; we are switching to real computers (Lenovo laptops) next year.

In my and many other people's opinion's, the iPad program was not helpful. In fact, I think the things were more distracting than useful. We only used them in biology to connect to sensors, and that could have been done with actual computers, probably with fewer issues than we had with iPads. Some web sites like to serve stripped-down "mobile" versions and recommend that mobile users get an app. This is really terrible because [1] I can't use the website like I wanted to, [2] I have to go through the annoyance of downloading an app, which [3] almost never (fully never in my experience) has the advanced capabilities of the actual web site. I'm looking at you, YouTube, Blogger, SpanishDict, and also kind of Wolfram|Alpha because the app costs $5 while the real website is free and fully functional on real computers.

So, I am very happy that real laptops will be issued. I might actually be productive while sitting around in a class after the teacher says "you can do whatever you need to." And, of course, I will actually for the first time have a modern laptop.