[Darth-Apple]

Recently, the presence of technology in education has significantly increased. In the last decade, many new websites have come up with completely new and innovative ways of reaching the uneducated with great resources with huge success. It looks like the concept of using iPads instead of textbooks is becoming a popular debate subject for schools today. While iPads may be significantly more expensive than the paper used to print textbooks, will it end up being of benefit to technology?

Personally, I find textbooks very expensive, but they aren't expensive because it costs a lot to print them. They are expensive because of the high charges from the publishers, so using iPads won't really save money. I don't really mind using textbooks, but I'm open to more futuristic ways of bringing education in both schools and colleges.

What is your opinion?

[Acko]

Well, if this world was perfect, Wikipedia would be perfect, with no errors. But this world isn't perfect. But I'll still say 'maybe'.

[Darth-Apple]

I am one of those people who actually likes wikipedia. It's obviously not something you should ever cite as a source on a research paper, but it is good for getting a general understanding on many topics. I'll often start with a wikipedia article just to get a general sense of what something is, then delve into more reputable sources for a research paper.

No source of information can really be perfect though. The reputation behind the publisher of the information makes a big difference these days.

[Acko]

Yeah, I wasn't saying I didn't like Wikipedia. I do visit it almost everyday (Even wrote an article or two). But because it's open (which is good) it has its fallacies.

[Darth-Apple]

Yeah, some really strange stuff can make it in there at times. Most of the more popular articles are generally correct about most things, but I've also seen some very shady content as well. I especially find it funny when the grammar gets really messed up.

[Acko]

Yeah, I'm glad the have mod bots for the wiki. It would be terrible to micromanage the whole thing with humans.

[Darth-Apple]

Heck yeah... they have like 4.2 million English articles now.

[Towncrafter]

I agree with Blake, textbooks are expensive. And because textbooks are printed on paper, they are out of date as soon as they're sent to the printer. I'm thinking having textbooks on websites would mean they don't have to be printed and sent to millions of students, and they could be kept uptodate more easily.

[Darth-Apple]

Being kept up to date is a huge advantage to electronic texbooks, so that was a really good point. English textbooks are usually out of date within about five years, computer textbooks are usually out of date within 1-2 years, and math textbooks rarely last more than 10 or so years before new methods of teaching are introduced. Electronic textbooks could definitely make keeping those updated much easier.

The only real disadvantage there is that it makes it easier for publishers to write "new versions" of their textbooks without any real need. My english textbooks get updated practically every semester with absolutely no need for it whatsoever. Usually there are only a few pages that are actually changed.

[Acko]

Another thing I'd like to add to this... in the defense of textbooks, if we're using internet based textbooks, we'll have to mind power outages and internet outages.

[Darth-Apple]

That is a significant disadvantage. Education does already depend on the internet very heavily, and adding even further dependence on it makes it difficult to do much without the internet. It seems to be becoming the way of the future though.