I don’t have anything new to add. My opinion hasn’t changed much since my first encounter with the iPad and I still do not see the use of having one with me for school purposes. They are useful a bit, but not to the degree that they thought. The argument that it will replace books is an understandable one, but it’s just not true. A math or physics or any language book will never go out of date. I’ve seen some Russian textbooks from 1948 and they are just as accurate as the ones published in 2010. Naturally, the pictures were bit dated and there wasn’t a technology unit. But it was still relevant.

However, the same cannot be said for an iPad (or any tech for that matter). If we get iPads for the entire school they will go out of date within the decade. Books stay relevant as time goes by, technology does not. Imagine if we were granted laptops from the early 2000’s. We would not be able to do anything on them now. So unless we keep spending about a million dollars every five or six years, we will be out of the loop. We’ll need to upgrade to the iPad7 by the time we get the current ones to all students. And then we’ll need the iPad12, and so on…

But my opinion doesn’t really matter. If most of the community wants iPads, then we’ll get them. That’s alright by me.