Comparative Use Factors in Education for Tablets
New technologies have change education in the ways of how to learn and what to learn. There are mainly three competing tablets in the market: Nook, Kindly and iPad. I have read a few articles and summarized their similar and unique factors.These three e-readers are largely involved in classrooms and libraries.
Nook
One of the biggest strengths of Nook is that its company Barns and Noble offered a special version of Nook software for study and recently signed an exclusive contract with a major textbook publisher.Nook offers support for customers that they send staff to the school, home or workplace to train you how to use it. With good customer service, they will replace it for you if the Nook goes bad. It's such a blessing to have real person to walk through the process with you. Otherwise, it will be a hassle to learn by yourself.
Another advantage is that if you have purchased plenty of Nooks, the content purchased on one account can be shared with among six Nooks.
However, one thing that Nook still needs to improve is that speech to text function.Nothing is perfect, Nook's price is very competitive compared to Kindle and iPad. Whoever wants to invest money on it need to balance the good and bad.
Kindle
Kindle, the best known of the current e-readers, weighs only 10.2 ounces. A Kindle is able to hold 1500 e-books or more, considered as a handheld library for students and teachers. Kindle stocked with well-chosen e-books would allow teachers to apply new teaching strategies.Students have more books electronically than practical in print, which saves paper by reducing photocopying and relieves the unhealthy weight of students' backpacks.
Its text-to-speech audio function helps the students who struggle with vision problems, language barriers and reading fluency.
The cost of Kindle is pretty appealing compared to iPad. For long term, it saves students countless money to purchase e-books on Kindle.According to a news article, Amazon decides to let Kindle users buy e-books at a great discount.
iPad
The fact that Apple has sold approximately 64 millions iPads in two year proves how popular iPad is. Embracing the functions of computer,note-taking, music, video, e-readers, communication and much more, iPad is changing schools.New Zealand may be the first country to have all students have iPad for study. Provided with a huge variety of apps, iPad allows students and teachers easily to access to all kinds of learning and teaching methods. Compared to the cost of a Nook or a Kindle, iPad is not that competitive. However, iPad has profound meaning than just an e-reader like Nook and Kindle.
Uses of iPad in Education
This article describes why iPad is adopted in education. Compared to computer, iPad is considerably cheap and with reach.Here are the summarized reasons:
The uses of iPad save the cost of education. Textbooks are extremely expensive. A student can generate the textbook bill up to $500 to $800. Online books ore-books can drop the cost of a textbook by 50% or more.In the long run,iPad reduces the students' financial burden on textbooks.
Nowadays, the digital students require multimedia creativity in their learning experience. It helps them develop critical thinking and collaborative teamwork displayed through the use of multimedia. The apps provided on iPad increase the interaction for students to learn and capture their attention.
No matter what kind of tablets educators decide to invest in education, there is no doubt that tablets are changing and helping education in many ways.
References:
Article
1. Comparative Use Factors in Education for Tablets
2. Uses of iPad in Education
3. Our Nook Adventure Part One
4. Will Kindle Change Education?
5. How the iPad is Changing Education.
Good work!
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