According to a story at ReadWriteWeb, Seton Hill University plans to give every first year undergraduate student a 13″ MacBook and an iPad. Just last month, George Fox University in Oregon also announced that it plans to give its new students a choice between a MacBook or an iPad.
The question, though, is if programs like this aren’t a bit premature, given that nobody has actually used the device yet and that we don’t really know how well the iPad will work for textbooks and other school-related activities.
Given the amount of interactivity that’s possible with books on the iPad, we can only hope that publishers will make good use of the device’s capabilities.
While just publishing a static book on the iPad might be good enough for some subjects, Penguin’s recent demonstration of interactive books clearly shows the potential of interactive books on the iPad. At the same time, though, publishing textbooks is already an expensive business, so it remains to be seen how many interactive textbooks we will actually see.
Photo by Seton Hill University.