Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

I Have My Doubts ...

  • 21-11-2013 7:04pm
    #1
    cnocbui
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,226 ✭✭✭✭


    A story in the Independent - "
    Switch to e-books was 'an unmitigated disaster', says school principal"
    A principal has called the move to switch students from books to tablets “an unmitigated disaster” and has ordered new books for the first year classes.

    The ‘book to e-book’ move was deemed a disaster following major technical issues with the majority of the HP Elite Pad tablet devices.

    Families of students at the Mountrath Community College in Laois paid €550 for the devices at the beginning of the school-year.

    They did have the option to pay for the tablets in instalments.

    “We had a number of issues with the devices,” principal Martin Gleeson told independent.ie.

    Having recently purchased first year text books for my daughter, I am having difficulty believing the basics of this story, because as far as I am aware, there are no e-book versions for the majority of them.

    Given the books I did buy cost about €330, as a parent, I would have been seeing red if I had been expected to add €550 to that.


Comments

  • #2
    flogen
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 10,247 Mod ✭✭✭✭flogen


    cnocbui wrote: »
    A story in the Independent - "
    Switch to e-books was 'an unmitigated disaster', says school principal"



    Having recently purchased first year text books for my daughter, I am having difficulty believing the basics of this story, because as far as I am aware, there are no e-book versions for the majority of them.

    I think it depends on the publisher - I know Edco have made a big push on ebooks, making most (if not all) of their stuff available.
    Given the books I did buy cost about €330, as a parent, I would have been seeing red if I had been expected to add €550 to that.

    €550 seems steep for a per-unit cost in a bulk order of tablets like this - I'd say that included licences for the ebooks.

    In general I'm not sold on the idea of replacing books with ebooks and this school's experience definitely shows the pitfalls - that said, the claim that they put a lot of research into finding the right device rings a bit hollow when the principal says this:

    “We wanted a device that was effectively a computer in tablet form for our students, so it would have a word processor, sufficient memory etc,” he continued.

    “The memory of the HP device is 64GB, it far exceeds other tablets’ memory capacity.”


Advertisement