An Australian school is deciding when kids do their back-to-school shopping and stock up on supplies that they'll be needing to buy an iPad. $500 is quite an expensive supply. However, it's touching on a subject that is very near and dear to my heart.
St. Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney, Australia is beginning the preparations to eventually have all students be required to have iPads in seven to ten years. The plan is for the school to eventually do away with hardcover textbooks and do everything on the iPad.
Personally, I think that's somewhere that every school system will end up eventually. The way technology is moving, it's almost like you can see it coming. However, in my vision of how it would work out, the parents aren't buying those $500 iPads. The schools are. Perhaps it works differently in Australia, but here in the States we don't buy our textbooks in K-12 classrooms. That's up to the schools. So shouldn't it be up to them to outfit the kids with iPads? Our schools complain about how expensive it is to replace textbooks every few years. They wouldn't need to.
Another school in Australia, St. Catherine's in Waverly, will be asking parents to provide tablets as well, but they will be asking for Samsung tablets instead of iPads. Along with pencils, pens, notebook paper and crayons, they'll also have Samsung tablet on that list.
I was shocked to see a flash drive on my son's school supplies. Granted, that was seven years ago, but I was still shocked that I was being asked to purchase that. It was a great idea, though, and definitely came in handy. I can see the same thing for an iPad, although to a much larger extent. Shock, followed by the realization of what a great idea it is. However, school officials believe they will have very few complaints.
Photo Credit: apple.com
