The Rambler - Cathedral Prep

NEWS & FEATURES
iPad books vs. standard textbooks
By Russell Babarsky, contributing writer
This year at Prep has been very different compared to any other
year. Students received new iPads which have all of our textbooks
on it. This is a huge advancement from years past in which students
have had only a select few books on their electronic devices.
This has some huge benefits but also some major downsides.
Almost everyone remembers the days in which students had so
much homework they could barely fit all their books into their
backpacks. With the new electronic textbooks, that is no longer a
problem.
The iPad is quite slim and only weighs a few pounds. This makes it
easy fitting everything students need into their backpack! Even a
bigger benefit would be the fact that as long as students remember
to take home their iPad every day, they will remember all of their
books.
Sometimes that hardest part about homework is not actually doing
the homework, but remembering the necessary tools to do the
work. With the electronic books, homework is much easier!
The electronic textbooks have some major flaws along with the
benefits. The biggest problem with the electronic version in the
first days of school had to be Content Locker. Originally, this app
looked like a great way to access our books. In reality, this app
caused more than a few nightmares. Every time students tried to
access a note-taking app to take some notes on their reading, they
were getting signed out of Content Locker.
The first few times doing this is not bad, but after awhile, this becomes
an annoyance. The good news is that the tech center has reportedly
fixed this issue and rumor has it that Content Locker is
going to push out an update which fixes this.
Surely all students are hoping this rumor is true. Otherwise taking
notes will become next to impossible. Another problem comes
with the quality of the books. Some of the pages in the books are
cut off. This becomes a problem when it is cutting out important
information in the text.
Overall, the electronic versions of student textbooks are not bad.
They just have some flaws that need to be fixed. Once everything
gets smoothed out, I think this advancement will be for the better.
Our technology is advancing every day. It is important that we
keep up with it so that when we enter out into the world, we are
technologically prepared.
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