California universities use iPads to report news, diagnose heart conditions; Penn State students are like, 'what's an iPad?'
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted August 15th 2010 9:12PM
posted August 15th 2010 9:12PM
As you know, colleges and universities love throwing in "free" gadgets to justify bumping up their enrollment fees. To this end, USC Annenberg has announced a new program to provide j-school students with iPads, digital cameras, and audio recorders to help them report the news. Now, don't get us wrong: we appreciate the importance (and we're big fans of) "the journalism," and if an upgrade from those long, skinny notepads to modern consumer electronics helps facilitate a new crop of Woodwards 'n Bernsteins, then so be it. But are these kids really supposed to type their front-line reportage with the on-screen keyboard? And haven't most students had access to proper laptops for years now?
In other "iPad in education" news, UC Irvine's iMedEd Initiative is providing first year medical students with "a comprehensive, iPad-based curriculum," according to PhysOrg. The devices are equipped with all the necessary apps for note-taking, recording audio, and faculty will develop podcasts and archiving lectures. Our favorite part of all this? The "digital stethoscope," which interfaces with the tablet for listening to and recording a patient's heartbeat. Once recorded, it can be compared to a library of over 3,000 heart sounds that typify specific heart conditions. Thornton Melon never had it so good!
[Thanks, Matt F]
In other "iPad in education" news, UC Irvine's iMedEd Initiative is providing first year medical students with "a comprehensive, iPad-based curriculum," according to PhysOrg. The devices are equipped with all the necessary apps for note-taking, recording audio, and faculty will develop podcasts and archiving lectures. Our favorite part of all this? The "digital stethoscope," which interfaces with the tablet for listening to and recording a patient's heartbeat. Once recorded, it can be compared to a library of over 3,000 heart sounds that typify specific heart conditions. Thornton Melon never had it so good!
[Thanks, Matt F]
I don't understand the Penn St reference. And this article is written like you don't thinks its newsworthy.
@oh ok
I agree
@oh ok WTF does this have to do with penn state? Go State!
@oh ok
Provide the source where penn state students said "what's an iPad?"
It is Sunday I know. But that does not mean you create news.
@oh ok Penn State has obviously discovered Android
@oh ok As a PSU student, I think that this might be a jab at how PSU has increased its tuition by around 10% and we don't even get a lousy ARCHOS 5!
@sweffymo Of course I may be giving a mediocre writer too much credit...
@oh ok Penn State is for Suckassss
10%? Let's hark back to Northwestern increasing its tuition 24 goddamned percent in one year, with the official excuse "everyone else is doing it."
@oh ok
When I saw this title, I was very interested cause I'm a Penn State Alum and then I read it and was totally confused to what the PSU reference was all about. Dumb
@oh ok
Engadget is just going crazy about Apple's products and attempts to create news when there isn't one.
@Information Central Did they do that 3 years in a row?
@oh ok
I'm a penn state student.. and I dont get the reference. I'm gonna take it as being offensive?
@oh ok
The entire article is a contradiction in itself. There's literally no news here, and the author points it out repeatedly...
Laptops/ Convertible Tablets are much better than the iPad for creating content and the learning environment.
What is the *graduate* is holding a "back to school sign?"
@Sean Connery
My apologies, my reply shouldve said "WHY is the .."
@kramer
im from pennsylvania and that was lame joke
the ipad is useless to me, i'd rather have a laptop and an ipod touch or iphone
@Diggler
Yes the crappy joo joo with the crappy android OS.
@Information Central That's nothing, the UC system bumped its tuition by 30%... yeah, it's ridiculous. My tuition has nearly doubled since I was a freshman.
The only reason why I waisted my time reading this was that bit about Penn State and the iPad... and this article doesn't even mention it! WTF?
@oh ok
Go Trojans!
@iofthestorm Hehe sdsu fee increase 55% year over year ftw. Ugh... I just started last year and were well on our way to doubling tuition. Gotta love California's budget...
@Mike10010100 I think it depends on the situation... Most convertibles have crap battery life. And it's far more difficult to write out calc notes or molecular structures using a conventional keyboard than a touchscreen. And using a mouse to highlight a digital textbook is kind of unintuitive and slow compared to, say, a touchscreen...
Now for like a GE where you want to type fast and there aren't a lot of special characters or drawing, then, yes, a laptop is preferable...
P.s. - woo $600 saved this semester on textbooks with an iPad and I can still highlight like a normal book, and I don't have to carry my 1500 page bio textbook with me, or my 1200 page chem one, or my 800 page classics book...
@oh ok As a medical school student myself, I see the benefit of being able to flip through pathology slides easily and zoom in and out while being able to use interactive diagrams. However, no medical school student has the time or energy to note take on an iPad. Annotating PowerPoint presentations is easier than note taking on an iPad and still most people don't do it. You either print out lectures and hand write your notes on them or you use a tablet computer and OneNote. This is just another University trying to show off and attract attention without doing anything really innovative. If they were serious about this, they would be giving the students tablets with digitizers. There are also a lot of interactive study aids that are made using Flash and unless the University is providing jailbroken iPads or the students do it themselves, they will be missing out on a wealth of information. My school records every lecture using a software/hardware combo called Mediasite which allows us to review lectures at our own pace. Obviously ipads won't be able to use that service either. And no multitasking? Do you have any idea how often I switch between my Professor's PPT presentation, to Firefox to look something up, then to a PDF study guide, and a chat program to keep in touch with friends, and then to my email client because I am waiting for grades to come out, and then back to my lecture because I realized how much time I just wasted? My God, trying to do that on an iPad would infuriate me. The one positive aspect of this is that the studends will have access to all their books in one device. Although the cost of that one device is an entire semester's worth of books, but hey...we're students so we have tons of money right? That $200,000 we owe just from undergrad is no big deal right? Why not give us unnecessary gizmos that you'll happily tack on the additional $200,00 we'll owe you for medical school. Sorry for the rant. BTW...I can't wait to get my Adam! ;)
@oh ok
According to the author's profile, he is from Pittsburgh, so this is just a little old Pitt vs Penn State rivalry jab.
@pavelbure What rivalry pitt is irreverent because they are to afraid to play psu. There use to be one.
@oh ok
It's always nice to hear that the iPad is reinventing the medical industry along with the rest of the world industries. Hehe.
@Dalton Atlas please tell me how you are going to write out anything on the ipad? with your finger like you are finger painting? LMAO a REAL tablet either tablet only or a convertible laptop has a stylus which allows you to actually write on the screen with precise detail
If i were a professor/teacher I would outright ban ipads from the classroom/lecture hall they are in no way productive and more generally designed as a media consumption device.
anyone who says they can type notes in as fast and accurately as on a real keyboard using the ipad's touch screen is an apple fanboy full of shit
@blindguymcsqueezy
Actually, the reason the Pitt vs. Penn State rivalry hasn't been brought back, is because Paterno wants a 2 for 1 deal.. 2 home games for each road game. Sad to say, if PSU were to play in Heinz Field, Pitt could actually say they filled the stadium for once.
That said, the title of the article is lame. Nice try Joe. Go State!
@oh ok
no respect....no respect at all...
@NikAmi You know... everyone says this (about typing on the ipad) but it's not true. I can type pretty damn well on the screen keyboard in landscape mode. True you do have to look at what you're typing but you can go pretty fast.
@sweffymo I have an archos 5 and i like it...
@vqro The point is, if it's already too difficult to use a keyboard to take notes on a laptop and they aren't all that useful anyways, then by making it harder to type (which only a fanboy would say it isn't) and using lesser software, you reduce the usability even further.
I love Paterno
@engadget
Penn State has more graduates than any other college in the country...poor choice in schools to take a pathetic cheap shot at and risk making mad...next time may I suggest some religious school that probably thinks technology is devils work like Bob Jones University, I didn't even go to Penn State btw
We Are
@LightNfluffy
Penn State!
I'm not sure what to say
why is this on here again?
@Hobowhiteside
Clicks. Advertising. Further controversial debate discussion multiplies the first two. You don't get it by now? It's a commerical weblog...
@Almo
Luckily, I don't have to see any ads. I actually forgot there were ads on this page thanks to AdBlock.
Yea, while US education levels are still falling behind other countries, lets make sure students do less than a half of notes forcing them to write on iPad... what a joke!
@AA Alex
Guess that's why everyone goes to the US for their degrees.
@GuiGui
Well, not EVERY United States University is falling behind in terms of education, but yeah, we do have a problem.
@AA Alex
college isnt really falling behind but it sure as hell is NOT as affordable as it was in the 1980s, you could work part time and pay for school
now you can work full time and still not afford a decent school( high end state or any University), Public education in California(i live there) atleast has fallen to shit and i hope i live in another state or can afford private by the time i have kids, this methodology in California is just keep pulling funds from Education and lets get more Road signs or more Social workers or more useless shit...Education should be the #1 priority and number 2 should be upkeep of current structures, number 3 should be the expansion
as of now it seems expansion and education are switched
@AA Alex
U.S. education problems, and they're there, exist in lower primary to high school education.
At the collegiate level, most universities in the U.S. are some of the best in the world. It's why foreign students wait years for student visas to study here.
@AA Alex That would be high-school students. Universities are different. At MIT, half the post-grad population were foreigners when I was there. Why do you think that is? Then there's Harvard and the other Ivy League schools. U.S. universities are very good.
I believe students should be free to use any computing device they want without restrictions on which device they use to receive and use their information. We don't want to "conform", we want to be free and grow!
@McKirf they do it that wait to create a uniform standard so each student is able to have the same experience. I believe they also create apps for each other. At least that's what Mizzou Journalism school does.
@The Fiasco
Yes but in the real world, they will be working with a wide variety of devices, a small portion of which are ipads. For example, software wise, once WordPerfect was used by almost everybody. I found it wise to learn wordperfect as well as other's to get a general feel of differences so I could pretty much work with what was thrown at me without much of a learning curve. I was able to jump straight into Microsoft Word when it became the new "standard" without a hitch!
I really like the iPad as learning tool, I just really think there needs to be a notes app that will transcribe your hand written notes into text, this way, you can scribble down notes with your stylus or finger, and have perfectly legible notes to read later and even share with friends who missed the lecture. If there is such an app PLEASE let me know because I couldn't find one. This aside, I like this article, the iPad can do a lot in the way of studies and I respect that a lot!