School of Medicine at Stanford University adopts iPad

School of Medicine at Stanford University has adopted Apple’s iPad so reports Appleinsider.

The School of Medicine at Stanford University has adopted Apple’s iPad, providing the device to all incoming first year medical students and Master of Medicine students.

The school cited four reasons behind the new program, including student readiness, noting that iPad “creates opportunities for efficient, mobile, and innovative learning.”

Stanford also noted “the flexibility of iPad technology,” noting that “iPad allows students to view and annotate course content electronically, facilitating advance preparation as well as in-class note-taking in a highly portable, sharable and searchable format.”

Access to information and “information literacy” was also a consideration, with the school pointing out that “students will be able to easily access high-quality information at any place, at any time (for example, images from textbooks on digital course reserve, image databases, journal articles, Lane Library’s various search tools, etc.)”

A fourth rationale was Stanford’s intent to go green, “replacing printed syllabi with PDFs is in line with the Sustainable Stanford initiative, which aims to build sustainable practices into every aspect of campus life.”

It is interesting to see the four reasons behind adopting the iPad. All of these reasons can be applied to laptops and netbooks. However where the iPad wins out will be efficient mobile learning with the instant on, excellent battery life and portability. The iPad is also quite innovative and they have achieved quite a bit of positive press as a result of this move.

Standford has always had good relations with Apple and are quite close to each other geographically.

One thought on “School of Medicine at Stanford University adopts iPad”

  1. I’m yet to see a study on the comparison between paper and eReader/iPad in terms of total environmental impact. Eg an iPad takes a huge amount of energy to make, from extracting the ore and refining it, to shipping costs of the components around the world, even without the energy needed to run it. I’m sure you could pulp a lot of trees from sustainable sources and put black marks on it for the same energy consumed.

    Also, having used an iPad now for some time for work, I’m not convinced that the marking up of materials and other benefits stack up against a netbook – although, as you point out, the instant on and excellent battery life are wins.

    I’d also cite the form factor itself as a win – it sits flat, much more like paper and doesn’t put up a psychological barrier between people – from experiencing this in meetings, I’m sure this would translate to a better learning environment too.

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