The Benefits Of Using Tablets

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In our changing technological times, devices like tablets have become so useful to university students that some programs actually require them.  In fact, the advantages of integrating tablets into classroom situations are so plentiful that textbook manufacturers and government bodies are doing what they can to make them a key tool for students in public schools.  What are the benefits to using a tablet PC if you’re a postgraduate student?  Here are just a few:

• In programs that require tablets, instructors can augment in-class lectures by sharing useful media through the tablets.  This can facilitate the learning experience and give students a way to interact with digital lecture materials.

• Tablets also make it easier for you to interact with others.  The most obvious application is in the form of emailing in school assignments.  This saves paper and time and makes it easier for professors to sort and grade papers.  But what’s arguably an even bigger benefit for students is the fact that tablets can assist with teamwork.  IM and social networking programs can help students connect in and out of class to work on their assignments.  During classes with team projects, students can exchange ideas with their teammates during lecture without disturbing class.

• There are a lot of useful apps you can install on your tablet PC or iPad.  For example, the Dictionary.com app can help with writing papers, while the Page app can assist with formatting papers.  Numbers, another affordable app, is a great alternative to Excel, and a bit more streamlined.  IM+ is an excellent application which allows students to communicate across a number of different IM platforms while running only a single program.  Having access to the World Wide Web can also put other informational sources at your fingertips, so that if something catches your interest while you’re in class or doing your homework, you can look up more information.

• Virtual textbooks are an up-and-coming thing.  Your school may or may not have started integrating them into the curricula.  If they are available, though, they have a number of great advantages.  They cost less than paper textbooks, they’re easier to carry around, and they also are usually kept up to date by their manufacturers, which saves you from encountering outdated and incorrect information.  This may be especially handy if you are studying in a technical field and want to keep up with new developments.

Perhaps one of the best things about tablets all around is the way they have of creating a more immersive educational environment.  The whole is more than the sum of its parts.  If you actually live in campus, an immersive educational environment is something you are probably already enjoying, but for commuter students, there can be more of a gap between the classroom and the home.  Having a tablet can help you to connect with the classroom and with fellow students when you’re not on campus, which in turn can enhance your college experience and make it easier to learn new material.  And if you do live on campus, a tablet can still provide you with numerous conveniences which can enrich your academic life.

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•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: www.shutterstock.com

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Blake H. is a freelance journalist and occasional blogger specializing in topics related to business and education. He currently writing on behalf a company offering postgraduate courses.

Does the iPad Replace Your Computer?

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Is the iPad a good fit for college students? Unsurprisingly, Apple says so [http://www.apple.com/students/], but they may be a wee bit biased. Conversely, a lot of parents are dubious about the prospect of buying what is so obviously (to them, at least) an expensive status symbol made mostly for entertainment and other distractions [http://dealnews.com/features/10-Reasons-Not-to-Buy-an-iPad-Instead-of-a-Laptop-for-a-College-Student/475970.html]. 

The iPad on a table in the Apple case (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Somewhere in the middle is the real question, which is 'How much computer do you really need?' Like our brains themselves, we often only use a small percentage of the computing power at our disposal. The irony of desktop PCs especially is that they've always been powerful enough to do all sorts of things that we don't take advantage of. And yet they tend to struggle and over complicate the few specific things that we absolutely need them to do. 

That's one of the biggest strengths of the iPad. Technically, it's underpowered compared to even a modest mainstream desktop; but it shines in exactly the right areas for many people, and for students especially. 

• Mobility (obviously). Desktop PCs take a certain amount of space, packing and unpacking, and setting up and tearing down. It gets old pretty quickly, especially if you're making the trip between home and school more than once or twice a semester. Plus, college life is especially decentralized and mobile by its very nature. Students need something that will travel from dorm room to lecture hall, from student center to labs or field work, to any number of places (coffee shop, yes. Frat party, no). 

On the other hand, you could argue that a decent laptop or netbook is equally suited for these situations, and perhaps a bit more powerful and versatile. Not to mention the screen is probably a little safer (stuff happens, especially at college!). But otherwise, portability is a clear win for the iPad over a 'traditional' desktop.

• Simplicity. A big strength of the iPad is its direct and user-friendly interface. It takes very little time to get perfectly comfortable with the way it works; and Apple is very good at ensuring that anything new works in a similar fashion. All too often with PCs, you tend to get hung up on figuring out how to do the things that you want to do; even the simplest things sometimes have a needlessly frustrating learning curve. This can be a major disruption to your 'flow,' whether you're trying to take notes, do research, compose a paper, produce a project, et cetera.

iPad and a Bluetooth Keyboard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lot of this depends on the kind of person you are. If you're even a little geeky by nature, most modern PCs aren't going to throw you too many curve-balls. Although third-party developers still seem to love doing things their own (occasionally counter-intuitive) way, there's a lot more standardization than there used to be.

• Hardware. On a similar note, it's nice to not worry about all the extra stuff that needs to plug in and work together. The iPad does away with separate monitors and keyboards and mice, and it nearly eliminates the complications of internal components; trust me, nothing's worse than a dead video card in the middle of the semester, or even worse, halfway through a term paper.With reasonable care, the iPad is a fairly durable little beast that just works, and always has all of its parts right where you need them. 

The notebook PC exception comes up again: the screen, touch-pad, and keyboard are all part of the whole, and designed to work together. But honestly, I've had enough hardware issues and mysterious breakdowns with laptops to not be too enthusiastic about this argument. The only caveat is with things like USB drives or other removable storage, which can certainly come in handy at times, and the iPad has ZERO support for.

 However, there are other ways in which the iPad won't fully replace a desktop or notebook PC. Not all students will face each of these issues, but if you're an exception, you'll REALLY wish you had an alternative. 

•  Flash. Despite rumors of its death, Adobe Flash is still very much with us. And Apple still refuses to support it. This wouldn't be a biggie, except that some college courses involve Flash-powered web sites and apps (sometimes just to log in, which is lazy web design but it happens). 


•  Similarly, individual course requirements may utilize a range of formats for both documents and apps. There's no use in complaining that professors have an obligation to make their materials accessible; they'll just point you toward the inconvenient public computers. 


•  If you're studying programming (for its own sake, or for game development or network administration or any of a big handful of other related fields), you're going to need coding and compiling tools that the iPad just can't handle. 


•  Similarly, if you're studying anything like 'serious' design such as CAD or audio/video production, you'll find that the iPad just doesn't have the horsepower, storage, or control that you'll require. 


•  And, of course, you'll almost certainly be doing a lot of typing at college, even if your major is something non-word-heavy, you'll be faced with requirements and electives for the first year or two at least. If you're comfortable with on-screen keyboards, or willing to explore the Bluetooth options, this may not be a big issue. 


•  Along those same lines, writing papers can be difficult enough when you have true windowed multitasking and cursor-precise editing tools (I know some people who can cut and paste quotes and links effortlessly on an iPad, but I'm not one of them) along with the typing issue, this turned out to be a deal-breaker for me personally). 


•  If money's no object for you, then you're an exception to the vast majority of college students that ever lived. For the price of an iPad, you can pick up a more powerful PC or even a decent mainstream notebook. You'll lose some of the benefits mentioned above, but one of the things you should learn at college is that life is often about hard choices and compromise. 

Tyler is a writer for http://www.cabletv.com

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Know the benefits of computer technology for the college students

With the advancement of science and technology, the computer technology has changed in your workplace. As such, it has also changed in the classroom where the students get their education. The development of computer technology has made it easier for the college students to maintain a proper balance between their education and their social lives. Thus, the college students find it easier to communicate with one another, do research work and manage their time in a much better way.

4 Benefits of computer technology for the college students

Go through this article to know about the 4 benefits of computer technology for the college students.

1.      Different modes of communication - With the help of Internet, the college students enjoy the advantage of sending emails, typing instant text messages to the online members and writing message boards to their faculty and classmates. These different modes of communication enable the students to ask their queries and engage in communication about their course material with their faculty and classmates at any time and at any place. This makes it easier for them to get their required information whenever they may need it.

2.      Get your course material easily - The Internet has made it possible for the college professors to post the course material directly to a website. Thus, the students do not have to carry the hard copy of syllabus safely with them and if they get lost, ask for an extra copy from their professor. The students can visit the website and get their course material easily in a very short time. With the help of e-book readers, you can even download your text books instead of carrying them every day to the class. 

3.      Submit your assignments easily - Before the development of computer technology, the college students were bound to submit their assignments in the hands of their professors within a deadline time. In case of any difficulty such as bad weather or illness, the students were not allowed to submit their assignment and thus, they would loose their grade. But, the advancement of computer technology has made the process easier and the students can submit their assignments online to their respective teachers.

4.      Improve your research capabilities - With the advancement of computer technology, books and articles are easily available online. As such, the college students are no longer restricted to the materials that are available only at the shops. Thus, the students can surf the Internet, improve their research abilities and increase their knowledge in any subject they would like to in a much convenient way.

Thus, the modern technology has provided suitable opportunities for the college students to improve their learning and get better chances of educating themselves in the best way possible.