Can a high school student use the IPad Pro instead of a computer?

You should check with school personnel to see if the school has any app the require a desktop computer or laptop. Well think about college too. The ipad 5 is $325. That would keep you bases open for college.

R

Hi Sofie.

I would recommend the Mac over an iPad for a student. You can do a lot more with the software on the Mac versus the iPad. One example will be saving, filing and retrieving documents. Functionally, it is a lot easier to save, organize and retrieve 500 files on a Mac versus on an iPad.

Here is what my filing structure looks like on my MacBook.

It enables me to quickly and easily find files when I need them.

Howard

Just a note on the college end of the equation - a few of us at my university tried using ipads for note taking for biology, chemistry, and some other social science classes instead of using paper and pen. It is possible but in many instances it was much harder simply because there was less screen real estate. The largest ipad Pro may be able to cut it as will the apple pencil (did not exist when we were trying this) but in general we all ended up reverting back to paper. The major strengths in a college setting are the ability to annotate papers in real time and share them amongst students, teachers or other peers. It was also helpful too if you had an apple TV because you could cast an article that a student found or whatnot to a classroom projector or TV.

While many colleges now have apps that run on OSX, the sciences have a lot of windows based products only. VM is, therefore, essential. IMHO, VM products aren't really that great on iOS devices.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers,

AIT

Hi AIT.

I have used a laptop and paper to take notes in college. iPads weren't out yet (or I didn't have 1 at that time). For biology and chemistry, I don't think anything beats paper. You need to be able to write chemical formulae and equations and draw molecules, organelles, etc.

H2O is not an accurate representation of water. You need the subscript "2". Actually, I am adding math to this subject list. 5^2 doesn't quite shout out, "5 exponent 2" but it's probably the best that we have. Math equations don't look pretty on computers (unless you have a tablet with a touch screen).

Actually, a tablet computer with a touch screen and a stylus just might; especially for the added ability to be able to quickly and efficiently share notes with classmates.

I think that using an iPad (or Android tablet; sorry not using the "W" word) with a physical full size Bluetooth keyboard would be much more efficient than using the touchscreen keyboard for note taking in classes such as English where diagrams are not needed often.

AIT, which VM products have you tested on iOS devices? I didn't even know that such a thing existed. Are memory requirements leading to sluggish VM performance the primary limitation?

Howard

The tablet and touch screen and stylus was nice but I myself don't really learn very well just typing things into a computer - something about writing it was important in the learning process for me.

This is common. I think it's been research and found true. With paper, you are synthasize what the prof is saying to to reduce the information to the key points. With typing, you are typing out each word the proof is saying without doing the analysis. It's a mechanical process.

R

Hi AIT.

I'm with you 100%. There is something about the tactile experience while learning; and not only for those whose preferred/primary learning style is kinesthetic.

A right-handed classmate once told me that when he studied for an exam, he would often write using his left hand to force his brain to work differently or to use primarily the other hemisphere of his brain. I didn't try it long enough to evaluate its effectiveness as study vehicle.

I have the stand alone Apple Bluetooth keyboard. You have greater freedom in positioning it since it isn't attached to the iPad. It is also larger so functionally, it is more like a standard keyboard because it isn't flat.

I have used Citrix Receiver on an iPad in a work environment; just so that I could assist an end user with the process of configuring it on their devices. The Citrix experience on an iPad was definitely not the same as running it on a Mac or PC performance wise. That was on an older iPad. You are possibly correct that running it on a larger iPad Pro with a more powerful processor should be a better experience.

Howard

RC, I think that you mentioned a key point.

"With typing, you are typing out each word the proof is saying without doing the analysis."

My written notes were almost always point form. The focus required to type (even when you are a touch typist) takes away from giving one's full attention to the content being presented.

Today, if I was attending a lecture, I think that I would probably sit near front of the class and (with the prof's permission), photograph each whiteboard, blackboard overhead of notes with my smartphone -- unless s/he gave us their presentation ahead of time.

Howard

rccharles wrote:

With typing, you are typing out each word the proof is saying without doing the analysis.

That's quite interesting, as the word is "prof", not "proof".

Perhaps you did that to emphasize your point.

Can a high school student use an iPad? Certainly. So could an elementary school student.

Hi Howard,

Thank you for the message.

The tablet and touch screen and stylus was nice but I myself don't really learn very well just typing things into a computer - something about writing it was important in the learning process for me. But that was just me. I did have a bluetooth keyboard on mine via a case but I never really used it.

Sorry I should clarify here - VM Products really being RDP - not running VM natively on the iPad. I don't think anyone has figured out how to do that and commercialize it into a buy-able product.

The RDP systems we tried were VMware, Teamviewer (not true RDP), and Citrix Receiver. We started with teamviewer first as a proof of concept simply because we were familiar with it before. That worked but boy it was a pain...granted teamviewer was never really meant to do this. Citrix Receiver worked better (re: not great) because we could create instances on our server so there was scaleability, whereas Teamviewer relied on a client computer. But even though we had stable internet access, the UI at that time was still clunky and made us go...why don't we just bring our laptops or tablet/laptops? Vmware was the same experience.

Maybe on the iPad pros vs the iPad 4s we were using the experience would be better (iPad 4 heated up a lot during sessions, stuttering when opening connections from sleep, multiapp UI experience was...terrible) it would be better but the problem remains the same. And if you had to install software on the fly, say on the first or second day of class for a math lab section later that day, that was much harder to do...because it was all windows based.

AIT