Have you noticed the recent influx of iPad users at the Pine? Whether students use them in class to type up notes with their wireless keyboards or to simply play a game of Temple Run, the iPad has become an increasingly popular portable device at school. The Panther student body has not only found the iPad to be extremely easy to carry around, but also increasingly functional in the classroom setting.

In fact, Apple has recently released a new version of the free iBooks app that enhances the experience of all iPad users, especially educators and students of all ages. Before the updated version, the app only included novels by notable authors and allowed users to highlight words, search for particular phrases in books, and bookmark specific pages. Now, with an updated app exclusively for iPads, textbooks can be downloaded at a maximum price of fifteen dollars. The digital textbooks that can be downloaded include those of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which are the publishers that make many of the textbooks that Pine Crest students use in various courses.

What does this mean for a Pine Crest student? Massive amounts of schoolwork can become quite overwhelming at times, especially for students in AP courses that require an extensive amount of reading in college-level textbooks each night. If all Pine Crest students were to have an iPad at their disposal with the new iBooks app, the readings would become less tedious. The iBooks app has much to offer: it organizes all of your online textbooks in one spot, includes interactive 3D diagrams built within the otherwise plain text, allows for easy note-taking and highlighting while reading each section, converts students’ notes into flashcards for reinforcing material and studying purposes, and has a built in dictionary for unclear words. This sure sounds much better than the extremely heavy, overly priced textbooks that all Pine Crest students lug around every day.

The Pine Crest administration should definitely look into investing in iPads for its students as Apple offers discounted rates for bulk purchases in educational settings. The SMART Boards put into place in the last few years by the administration have been widely accepted and useful in the classroom, and the iPads, if implemented, would likely be just as successful. As they say, out with the old, and in with the new. Hardcover textbooks are outdated and should be replaced with the technologically innovative iPads that students can enjoy in their hunger for knowledge.