Have a Good Life

From this post: http://speirs.org/blog/2011/5/5/ipad-trials-at-oklahoma-state.html

Was the integration of an E-Reader an enhancement or detraction to the academic experience?

The responses were mixed. On the one hand, students liked using the iPad to house their textbooks and suggested it promoted more reading. [I'd venture that they could read more because they were actually able to have their books with them at a time when they otherwise wouldn't] On the other hand, reactions from the beginning-of-the-semester expectations of planned use to the end-of-the-semester actual use saw e-book reading exhibiting the greatest change, a substantial decrease. Students thought they would use the iPad as an e-reader but did not do so as much as initially planned.

What was said later about pedagogy needing to change with technology was spot on:
 

"...technology, pedagogy and curriculum each have influence on the other. If you're not able to modify your teaching methods or curriculum to take account of new technology, that's a barrier to getting the maximum utilisation out of these devices."

If the iPad-as-textbook is just the textbook loaded into iBooks, with nothing else changed, the iPad is no better for reading than a textbook; it is probably a worse reading experience (with the only benefit being that the iPad is lighter than a textbook).

If the textbook is just a PDF opened in Noterize or PDFNotes, then it is already much better, as those two programs are designed for annotating a PDF.

If the textbooks are in something like Inkling, where there are additional multimedia supports (videos, pictures, interactive images, etc.) then it is even better.

It is probably best when the book adapts to the new technology like the book "Our Choice", which clearly appears to be the best "book" reading experience on the iPad.

I hope the image explains it better than I could.