58 | BUY ER’S GUIDE TO: TABLET COMPUTERS | EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY Watch the video click here
BUYER’S GUIDE TO TABLET COMPUTERS – WHAT DO STUDENTS THINK?
Campuslife asked three students to test the most popular devices on the market to see how useful they would be to university life
SINCEAPPLE LAUNCHED their first iPad in 2010, tablet computers have found their way into the bags, bedrooms and lives of many students around the world. As other manufacturers have got involved the choice of device grows bigger every month, but are tablets set to be the dominating force for student learning and living over the next few years? Have they evolved enough for our students to ditch their laptops and embrace a touchscreen future or do today’s tablets offer nothing more than an oversized smartphone?
BELOW: L-R Harriet, Emily, Ali
✥ What were your initial feelings about each of the tablets in our test?
Our testers:
✥ HARRIETT Biomedical Science Currently owns: iPhone and MacBook
✥ EMILY English Literature and Language Currently owns: Samsung Galaxy and Windows laptop
✥ ALI Business Studies Currently owns: iPhone and Windows laptop
EMILY: I love the iPad, I think it’s the best one by far. I’d feel comfortable taking it around everywhere with me. I study English so I do a lot of reading, which it would be useful for. I wouldn’t use it to do a dissertation on or any kind of essay but I think it’s ideal for taking short notes like in lectures. HARRIET: I like how small the Nexus is, I like the fact that you can put it in your handbag. I’m really clumsy, so with the other two, I feel like I’d end up smashing the screen. I don’t like the excessive advertising on the home screen though, I felt like it took up a lot of space. ALI: I quite liked using the Surface tablet. It was so comparable to a Windows computer, which I would use normally, so the transition from a laptop to this tablet would be very easy. If you had it in a lecture you could use it to type quite quickly. It lets you do split screen too so I was able to have both word processor and web browser open on the same screen so I could copy and type really easily.
✥ How did you find them for general web browsing?
A: The Nexus took a good five seconds to load the Sky News website which was noticeably slower than the other two.
H: I tried to download the Blackboard app for my uni – it worked fine on the Nexus and iPad but it wouldn’t load on the Surface. E: With the iPad and Nexus it doesn’t let you save downloads to folders as you would on a laptop. So if I downloaded something I often forgot because there isn’t a downloads folder or easy storage area where files are kept.
✥ Where would you use a tablet?
E: Wherever there’s Wi-Fi… cafes, on the train, whenever I have a few minutes free. You could even use it in the kitchen, watching cooking videos. A: Depending on batery life I might not take it out with me to use all day although around uni you can usually find somewhere to plug in and charge up. H: I think a tablet would be a really useful tool for viewing lecture notes and stuff. When you’re revising and you’ve got your laptop out there’s the temptation to go on Facebook, whereas with a tablet if you just had your lecture notes on there you’d be more likely to just sit and go through them.
✥ Would you only use a tablet where you had a Wi-Fi connection?
E: I could still use it without Wi-Fi for reading; most apps now have an offline mode that allows you to download content for when you don’t have a connection.
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