Irish school kids swap books for iPads

Students at a Dublin secondary school started off term by swapping their heavy books for a not-so-heavy iPad.

Remember the days of lugging a bag weighing half of your own body weight in and out of school everyday? Well luckily for the kids of today (the ones in St. Kevin’s College, Crumlin at least), all they have to carry is an iPad.

The novel idea to eliminate the heavy as sin secondary school books will see the child’s parents pay €150 per year for the iPad with books already pre-loaded. The students are entrusted with the iPad for the entire school year and they will also be able to do their homework on the tablets too.

Blake Hodkinson, the principal at St Kevin’s said the iPads “will bring alive the education the students receive”.

“I think this is the perfect solution to the cost of schoolbooks. It brings down the cost of schoolbooks by 40pc and works out cost neutral to the school.

“And parents at the end of it will have children who are more employable with great IT skills.”

St Kevin’s isn’t the only school issuing iPads to their students. Several other Dublin secondary schools are to take the leap from paper to technology this year. They receive all of their textbook information from Edco Digital, who automatically load the textbooks to the iPads.

Pamela Gleide, 13, who has been using the iPads said, “It’s whopper, there’s loads of apps on it. It’s less boring than books.”

Well, good to know that the iPads are “whopper”, although hopefully they come equipped with some form of grammar correction software onboard too.