iPad Adoption Article Review

The Article I found from the ERIC database deals with an early iPad adoption program ran by a group of librarians at Ryerson University in Toronto. I've been doing a lot with iPads and plan to possibly make something of a thesis and/or project out of it, so the more research the better. The article is titled "Project iPad: Investigating Tablet Integration in Learning an Libraries at Ryerson University." The article is well thought out and is outlined to discuss the research and background that went into this technology adoption. The project idea was to purchase a small amount of iPads, select up to four students that would use them throughout the academic year. Each student was asked to blog weekly about their experiences about using this relatively new technology (the article was published in September 2011, but began in late 2010 after the iPad was first introduced). The librarians opted for the 16GB Wi-FI model and purchased $300 of apps for the iPads and granted some gift cards to each student later in the program as more apps began to flood the market. The article describes the impact the iPad had on organizing and completing academic work to conducting research with the iPad. All in all, "Each of the students agreed that the iPad altered their academic workflows, making them practically paperless" (p. 18). The summary of the article concludes with lessons learned and recommendations which would be beneficial for anyone thinking of making the leap to this platform. As the project developed and concluded, the librarians discovered that more professors were beginning to adopt the iPad and their efforts needed to be focused on helping the staff with iPads, not so much the students. The librarins developed "iPad Literacy" drop-in sessions for the faculty to helping with the growing population of tablets. ~~ Eichenlaub, N., Gabel, L., Jakubek, D., McCarthy, G., & Wang, W. (2011). Project iPad: Investigating Tablet Integration in Learning and Libraries at Ryerson University. Computers In Libraries, 31(7), 17-21.