LIU makes it easier for students to get iPads

Welcome to iPad U.

In an effort to offer mobile communications technology to as many students as possible, Long Island University gave free 16-gigabyte iPads this year to all incoming full-time freshmen and undergraduate transfer students and also offered the devices to all full-time undergraduate students for $250, about half the retail cost.

The distribution of 6,000 iPads is believed to be among the largest in the nation for a university.

"The iPad is a powerful tool that students can use to retrieve online course materials and their university records, to download digital textbooks, and to communicate with professors and peers," said Paul Forestell, provost of LIU's C.W. Post campus.

Other colleges nationwide have distributed iPads, but apparently not as widely as LIU. For example, the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development is supplying its entire freshman class of about 450 students with iPads.

On Long Island, Adelphi University provides netbooks to new graduate students in business. Hofstra University doesn't give away computing equipment, but it does offer discounts for Apple and Lenovo products for registered students, officials said.

At LIU, students will be able to keep the devices after graduation. The university updated its wireless infrastructure, investing $100,000 to create additional access points at its six campuses in the metro area.

The iPad program also aims to provide students with "cloud computing," which allows users to access their information from any computer with an Internet connection. The Internet often is depicted graphically and metaphorically as a cloud.

C.W. Post student Nora Polcover, 19, a junior biology major who took advantage of the iPad discount, said she has embraced the technology. She records lectures on it and on a recent afternoon downloaded a genetics study guide sent by her professor. She also uses a class organizer application.

"It's really helpful," she said. "As long as you buy good apps . . . it is pretty useful."

Associate provost William Gustafson, who oversees College 101, a required seminar that teaches freshmen how to be best prepared for the college experience, said, "When you look across a freshman's iPad and see the various applications, The New York Times sitting right next to Facebook right next to an e-reader . . . they are blurring the lines between the curricular and co-curricular."

Not all students are impressed. Tremaine O'Garro, 22, a sophomore majoring in theater and broadcasting, called it a "nice trinket."

"I haven't used it for schoolwork," he said. "It has no USB port . . . and using it for schoolwork is difficult to do. It is small, 16 gigs. There is not much you can put on it - there is not enough space."

Shannon Cavanagh, 18, a freshman majoring in theater production and design, said that while the iPad is portable and light, "You can't multitask and it doesn't have [Microsoft] Word.

"I take notes on it and e-mail it to the computer lab," she said. "If they had to pick an Apple product, they should have chosen the MacBook."

Alexander Najman, 23, a senior in philosophy, bought an iPad through LIU. "It's the latest, most useless invention of the last 20 years," he said as he read Plato on the iPad's e-reader in a Hillwood Commons study room. "Everything it does, you can do on something else."