The iPad has revolutionised my life  - it could do the same for students, writes  FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

ABOUT FOUR months ago I decided I could wait no longer.

I got into my car, drove to Belfast and made my way to the new Apple store in the ultra modern Victoria Square shopping centre. My heart was beating fast as I entered and no doubt I exhibited all the signs of anxiety and excitement. I was there to buy an iPad.

I am a user of all things Apple. In 1986 I acquired my first Macintosh computer. It had a single megabyte of memory, just a single floppy disk drive and the 1.3 (or whatever it was) megabyte capacity of that floppy had to hold the application software and the files I was working on.

But it had a windows/mouse user interface and I felt so much more sophisticated than my colleagues. Most of them were struggling with MS-DOS and some really non-intuitive word processing software loaded on to computers that nobody would recognise now – that is, assuming they were working on computers at all, which most of them weren’t.

But the Macintosh was not just a much smarter computer, it was also a triumph of design. In fact over the years, Apple’s strength has partly been in its ability to make fashion statements as well as provide computing power. It is this approach that has given it the wow factor and allowed it to attract customers with products that, while very good, are not necessarily technologically much superior to those of their competitors. But, oh yes, they look so much better.

In the 1990s Apple lost its way somewhat. They started selling computers that looked just ordinary. And I confess that for a few years I went over to Windows. But then Steve Jobs, Apple’s legendary chief executive, returned and so did I. Now I have a desktop iMac, a PowerBook, an iPhone, an iPod, an Apple TV and my iPad.

I have to say that the iPad has revolutionised my life. I take it everywhere. It is my mobile computer; my internet browser; my mobile email device; my portable television; my library; and my music centre. When I go to a meeting, I load all of the documentation on to the device and I use it to take notes while there. People have got used to seeing me prop it up on its cover and tap away on the screen as I write. I admit that it wouldn’t work if you are touch typing, because you cannot feel the keys, but as that’s a skill I don’t have anyway, it doesn’t make any difference to me.

But could it be used as an educational learning tool? Absolutely. In fact, I suspect we should be providing one for each student as they enter university, and then use it as a tool to communicate with them, give them reading lists and other course materials and perhaps we could have a custom-designed interface to allow them to interact with their lecturers.

But even before we get that far, students (and others) can use the iPad to look at courses and materials from universities and other institutions all over the world. I have started doing this myself, for amusement and in order to expand my knowledge.

Apple has set up a device called iTunes U. This can be accessed on any computer that has iTunes as well as on the iPad and indeed the iPhone. With iTunes U, you can read, hear, see and experience university-level courses from a large selection of universities worldwide which are usually offered for free.

For example, right now I am taking two courses on my iPad. One is from Oxford University and is entitled The Nature of Arguments: Critical Reasoning; and the other is a series of science lectures offered by Clemson University in South Carolina.

Of course this kind of online learning is not a substitute for participation in a degree programme, but it offers access to some of the world’s best academic courses, either to stimulate our interest or to supplement something we are already doing.

Furthermore, with the iPad (and similar devices) it is now easy to access this anywhere and everywhere. But perhaps more particularly, the rapidly developing technology is allowing us to look again at whether our very traditional approach to university-level learning could now be brought up to date.

I may not be a fan of the Powerpoint-for-the-sake-of-it approach (as I outlined two weeks ago) but I am a strong believer in the use of new learning technologies.

One of the things we are all beginning to see is that platforms developed for leisure purposes, including social networking, can be harnessed for teaching. The iPad is one such innovation that we should begin to use seriously.

By the way, this piece was written on my iPad.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski is a former president of DCU