By Chris Chang, posted Sep 19, 2012 at 7:51 AM, 1,076 views,

High School in China Gives iPads to Students For Free

Looks like Apple has managed to change the way Chinese students access education material and help them learn and study. A high school in China — Jinling High School — has equipped its senior students with iPads in a bid to replace textbooks and help students in their studies. And best of all, the school has managed to help students to reduce the burden of school bags from at least five kg to less than one kg while saving book expenses by thousands of yuan a year.

It’s actually a good thing to see Apple’s education revolution is happening in China today. Jinling High School in Nanjing has recently launched an e-schoolbag trial offering iPads to its students, where students do not need to pay for the iPads. The iPads are all at school’s expense. With the iPads, the students can download US electronic textbooks and lecture notes onto their iPads rather than buy expensive and heavy paper books and take them to school. However, the school is not allowing students to use social media on the iPads, according to Meng Qun, a teacher at the school who’s in charge of the China-US Class.

“The school has set access privileges on the iPad. Students can surf the official websites of foreign universities, browse English-language newspapers and download English original novels and biographies but not chat with QQ or some certain social networking services such as Renren.”

Just in case you haven’t heard of QQ, it’s actually China’s most popular Instant Messaging client, and Renren is a social networking site in China, which started out as a Facebook clone with quite similar interface, layout and logo in 2005.

What’s more, trainings for teachers and students have been done, so it will not be a problem for them to use the iPad as a major tool for class. However, the e-schoolbag program is yet to be pushed forward in all grades of the schools.

Right now 21 public primary and secondary schools in Nanjing are planning to promote the use of iPads as the major tool for class in a piloting e-schoolbag program.

Source: People.com.cn (Chinese Translated)