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Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#51

Post by duncanawoods »

canuckintime wrote: post #29

The Apple Pencil should be a key strategic advantage for the iPads and should be compatible with every model if not included in the box outright. Instead Apple restricts the Pencil to the Pro models. Microsoft won the Business world by owning the document format. Apple could win the education world by owning the handwritten notes format [1] if Pencils were standard What is Tim Cook's vision for education? Nobody fuck…

I put some effort into seriously transferring over note-taking and journaling to an iPad Pro and Pencil. The initial experience was so delightful that I thought it could be amazing.

- I initially liked the experience of writing on glass - its fast and the responsive but quality seriously suffers - letter roundness and stroke subtlety is lost to become spider-scrawl. This meant that reading it back later became a deeply unpleasant and difficult experience reducing the value of writing anything at all. I committed to it and it didn't seem to be a technique issue but a combination of the zero friction pen/screen interaction and how strokes are recorded and rendered. The one thing I did not try was a screen protector to add more friction.

- electronic store of handwriting did not not prove useful. It became a worse experience than flicking through loose leaf paper which you can layout, rearrange, pin up etc. There is no handwriting recognition or anything to add value like searching. If I ever wanted to make ink digital, I could take a photo in 2 seconds.

- There is something psychological and so special about ink, paper, flow experience. When you write with ink, you make a mark on the world. The experience and art is lost on a screen. Its also pretty weird when the screen gets hot and it increases the time you are staring closely at a screen which is more fatiguing than taking a break to stare at paper.

- IOS is just a bad productivity platform - copy text out of a webpage/ebook into notes? Ugh. Get a pdf onto the iPad. Ugh. It hobbles the user at every turn. Delight turns into impotent rage at anti-user design decisions to keep you buying media from Apple. I found I either wanted real text notes and all the high quality text tooling I am used to on a laptop or the real pen and ink experience for the flow and flexibility.

A week later, I returned the 12" pro and pencil - the initial wow-factor turned into loathing. Its worse than the cheapest pen and paper.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#52

Post by ecshafer »

tomswartz07 wrote: post #47

My previous job was in K-12 tech, and I still keep in contact with my old boss. When I started at that position, the school district (~5k students) was nearly 100% Apple. Nearly every device was the low-cost polycarb Macbook. The district purchased them with a heavy investment from "Classrooms for the Future" program, which covered a large portion of the cost. Since that time, Apple retired the less expensive model a…

You worked for Penn manor? That is pretty cool. At Philadelphia fosscon last year I saw a presentation by the it director at Penn manor (who is who I assume you are talking about). It was a really interesting talk, and it was an impressive achievement. More than just the saving money or more foss use in schools, I thought the program was especially cool for how it taught actual it and computer skills to the children.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#53

Post by LyndsySimon »

eanghel wrote: post #30
giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

I will never understand why they don't just rebrand the Macbook Air as just the Macbook... The new Macbooks look ridiculous to me. They look more like something that could be called the Macbook Air instead. They should swap the names. And if they did that and THEN got rid of the Macbook Airs (currently the Macbooks) I would not be bothered by that. I think Macbooks are hideus compared to how nice they used to look be…

I love the 12 inch MacBook. It's super small and light and I can carry it in just a sleeve, and the battery still holds for many hours. Granted, it's not a powerhouse and I mainly use it for presentations and very light coding, but there's the Pro model if you need more. Each tool has a purpose, and the 12" is great for my needs. The current Air is larger for no particular reason and has a lower res display, so it's…

I have a 13" MBP (2017), and it fits in the sleeve I bought for my 12" Windows tablet (Samsung TabPro S). Battery life is adequate to great, though it feels pretty low-spec. I'm not sure if that feeling is because it is comparatively low-spec, but because I recently bought a desktop for gaming and am comparing it to that.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#54

Post by greedo »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #40
greedo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids have both iPads and school issued Chromebooks. They hate the chromebooks, only using them for homework. They call them "CrummyBooks." The build quality is terrible, battery life is terrible, and to my kids, they're locked down way too much (some of this might simply be the wifi restrictions/filtering at school). Initially our school district planned iPads, but backtracked over cost. We were initially excited…

> the quality of the textbooks on the Chromebook are terrible Would you expect the textbooks to be better quality on the iPads vs on the Chromebooks? Why?

No, I just expected them to be better, more like an ebook than a crappy PDF. If I could move the textbooks to my daughter's iPad I would, but they're licensed and I haven't tried to work around the DRM.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#55

Post by macspoofing »

throwaway-1x9 wrote: post #16
macspoofing wrote: post #12

A low cost pencil, paper, and a book is all you really need.

Yea? Are they going to teach programming with pencil and paper?

They could. It would probably go as well as teaching programming on an iPad. And programming really isn't the backbone of primary education. We're graduating kids who can't read.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#56

Post by arrythur »

duncanawoods wrote: post #51
canuckintime wrote: post #29

The Apple Pencil should be a key strategic advantage for the iPads and should be compatible with every model if not included in the box outright. Instead Apple restricts the Pencil to the Pro models. Microsoft won the Business world by owning the document format. Apple could win the education world by owning the handwritten notes format [1] if Pencils were standard What is Tim Cook's vision for education? Nobody fuck…

I put some effort into seriously transferring over note-taking and journaling to an iPad Pro and Pencil. The initial experience was so delightful that I thought it could be amazing. - I initially liked the experience of writing on glass - its fast and the responsive but quality seriously suffers - letter roundness and stroke subtlety is lost to become spider-scrawl. This meant that reading it back later became a deep…

I completely agree, except my experience was on a Surface Pro 4. Let me start by saying it's a fantastic product and the experience of writing/erasing with the pen was great. I commit to it for a few months in college and while it was fun to write on, I found that it became more of a hassle when I would try to study or refer back to my notes. I would be switching tabs constantly on OneNote then back to a browser, then back to my notes, etc.

With traditional pen/paper, it leaves your computer fully available for research, videos, or quick references without having to switch around. Great products overall, but the experience is still lacking in that regard.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#58

Post by leadingthenet »

apotheothesomai wrote: post #45
leadingthenet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On laptops? You do know they have the ability to keep notes, right?

How long does it take to draw diagrams and modify and annotate them over time on note taking apps? You can do it in seconds by hand. The situation applies to drawing arrows between phrases and such too. For some things, the simple way is the best. It's not one or the other, even in the classroom. Computers didn't kill handwriting or print, and latter don't hinder the use of computers. They all complement each other.…

I didn't make myself clear. I agree, I use pen and paper every day to complement my laptop use, and it's miles better for some things than can be accomplished digitally even today.

It's still doable to only have a laptop and use that for everything, if not practical or quick enough in many cases. Pen and paper is nice to have, but it's not 100% required.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#59

Post by macspoofing »

jrimbault wrote: post #18
throwaway-1x9 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea? Are they going to teach programming with pencil and paper?

How do you teach programming without pencil and paper ?

Programming is not the backbone of primary education and you shouldn't design a education curriculum around a niche subject. Primary education is for teaching literacy, history, and arithmetic not a trade.

But you can certainly teach programming with pencil and paper. Some of the most influential programmers in history of computer science did not do their work on physical computers or used (now) esoteric methods like punch-cards as input. Several of my university CS classes were all pencil and paper, especially midterms and exams.

Re: Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad

#60

Post by macspoofing »

leadingthenet wrote: post #24
throwaway-1x9 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea? Are they going to teach programming with pencil and paper?

Neither is an iPad, frankly. Yes, yes, I know, Swift Playgrounds. Not convinced.

And you shouldn't be convinced. Are there any studies that show any sort of educational benefit of 'Swift Playgrounds'?
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