Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

No one I know "produces" content on an ipad but it's fine for HN comments or management emails. So maybe that's what we want to teach, not sure.

In theory I suppose the lesson is that if you are a "regular" user, IT is brutally unhelpful, and put your content on removable media or cloud storage.

This is not such a bad lesson, and the kids who care about owning their data will eventually figure the other side our for themselves.

I still think using general purpose computing devices in general education has value, mainly because then the kids who don't see that at home will get a chance. When you do it's like the whole world changes if you're made like that.

I had the experience of being consulted by the principal of our local elementary school on this a few years back. They had received a donation and could make their own localized purchasing decision with that money.

Based on what we learned at home with our kids and various iOS devices my advice was to avoid them and opt for inexpensive PC laptops running Windows. We, in fact bought 100 HP laptops, 17 inch screens, brand new, in original packaging, for $200 each.

The machines have been absolutely fantastic. They have allowed the kids to explore things that would be absolutely impossible to approach with an iPad. For example, using a USB port to save their work and bring it home. Or read and write CD's and DVD's. Yeah, that's how bad iPads are.

Oh, yes, and they are all multi-user, of course.

They run applications like GIMP, Lego Mindstorms and a myriad of really excellent programs out there. And, of course, access the web under supervision to do even more. This year, if I can find the time, I'd like to get the school started teaching a very basic Python programming class.

One of the big problems we recognized early on with iPads was that the lack of multi-user capabilities made them impossible to use. For example, in the Special Ed class (For non-use readers: developmentally disabled kids) the spectrum of disabilities was such that you would have to have a highly customized iPad for each kid in order to configure it to fit their needs. PC's dealt this this very easily. In some cases we had to cover the keyboard give them a small Wacom tablet.

Tablets are great for such things as reading books and what I am going to call limited web browsing. Even today, with the push for mobile-first, the browsing experience on tablets can range from OK to frustrating and down-right impossible.

Tablets will, of course, survive. It'll be interesting to see what use-cases they end-up satisfying in the end.

EDIT:

Forgot to add that in our own case we took away our kid's iPads and iPods. Both my wife and I concluded they were not doing anything useful with them. The devices became an addiction and achieving balance between beneficial play (educational apps) and mindless addictive crap was a constant battle. The last straw was when one of them started to lie about usage and would play Clash of Clans hidden under his blanket in bed instead of sleeping. They exhibited the behavior of alcoholics or drug addicts who deny their reality. That's when the iOS devices evaporated.

They have nice PC's in our family room. They can have fun and they can also learn but the addictive element is completely gone. And rules are easier to enforce. For example, on Saturday's they can play as much as they want. In practice they play about a couple of hours and then go play with real toys, the dogs, lego's etc. Better balance and better outcomes.

Paper textbooks are a comfortable earner for publishers, especially with nominal annual or regular updates.

Print development, including author payment, is much less expensive than app development, and requires skills that are far more common.

Publishers are reasonably likely to make some money on a book project. (The author probably won't beyond an initial advance, but that's a different problem.) They're much less likely to make money on educational app or ebook development.

It doesn't help that the industry never standardised a format for animation and interactivity.

There's a big gap between the features you can include in an epub and in a native app. Apple poked at this problem with their book creation software, but never really solved it. The other platforms barely considered it an issue.

There's definitely an entrepreneurial opportunity in developing smart learning tools for schools. But between conventional publisher apathy, school board politics, device incompatibilities, marketing access, and a dearth of authors/designers who can produce the content that's needed, it's a very bumpy minefield.

Platform selection is not the hardest problem. IMO Apple should have created a "school certified" app creation program, added multi-user and app selection locks to iOS, brought in experienced educators and consultants with evidence-based credentials who could explain effective learning strategies, and acted as a bridge between developers and school management.

Instead we got an app store free-for-all with education tacked on as a buying category. That strategy was never going to give schools the tools they needed to go beyond buying iPads to making education the well-managed and effective market it could be.