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Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#21

Post by droithomme »

dpark wrote: post #15
ux-app wrote: post #13

I'm a HS teacher. I was so happy when my school finally phased out iPads as the designated device for our year 7 students. It's such a rubbish device for content creation. The touchscreen is a POS for anything other than web browsing and casual games. Teaching coding, image manipulation, file manipulation was utterly painful or impossible. Typing on them is beyond painful and of the hundreds of students I taught, few…

> Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either. What to your mind would not be rubbish? I'm a Microsoft employee, so I have a vested interest in Windows devices being the dominant choice for schools, but I don't see anything realistic students at the high school or below level couldn't do on Chromebooks. Also, where do you live/teach? "Year 7" is not high school in the US.…

His user profile shows he is in Australia.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#22

Post by protomyth »

sna1l wrote: post #6

I'm curious how much of a boon Chromebooks/low cost laptops were for schools in low-income areas. I can imagine they made quite a significant impact!

I'm in a very low income area and they really haven't changed anything for us since the lack of any local management software for chromebooks has not allowed us to buy them. Netbooks were interesting but they had quite the maintenance problems. I think buying tough books or their equivalent would have been a more cost effective solution.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#23

Post by ux-app »

dpark wrote: post #15
ux-app wrote: post #13

I'm a HS teacher. I was so happy when my school finally phased out iPads as the designated device for our year 7 students. It's such a rubbish device for content creation. The touchscreen is a POS for anything other than web browsing and casual games. Teaching coding, image manipulation, file manipulation was utterly painful or impossible. Typing on them is beyond painful and of the hundreds of students I taught, few…

> Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either. What to your mind would not be rubbish? I'm a Microsoft employee, so I have a vested interest in Windows devices being the dominant choice for schools, but I don't see anything realistic students at the high school or below level couldn't do on Chromebooks. Also, where do you live/teach? "Year 7" is not high school in the US.…

> Also, where do you live/teach? "Year 7"

I'm in Australia. Nationally we are transitioning to a R-6 = Primary School, 7-12 = High School model.

My school is a little unorthodox. We're a private school with a 6-12 shared campus which is why I had experience teaching younger students even though I am HS trained.

> What to your mind would not be rubbish?

Either Mac or PC is fine in my books. Anything that allows them to install native software is fine. I recently did a small unit on binary data. It was really handy for students to install a hex editor, inspect a flat text file in binary mode and map out the ascii table for themselves. I don't think that's possible on a Chromebook.

I also teach Web dev. We use MAMP which is cross platform. We install VSCode, interact with the FS, create a local DB, file uploads, programmatic image resizing etc. My understanding is that this is not possible without jailbreaking (is that the right term?) a Chromebook.

I'm also opposed to any device that hides away the file system from the user. It relegates a computer to the dumb appliance category which I think is unhelpful.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#24

Post by adventurer »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #9

I remember the huge push when the iPad came out and all the talk about how it would replace textbooks and exercise books. It could only be because school administrators were won-over by the engaging user-experience - completely overlooking practicalities - back in 2010 even into 2014 iOS lacked decent enterprise-management tools that would enable staff to lock devices down as they're obvious distraction devices - thi…

The neglect of markets where they've had record sales the past year or two? Not to mention, the massive increase in mobile devices weighing into the equation. It seems a little off to me.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#25

Post by ajmurmann »

dpark wrote: post #16
masterleep wrote: post #8

It's sad, but Apple has completely lost it at the low end. The value proposition just isn't there any more. This goes for iOS as well as Macs.

> It's sad, but Apple has completely lost it at the low end. When was Apple ever targeting (or winning) the low end? Apple was never the "value proposition" for affordable devices.

The iBook was solid quality at a competitive price especially if you got their student discounts.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#26

Post by sna1l »

protomyth wrote: post #22
sna1l wrote: post #6

I'm curious how much of a boon Chromebooks/low cost laptops were for schools in low-income areas. I can imagine they made quite a significant impact!

I'm in a very low income area and they really haven't changed anything for us since the lack of any local management software for chromebooks has not allowed us to buy them. Netbooks were interesting but they had quite the maintenance problems. I think buying tough books or their equivalent would have been a more cost effective solution.

Ah interesting, thanks for the perspective. I'm surprised nobody has build any local management software for chromebooks, but maybe Google makes it difficult.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#27

Post by ploggingdev »

> “At the end of the day, I can get three Chromebooks for each of the Mac devices I would have purchased,” said Steve Splichal, the superintendent of Eudora Public Schools.

Not choosing a Mac for school students should have always been a no brainer because, as mentioned a) cost, b)what benefit do Macs provide over say Windows laptops or chromebooks for high school students?

Apple did a real good job marketing their products to schools all over the country though.

I imagine high school students require a device to do basic coding, assignments, office applications (presentation, word), browsing and maybe basic image editing. Sure, in professional settings I can understand people choosing Macs, but but for high school students it just seems overkill for their use case.

Anyway I'm glad to see schools coming to their senses and move away from apple devices...into another (cheaper) walled garden.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#28

Post by dpark »

ajmurmann wrote: post #25
dpark wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's sad, but Apple has completely lost it at the low end. When was Apple ever targeting (or winning) the low end? Apple was never the "value proposition" for affordable devices.

The iBook was solid quality at a competitive price especially if you got their student discounts.

So over a decade ago before they even switched to Intel?

I actually don't recall them actually being competitive with Windows devices even then, but I wasn't looking very closely at them either.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#30

Post by [deleted] »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #9

I remember the huge push when the iPad came out and all the talk about how it would replace textbooks and exercise books. It could only be because school administrators were won-over by the engaging user-experience - completely overlooking practicalities - back in 2010 even into 2014 iOS lacked decent enterprise-management tools that would enable staff to lock devices down as they're obvious distraction devices - thi…

[deleted]
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