Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#201

Post by jaegerpicker » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #142

taurath wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key reason tablets were chosen wasn't that it was the best learning tool, but it was the best learning tool that won't cause a maintenance nightmare for school IT when kids go crazy with viruses and bricking their laptops whenever they were late for a homework assignment. Ipads are relatively hard to fuck up fron a software side, and if they do you just do a reset.

I suppose the utility of this depends on your definition of learning. 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…

"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."

Yet there are thousands of content creation apps on the app store, many of which are very successful. An iPad Pro with keyboard and pencil is extremely capable at content creation. On mine I regularly use mine to write long form fiction, do web development, do iOS prototyping in swift playgrounds, draw and sketch art (pixel and comic book style), sign and annotate pdf's, and sometimes produce electronic music. I'm a software engineer by day and a indie game dev at night. For many of the content creation tasks I need the iPad Pro is among the best tools available.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#202

Post by sfeng » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:15 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #179

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see RPis in schools - they're cheap, just $5 or $10 for the wireless models. Providing the accessories required to use it is more costly, but kids can't really hack screens and $3 keyboards. RPi's are ideal for learning basic computer usage and programming, IMO. Slow though, but the RPi 3 should be fast enough for that too.

The $5 and $10 models are limited to one per customer and out of stock much of the time - not something you can equip a classroom with.

There are Chinese knock-offs which are available.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#203

Post by baldfat » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:19 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #32

ux-app wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Chromebooks are not the ideal learning device for coding. I was thinking general schooling and glossed over your earlier comment about teaching coding. I think they can probably work there, but you're right that a "real" computer is a better choice for that.

We are possibly entering the age of thin clients for coding soon. With ssh and remote desktops being the best use of laptops and Chromebooks for coding. I do that now with a personal server that I remote into when coding at different locations.

There is a HUGE divide between production and consumer devices that keeps increasing every year. People don't have multi-use devices. Many of my peers use their iPad for everything or even just their phone.

Other than coding and video editing Chromebooks are pretty just as capable as a laptop in terms of production.

Example: I needed to re-image my laptop at work (I have 3 desktops, 2 iPads and one laptop) and I realized that my use of the laptop is the same as a Chromebook. I had absolutely no files on the computer that I needed to get off before re-imaging. Everything was Bit Torrent Sync and Git and the rest were just a few programs that were easily installed or on the "cloud" aka Google and Amazon's computers.

My own use of computers has always been desktop for video, image editing and coding (I need that screen space and a reference screen). I find laptops to always be very limiting for my production and that a Chromebook becomes a thin client with ssh and remote desktop. My $1,000 laptop is used like a $300 Chromebook.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#204

Post by ghaff » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:22 PM UTC

leadingthenet wrote: post #176

warcher wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most professors, you really gotta slow them down. This is their life's work and they know it bottom to top. If you let them run at their natural clip, you're gonna miss stuff. Making them write it down is great for that. If you let them use slides, you gotta ask them questions and break their rhythm or they'll just roll right over you.

Thank you, somebody other than me finally said it. I hate lecture slides with passion, so much so that I barely even go to lectures anymore. I mean, what's the point if all they're going to do is read them out loud? I can do that at home.

We've had the tech to box up big lectures since VCRs went mainstream. That's the easy (and cheap) part.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#205

Post by Filligree » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:24 PM UTC

nkkollaw wrote: post #128

tmd83 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction writing on touch screen keyboard is as good as your laptop's keyboard? I can sort of understand the painting/video creation even though I don't do either. But I would guess you would be a special minority in the writing department.

He probably has a keyboard, but students don't.

Even then, he's wrong. There are power tools such as Scrivener which have no equivalent outside the PC ecosystem.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#206

Post by josteink » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:25 PM UTC

blipmusic wrote: post #107

ux-app wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

This is so nice to read after having seen my sister's children receive laptops at school. No one was actually giving them any system knowledge. No programming, no "how does a computer work, what is a file...", no support/teaching on how software can help when e.g. writing an essay. Nothing. They were carrying 10+ kg (no joke) in their bags every day because of course they were forced to bring the (heavy) laptop to ev…

> Maybe other schools are doing better over here, but when my nephew (growing up with minecraft/pokemon go on mobile only) didn't dare to touch most of the stuff on his school laptop due to being afraid of messing up I tried very hard not to scream.

Considering how school should be the arena where you're allowed to mess up (and thus learn from your mistakes), this is so ass backwards (and sad) as it can possibly be.

When a school is no longer a safe zone for learning, you can pretty much just consider that generation pre-doomed, irrespective of topic. What a waste.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#207

Post by baldfat » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:30 PM UTC

Adaptive wrote: post #71

dpark wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Chromebooks are not the ideal learning device for coding. I was thinking general schooling and glossed over your earlier comment about teaching coding. I think they can probably work there, but you're right that a "real" computer is a better choice for that.

I'm running a coding class right now that is almost entirely run over ssh on chromebooks to a linux server. Works beautifully. No fancy IDE, but lots of actual learning to code.

I have found that notebooks like Jupyter (http://jupyter.org) and especially JupyterHub (http://jupyterhub.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) are made to teach languages with a REPL from the browser.

> "With JupyterHub you can create a multi-user Hub which spawns, manages, and proxies multiple instances of the single-user Jupyter notebook server. Due to its flexibility and customization options, JupyterHub can be used to serve notebooks to a class of students, a corporate data science group, or a scientific research group."

I have grown less and less fond of Python but I still use Jupyter with other languages and I have it running on my personal server.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#208

Post by jaegerpicker » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:45 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #205

nkkollaw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He probably has a keyboard, but students don't.

Even then, he's wrong. There are power tools such as Scrivener which have no equivalent outside the PC ecosystem.

What? Scrivener has LONG had a iPad version

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scrivener/id972387337?mt=8

Also Bear is another amazing iPad writing app. As good or better than anything on PC IMO. Clearly he's not "wrong", it's almost like people who like the iPad for content creation actually may know what they are talking about.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#209

Post by cmdrfred » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:45 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #198

makomk wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $5 and $10 models are limited to one per customer and out of stock much of the time - not something you can equip a classroom with.

If a state decides to introduce RPis in all classrooms, I suspect that they could get a nice deal.

Also the entire purpose of the Raspberry Pi project is education. I'm certain they would work with anyone using them for that purpose.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#210

Post by christoph » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 1:47 PM UTC

nicky0 wrote: post #188

christoph wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple need to take a long hard look at the nose dive their customer service has taken in the last few years. I love Apple kit, I really do, but Apple the company are starting to become increasingly difficult to like and do any sort of business with. I have many personal data points on this, but below is the worst i've encountered in any retail store in my life: I went into an Apple Store to purchase 3 (yes, 3) Macboo…

I like this story, I like the part where you walked in thinking buying THREE laptops they would fall to their knees in joy. So did you buy online or.... ? ;)

TBH, the fact it was three doesn't alter my perception of the situation. I didn't expect them to fall at my knees because of the quantity. If I had walked in sure of the fact I wanted to buy 1 iPod touch or 1 Apple Watch and knew the model, I would have found the same level of frustration with their inability to just sell me what I want. In fact, the frustration might have even been amplified.

I get they have a lot of people who need help making a decision around a purchase and they want to assist those people, but they have to realise some people just want to walk into a retail store, pay, and get out as quick as possible. I don't have 90+ minutes to hang around waiting in a shopping centre on a week day afternoon just to buy something.

I'm unaware of any other standard retail store where you would need to book an appointment to make a purchase, even high end jewellery & fashion.

To answer you & the sister comment - we didn't. We purchased some Dell laptops instead - cheaper, worse build quality, etc. but the staff are largely desk based and use Windows anyway. Performance is as good. We've since started buying less (almost no) Apple hardware as we are happy with the quality / price compromise in most instances. We would generally spend £50k a year with Apple, this year it will be more like £10k.