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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

#231

Post by intoverflow2 »

metafunctor wrote: post #111

The sad thing is that in practice, iPads are mostly used as substitutes for books. That's completely backwards. It reminds me how "multimedia CDs" were supposed to revolutionize teaching in the 90s. They ended up being picture books on a computer, with silly animations and sound effects on mouse hover added on top. Computers and tablets could be a great pedagogic tool for many things, like exploring maths concepts in…

> Computers and tablets could be a great pedagogic tool for many things

Just strongly feel these days that trying to shoehorn a device built for content consumption into a creation and learning tool isn't the best idea.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#232

Post by jacobolus »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #156
jacobolus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPads with Apple’s stylus are amazing tools for illustration, hand-drawing diagrams, sketching out ideas, proofreading PDF files, taking technical notes, doing mathematical scratch work, and so on. Think of it like a notebook/scrapbook with pens/markers that doesn’t take any consumables, takes up less space in a bag, allows undo/redo, and makes sharing the products digitally a snap. Works best when used alongside a l…

Agree, it's wonderful except for thinking clearly about things and clearly expressing them in other terms than a diagram. And in the iPaid view of the world, if you write a responsive comment, only paid subscribers will see it. Because that's "premium content".

I have no idea what you’re getting at with “iPaid”, “responsive comment”, “only paid subscribers”, etc. Seems like a weird off topic rant that has nothing to do with my comment or the thread in general.

For pen input, the iPad (display, stylus/digitizer, software) is better than anything you could buy for 50x the price a decade ago. For me, it’s not as good a general-purpose computer as a 10-year-old laptop, but it’s also not really supposed to be. There’s room in the world for more than one vision of computing to exist side by side.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#233

Post by sperglord »

cmdrfred wrote: post #209
adrianN wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Education and a 1:1 program are vastly different usage models.

You're not going to be able to take a Rasperry Pi, a monitor keyboard and mouse home with you in your backpack to do your homework on.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#234

Post by intoverflow2 »

zzzeek wrote: post #214
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they've lost it at the high-end too: the MacPro's internals are now over 3 years old with still no update in site, AV pros are switching to HP Z-series and the MBP is high-end only in price and design: perf-wise it's quite lacking. The MacBook Air (with its low price to clear their stock) and Mac Mini are priced right for education, but spec-wise they're poor investments, especially as even web-pages now require…

yet apple's stock price keeps soaring well into the 130s (!) now, despite months and months of nothing but bad news in my own distorted, self-selected information. what are we missing?

> what are we missing?

A CEO that finds fulfilment in something more than numbers on a chart?

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#235

Post by BearGoesChirp »

dpark wrote: post #12
derefr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to give the kids laptops or tablets to take home , but having each child be able to do individual computer-supported exercises at their own desk—in effect, turning every classroom into a computer lab—has important benefits for lesson planning.

Such as? I think having computers at home is the one compelling reason for all the "let's give everyone laptops/ipads" initiatives. It means that everyone has a device they can do typed reports or homework research on. I'm much less convinced that computers in the classroom are a clear value-add in many cases.

>It means that everyone has a device they can do ... homework research on.

I've known a couple of families where the children received take home devices they were expected to use to do further research or school work on, but who were unable to due to the lack of internet. A few had dial-up which can be unusable with some of the education sites (all the js resources take too long to load, time out, and leave the page useless), but some had no internet at all. Some of these families had no heat/ac, to give an idea of the level of poverty. There were no libraries within walking distance either (nor public transit options).

I think the devices are a good thing, because it gives some of these kids exposure to computers they wouldn't have otherwise and if the school handles it correctly they can be used to do work from home (have all needed resources already loaded on the device), but I've seen multiple teachers not be able to account for the most impoverished students lacking internet action (I somewhat suspect the teachers don't always have a choice in the matter either).

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#236

Post by daemin »

agmcleod wrote: post #227
daemin wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The schools I went to we had 1-7 in a primary school, and 8-12 in high school. Sometimes there's also college which is for years 11-12 (and sometimes 13), so it depends on which state and schools you go to. Also we never really did any programming at school what so ever when I did it, I learnt it all myself at home hacking around doing useless things on my home computer. The closest we got was learning a few features…

I'm not sure if that's something people should have to learn though. For example, not everyone knows how the engine of a car works, and that's okay. For using computers, I feel like getting comfortable with a phone or tablet is useful at a younger age, and maybe get introduced to a mac or windows machine when they're a bit older, provided those are still main stream by the time they get there. Not everyone needs to b…

I know, I had the exact same thoughts while writing it, so it's heavily influenced by what I do.

But on the other hand car engines aren't that complicated either, not a lot of people tend to look under the hood and tinker with their engine either. But at least knowing the components of a system gives you some confidence in using it. It's not necessarily the engine but knowing how to change a car tyre, or a light bulb is helpful and can feel empowering.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#237

Post by TeMPOraL »

ageofwant wrote: post #228
TeMPOraL wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does match my usual experience of IT philosophy in educational institutions that says that the easiest way to maintain infrastructure is to not let people use it. That it defeats the whole raison d'être of that infrastructure is apparently beyond their care. It's like a city would give a company a long-term contract for repairs to a stretch of important road, and the company started by locking it down and decidi…

Educational institutions ? I currently work for one of the biggest resource companies in the world. It generates many billions of dollars of revenue each year. It spends millions on infrastructure and then refuses to allow anyone to actually use it. A thousand chinese state hackers on adderall can not disable a network so thoroughly as "Infrastructure Security" can, I don't even...

It is my personal belief that the same thing happens in big companies. I decided to elide that thought in my previous comment.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#238

Post by euroclydon »

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…

In my children's schools, I get the impression the iPad is meant to replace textbooks, and not to be used as a general computing device.

Now, it doesn't replace a textbook with an eBook or iBook, but rather with a plethora of crappy web pages.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#239

Post by basseq »

My county in Virginia was one of the first national pilots for computers in high schools. Every student was given an iBook. I also worked on the help desk, so I saw the administration side as well.

The school system experienced all the challenges you'd expect from giving several thousand 14-18 year-olds expensive tech kit. Broken screens, porn, integrating technology into the curriculum, etc. (But, oh, those heady days when we knew more than the admins and played multiplayer Quake 3 or CroMag Rally—the latter came pre-loaded on the first images!—in the back of classrooms over school wi-fi.)

They switched from Apple to PCs in 2007 or thereabouts, but it was generally regarded as "worse" (more issues, more hardware problems, etc.).

I suspect Apple's strategy changed. They used to own primary school, but I think in the mid 2000's they started to back off that. Macs were becoming popular, including the rise of the iPhone, and the kiddie image wasn't in line with Apple's brand. Not to mention the hardware expense as schools a) bought more volume and b) went with lowest-cost options (like Chromebooks).

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#240

Post by carussell »

kaspiCZ wrote: post #91
Adaptive wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you considered online tools such as Cloud9, replit etc.? If so, is the problem missing features, workflow or pricing?

FWIW, amid the talk about Raspberry Pis, the (fully open) BeagleBone Black/Green has a default experience for casual-tinker-friendly programming where it spins up an on-board Cloud9 instance for the user to poke around.

It's slightly more expensive than its Pi contemporary, but that's expected when everyone keeps flocking to the Pi and the alternative can't make use of the same volume discounts and self-fund engineering to put new board revisions out every year. And even for all that, it's a popular alternative—you're not left hanging out in no-man's land with some exotic hardware. Check the hackerboards.com surveys from over the years that show it trailing the Pi(s).

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