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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

#251

Post by baldfat »

jimbokun wrote: post #215
baldfat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 every…

But will the average school be able to afford and administer servers For every student to ssh into?

One server and one instance could easily do one class if not hundreds of students. Actually to have it done with a container would be very cheap and wouldn't require a high tier server. So it would cost less to do Chromebooks with a server for instances when they need more horse power or build tools.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#252

Post by mi100hael »

agmcleod wrote: post #230
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…

If I can ask you, what do you find the benefit is of teaching this as a standard curriculum? It makes sense to me for people wanting to get into development or IT. But not everyone is going into tech, and may not benefit from it. Most non tech people I know only use a computer at work, and get by. Otherwise they use phones, tablets, etc. I agree that the iPad is awful for the kind of things you're teaching, but for s…

By the time you get to your second half of schooling, isn't the point more to expose you to a variety of topics to broaden your base and allow you to explore what you like and what you don't?

You could ask "what do you find the benefits of teaching this as standard curriculum?" about pretty much every middle/high school class:

- Trigonometry? Most people don't need to know how to calculate the pythagorean theorem, only need to occasionally measure stuff with a tape.

- Chemistry? Most people don't need to know the periodic table, only not to mix bleach and ammonia.

- World History? Most people are never going to use all that Byzantine knowledge, just stick to more recent events.

- Foreign Language? Most people are never going to need more than enough to get by on vacation for a week.

- Music? You're never going to pick up that instrument again after graduation.

Now that computing has become an enormous part of life, doesn't it make senses to pull back the curtain a little? It's not like it's going to do them any harm.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#253

Post by m-j-fox »

yoz-y wrote: post #110
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.

I have never used chromeOS, does it have a terminal or is there some sort of ssh as a service?

Me neither, but this looks interesting:

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForChromeBooks

I might pick one up at Fry's today just for giggles.

Update: Tried to run the NaCl Development Environment on my macbook to get a taste and it just crashes on launch. Seems like a lot of people have the same problem on chromebooks too: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nacl-development-e...

So maybe I'm not so excited to run out and buy a chromebook for development just yet.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#254

Post by sperglord »

lowpro wrote: post #105

My HS rolled out iPads to all students my Sophmore year of HS 4 years ago. It was well known the average GPA dropped by a sizable amount (mine personally by nearly .5). There wasn't a good way for the school to lock down games, and it was really hard to self regulate. The technology side of Canvas worked pretty well once teachers knew how to use it, but the fact that so many games could be played just distracted the…

There are many iPad MDM solutions to that problem. Apple s App Store can be disabled and replaced with a custom one, for example.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#255

Post by pjmlp »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #153
adventurer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple doesn't have that many engineers - they have a chronic shortage, I'm told - a friend of mine at Apple worked on a major built-in iOS app and said his team was only "8 people, including PMs" - and given iOS devices alone are the majority of Apple's revenue it makes sense for them to allocate resources where they're needed to maintain cashflow, which necessarily means neglecting less-popular lines (namely the Mac…

> which is further evidence of the amazing foresight Apple had in basing macOS on an open-source core (BSD):

NeXT did it, not Apple.

And the goal of the time was just to help bring UNIX software into NeXTSTEP as they were competing against the likes of Solaris for market share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg

The whole NeXT architecture has very little UNIX on it.

http://osxbook.com/

http://www.nextop.de/NeXTstep_3.3_Developer_Documentation/

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#256

Post by fuzzybeard »

jimbokun wrote: post #215
baldfat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 every…

But will the average school be able to afford and administer servers For every student to ssh into?

It should be cheaper than giving full desktops/laptops to students. After all, it consolidates all the computer power. The pendulum is swinging back to mainframes. Have 1 server for all the students and spin up VMs or a single Linux instance.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#257

Post by thearn4 »

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…

I've been skeptical of mobile devices in the classroom for awhile now. They just seem like distraction machines. Which I admit sounds weirdly luddite for someone who makes a career working with technology.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#258

Post by fuzzybeard »

devwastaken wrote: post #193
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…

Surface RT's were an amazing step for our school. Had full office suite, a stand with a magnetic detachable keyboard, usb port, and was the same stuff we'd be using on the desktops. So, we could write up essays right on our desk, or do research, right there. Could then transfer that data to another computer at home if we wanted, or plug in a mouse to do some quick research. But, Microsoft refused to fix the problems…

That's a big one. How do you sell a computer in an enterprise or institutional environment and not allow that.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#259

Post by pawadu »

lowpro wrote: post #105

My HS rolled out iPads to all students my Sophmore year of HS 4 years ago. It was well known the average GPA dropped by a sizable amount (mine personally by nearly .5). There wasn't a good way for the school to lock down games, and it was really hard to self regulate. The technology side of Canvas worked pretty well once teachers knew how to use it, but the fact that so many games could be played just distracted the…

> It was well known the average GPA dropped by a sizable amount

Are there and studies on this? The subject must be a gold mine for edu researchers...

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#260

Post by ensignavenger »

skookumchuck wrote: post #56
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.

> has important benefits for lesson planning If computers help learning, why have school results essentially been flat since 1970 or so?

Perhaps the curriculum has changed. Almost certainly the tests have?
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