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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

#41

Post by ux-app »

ploggingdev wrote: post #35
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…

> 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. Depends on the use case. So in your case where you teach programming, it makes sense, but there are legitimate cases where it makes sense to not expose the filesystem directly and disallow native apps. This has the benefit of better security.

> there are legitimate cases where it makes sense to not expose the filesystem directly and disallow native apps. This has the benefit of better security.

I always found the better security argument to be a red herring in a school environment and always pushed back against it. If a computer breaks then re-image it. malware spreading? Wonderful! There's an amazing learning opportunity!!

The point is moot at my school now though as all students are required to bring their own device (Mac or PC), and of course they have full control over their own system. As it should be ;)

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#42

Post by snowwrestler »

eon1 wrote: post #31
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.

I seem to remember them flooding schools with low cost grey iMacs called eMacs (though you might have some trouble googling that).

eMacs were low cost for Macs, but not necessarily compared to PCs.

The real big shift that is killing Apple in schools is the shift from "a few computers in the computer lab" to "issue every child a laptop."

When it's just a few computers for all students to share, buying nicer computers doesn't have a huge aggregate impact. When you're buying thousands at a time, even small price differences add up.

This is in part why Apple has focused on $500 iPads for education. They know they have no chance of selling $1000 MacBook Airs in lots of thousands to many school districts.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#44

Post by 2arrs2ells »

sna1l wrote: post #26
protomyth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure what grandparent means by local management software, but Google's built a cloud device management console (https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/devices/featu...) and there are 3rd party tools (ex. GoGuardian - who works with my company - https://www.goguardian.com/) that help manage devices.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#45

Post by [deleted] »

ux-app wrote: post #23
dpark wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#47

Post by shmerl »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #46
shmerl wrote: post #29

Schools should start using Linux more.

Well, ChromeOS is based on the Linux kernel...

Yes, but one has to go out of the way to enable normal Linux environment there (developer mode, chroot and so on). It should really be easier, and it could provide advanced mode with normal Wayland based DE, without requiring one to jump through hoops for it.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#49

Post by grovegames »

ploggingdev wrote: post #35
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…

> 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. Depends on the use case. So in your case where you teach programming, it makes sense, but there are legitimate cases where it makes sense to not expose the filesystem directly and disallow native apps. This has the benefit of better security.

I love my daily typing with the elevator. (me)->floor[6+1]

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#50

Post by Brendinooo »

My wife's school used the iPad 2 in classrooms, and my wife generally disliked them. They don't do a whole lot for content creation as others have noted, and they went obsolete fast. It's a nice box to check (particularly for a private school) - "We have iPads" sounds nice. But the reality wasn't so great. This point might be a little more moot now that iPads have matured a lot and Apple has started to push for better content creation, but that stuff is still on the higher-priced end of the platform.

I'd have to think that the lack of repairability is a problem for some schools as well. My school district was one of the first to distribute laptops to junior high students (this was around 1999...and pre-WiFi I guess, since we all pointed the tops of our laptops to the infrared caps in the ceiling! [0]), and I remember seeing the IT guy with a stack of computers in the tech room, replacing screen after screen.

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/i/ne/pre/Pcnews/12_97/kidntbk.jpg

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