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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

#61

Post by knowaveragejoe »

microcolonel wrote: post #53
2arrs2ells wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cloud IDE like Cloud9 ( https://c9.io/ ) works well on a Chromebook. If I were teaching programming today, I'd probably start with something like GoMix ( https://gomix.com ) or Scratch ( https://scratch.mit.edu/ ) - neither of which require a download. Not saying there isn't value in installing native software... but it's amazing what you can do in a web browser these days vs. 2010 when I was teaching middle school…

To be honest though, I think these environments make new programmers go through the trouble of learning a platform which they can never ship a real application in; except maybe Cloud9. Scratch has been around for about 15 years now, and 12 years in a workable state. And while it seems superficially to be helpful (none of that fussy text editing!), I have never met a programmer who got their start in Scratch.

I think what you're saying is true in a sense but misses the point of this part of their education. I think the idea is less about making grade school students into career-ready programmers and more to expose them to programming concepts in general. They're increasingly useful in a wide variety of fields, even if you don't end up being a programmer or touch code again.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#62

Post by fleshweasel »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #57
microcolonel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest though, I think these environments make new programmers go through the trouble of learning a platform which they can never ship a real application in; except maybe Cloud9. Scratch has been around for about 15 years now, and 12 years in a workable state. And while it seems superficially to be helpful (none of that fussy text editing!), I have never met a programmer who got their start in Scratch.

I got my start in Scratch! And so did everyone else whose first programming experience was CS50 ( http://cs50.tv/2016/fall/ ). Don't want to threadcrap too much, but I deeply believe that most programming in the future will happen in environments like GoMix, in the same way that a ton of programming today happens in Visual Basic.

Do you mean Visual Studio?

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#63

Post by ecspike »

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.

There are a couple of Chrome apps that can run offline and do coding. I've used Caret and Advanced REST client on occasion for things. It gets a bit tricky if you need something that can't work without a real webserver but there's a lot of beginner stuff you can do with it.

crouton unlocked a bit more functionality giving you the possibility of a Linux base layer, albeit likely not a great idea to have kids put the machines into dev mode. But that might be workable if staff did it.

I've dogfooded a bunch of the Web Development content we make at Udacity using either a pure Chromebook or Chromebook + Crouton.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#64

Post by LeicaLatte »

The passing of Steve has affected the iPad product line the most. iPads have pretty much stagnated since his demise and Apple has alienated the education market with their laptops too. I mean look at the Pro features of the iPad - split screen multi-tasking and 100$ pencils. Its a joke.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#65

Post by foxfired »

When I used to see all schools turning to iPads I was one of the naysayers. I saw my nephew working(playing) on his school iPad and I thought this was the worst decision the school system ever took.

But now looking back, I am glad they went through it, call it a phase if you must. The American school system (or government) is always last to adopt any tech. You can still find outdated technology barely holding together in some schools. But this time they did something different. They took a risk. They adopted something that hadn't been tested yet. Well now they tested it. We thought iPads were inferior to laptops or desktop, but now we know that they are, at least in the classroom.

Money was wasted, time was wasted, but at least now we know through experience.

I'm glad that they took the risk of trying something untested. And I hope that in the future they will do so again with whatever tech that looks promising in improving education.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#66

Post by askvictor »

ploggingdev wrote: post #27

> “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…

Macs definitely have less downtime, shorter startup time and better battery life than windows machines. Windows has certainly gotten better over the last few years, but 5 years ago it would be taking a minute or two for windows to wake up and log in between each class. Mac is pretty much instant (Chromebooks are fast too). Before you say that a minute isn't much, consider that you have 25 teenagers in the classroom, with a minute of boredom.

Also, build quality, effective lack of malware and other system problems mean students (and teachers) don't have to deal with broken computers nearly as often.

It's only the last couple of years that windows has come close, and for hardware the compares in terms of durability, you'll be paying as much as Apple anyway (which schools are hesitant to do as they are underfunded)

I speak from years of experience as a teacher and IT manager, and as an apple hater.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#67

Post by eksemplar »

foxfired wrote: post #65

When I used to see all schools turning to iPads I was one of the naysayers. I saw my nephew working(playing) on his school iPad and I thought this was the worst decision the school system ever took. But now looking back, I am glad they went through it, call it a phase if you must. The American school system (or government) is always last to adopt any tech. You can still find outdated technology barely holding togethe…

I work in the public sector, albeit in digitization an architecture in the central administration in a Danish municipality, but I can assure you the lesson won't stay learned for long. We've gone through the same shift, but it wasn't because IPads were unfit for classrooms, it was because chromebooks were cheaper and are easier to administrate for the IT department (also a major financial saving).

Our school system is at a whole a lot better than the American, yet even here it's typically cost and business needs which define what IT makes it into classrooms, rather than educational needs.

Apple is unfortunately for Apple technically and financially unfit for most enterprise, and in the modern world schools are becoming enterprise.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#68

Post by Tsagadai »

secabeen wrote: post #2

Finally. It was always so hard to see schools spend millions on expensive Apple tech when there was equivalent equipment available for half the price that met their needs equivalently well. We really don't need to be spending $400-500 per tablet to outfit a classroom with 1 device for every 3 kids, when each kid really needs their own.

It's telling that MIT still lectures with blackboards while other universities spend oodles of dollars on expensive electric whiteboards, projectors and whatnot.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#69

Post by SpaceManiac »

fleshweasel wrote: post #62
2arrs2ells wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my start in Scratch! And so did everyone else whose first programming experience was CS50 ( http://cs50.tv/2016/fall/ ). Don't want to threadcrap too much, but I deeply believe that most programming in the future will happen in environments like GoMix, in the same way that a ton of programming today happens in Visual Basic.

Do you mean Visual Studio?

GP means Visual Basic, probably as in the VB macros that you can write within Word/Excel/Access etc., in which there is surely a huge amount of code written by otherwise non-programmers.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#70

Post by witty_username »

microcolonel wrote: post #53
2arrs2ells wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cloud IDE like Cloud9 ( https://c9.io/ ) works well on a Chromebook. If I were teaching programming today, I'd probably start with something like GoMix ( https://gomix.com ) or Scratch ( https://scratch.mit.edu/ ) - neither of which require a download. Not saying there isn't value in installing native software... but it's amazing what you can do in a web browser these days vs. 2010 when I was teaching middle school…

To be honest though, I think these environments make new programmers go through the trouble of learning a platform which they can never ship a real application in; except maybe Cloud9. Scratch has been around for about 15 years now, and 12 years in a workable state. And while it seems superficially to be helpful (none of that fussy text editing!), I have never met a programmer who got their start in Scratch.

I started programming through Scratch (then I shifted to Python).
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