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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

#71

Post by Adaptive »

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.

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.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#72

Post by ReverseCold »

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…

Chromebooks are the best, my school has them, and they're 100% usable in all non-tech classes. Battery lasts forever, great for typing, and everything is a web app anyway.

We had iPads at one point, but luckily the school realised those were bad and I haven't seen them this year at all.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#73

Post by ptaipale »

skookumchuck wrote: post #55
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #9

I remember the huge push when the iPad came out and all the talk about how it would replace textbooks and exercise books. It could only be because school administrators were won-over by the engaging user-experience - completely overlooking practicalities - back in 2010 even into 2014 iOS lacked decent enterprise-management tools that would enable staff to lock devices down as they're obvious distraction devices - thi…

Schools are always looking for ways that teachers can teach without doing work and students can learn without doing work, and computers are the magic tool that promises to do that. It's like using a forklift to raise the barbell. Sure, the barbell goes up, but you don't get any stronger.

Yes. However, if your goal is to learn to lift up large masses, learning to operate a forklift is a good thing to do.

(I cannot write about a "forklift operator" without asking if you have seen this German "educational" film. It starts slowly, but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oB6DN5dYWo )

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#74

Post by ReverseCold »

ReverseCold wrote: post #72
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…

Chromebooks are the best, my school has them, and they're 100% usable in all non-tech classes. Battery lasts forever, great for typing, and everything is a web app anyway. We had iPads at one point, but luckily the school realised those were bad and I haven't seen them this year at all.

I also see comments about programming on them, that'd be painful. For everything else (that matters at school) though it's 10/10.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#75

Post by bitmapbrother »

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…

>Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-install-linux-on-a-chromebook-a...

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#76

Post by WWLink »

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.

It's a school, and people are there to learn. Knowing how to maintain a computer is a pretty darn useful life skill.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#77

Post by andrewflnr »

ptaipale wrote: post #73
skookumchuck wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools are always looking for ways that teachers can teach without doing work and students can learn without doing work, and computers are the magic tool that promises to do that. It's like using a forklift to raise the barbell. Sure, the barbell goes up, but you don't get any stronger.

Yes. However, if your goal is to learn to lift up large masses, learning to operate a forklift is a good thing to do. (I cannot write about a "forklift operator" without asking if you have seen this German "educational" film. It starts slowly, but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oB6DN5dYWo )

... but gets gory. I mean, just-above-Monty-Python level gore, but still maybe not what you're expecting.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#78

Post by bitmapbrother »

ReverseCold wrote: post #74
ReverseCold wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromebooks are the best, my school has them, and they're 100% usable in all non-tech classes. Battery lasts forever, great for typing, and everything is a web app anyway. We had iPads at one point, but luckily the school realised those were bad and I haven't seen them this year at all.

I also see comments about programming on them, that'd be painful. For everything else (that matters at school) though it's 10/10.

Not really. It's quite easy with Crouton installed.

Re: Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

#80

Post by ptaipale »

andrewflnr wrote: post #77
ptaipale wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. However, if your goal is to learn to lift up large masses, learning to operate a forklift is a good thing to do. (I cannot write about a "forklift operator" without asking if you have seen this German "educational" film. It starts slowly, but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oB6DN5dYWo )

... but gets gory. I mean, just-above-Monty-Python level gore, but still maybe not what you're expecting.

Well, you spoiled it, but that's it, the tone change from dull German workplace education film to a full Monty-Pythonesque parody creeps in so that you don't really know when it exactly set in.
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