“Recently, several school districts decided to take the plunge and institute a 1-to-1 distribution of tablets,” Jen Bosier reports for Forbes. “You might be thinking education’s old buddy, Apple, came out ahead, but you’d be wrong. This year, Dell Latitude 10 tablet, which runs on Windows 8, was the clear winner.”
“How was this decision made? Well, in the case of Clear Creek Independent School District, CTO Kevin Schwartz said the best way was to put the tablets in the hands of students,” Bosier reports. “Several students were asked to handle a variety of tablets and judge them on a number of factors. The catch was that none of the students were briefed on how to use the tablets before entering the room. Schwartz said they wanted to see which tablet would have the easiest learning curve.”
Bosier reports, “Of all the tablets offered, the students preferred the Latitude 10 because of its ease of use and accessibility. Additionally, students specifically noted they felt the Latitude 10 would best prepare them for college and the work force.”
“Clear Creek is set to distribute 30,000 tablets once the school year starts,” Bosier reports. “With endorsements like this and a surprisingly low price point, the Latitude 10 could be looking at a handy sales boom come August. Right now, depending on model and options, the Latitude 10 is priced between $579 and $849.”
Full piece here.
MacDailyNews Take: There is so much wrong with this, from Bosier’s piece sounding like a Dell press release to a clueless CTO to a handful of kids being allowed to choose something that they most certainly will not ever even see when they enter the workforce (unless they’ll be working at some tech history museum deep within in the dead-end tech wing) that we’re not even going to bother beyond a simple “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Our sympathies to the students and teachers of Clear Creek Independent School District League City in eastern Texas.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ian” for the heads up.]
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I would think that the majority should be straight across the board (school wise) the school should dictate media factor the students should use. I was handed books that was the standard and we didn’t have a choice. It was do that everyone was on the same page with the same books . What are the other schools using?
League City, TX…just 3.5 hours from Dell HQ in Round Rock, TX. Go figure.
Texas? Oh. Makes sense.
That was my first thought, too. Go flippin’ figure. As if their “La-la-la, I’m not listening” revisionist history books weren’t bad enough …
Its EAST TEXAS, folks.
Thats all you need to know about this bs.
You can all bury your heads in the sand, but the fact remains that the majority of students chose the Dell, and that should be worrisome.
Still, I’d like to see the questionnaire that the students evaluated the two options by, and would like to know who created it.
Well, the majority of “several students” to be accurate. I’d like to know the students’ names, but never will coz either:
A) don’t exist
B) would get the Texas kicked out of them in the bathroom
Probably get to their special school in a short bus too.
The students are quoted saying “it will prepare us for the work force”. They may as well use UPS tablets.
Double-digit IQ minimum required for most Any work force….
“It will prepare us for the workforce”
You just know that phrase came right out of the “Dell Sales Best Things to Say to High School Dropout Kids” Manuel.
Manual. You didn’t type this on a Dell Latitude did you? Just kidding. Sort of.
Maybe Manuel is the recruiter for Dell. He looks for high school kids dumb enough to use the Latitude and hires them.
And it will need parts 3 months later.
3 parts 3 months later to be precise! 🙂
p.s It is quite possible there was no iPad in the tablets offered for evaluation!
I think before I spend $900 on a Windows 8 tablet, I would have spent $999 on a MacBook Air.
Tap here to add fries to the order.
“A variety of tablets”
Who wants to bet that the iPad was not one of them?
Ding ding
Oh… Texas. What else is new?
I know! Damn Texas will let anybody in, http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239445/Apple_to_build_Macs_in_low_tax_Texas
Oops! What do we think of Texas now?
I know! Damn Texas will let anybody in, -Apple_to_build_Macs_in_low_tax_Texas
That is to take advantage of the cheap labour from all those current ex-students unable to get a job anywhere else but a production line!
I think Texas is great for low taxes and good for Apple.
Not as much for the school district methods.
That said, great state to those trashing it that never lived there.
The school district wanted to buy “made in Texas” and keep the parents who work for Dell employed and the IT department occupied.
The formerly non-existent IT departments in many school districts ended up being the highest annual budget once they switched from Macs back in the day (with an occasional Mac contractor for many school districts at the same time), to PCs – and developed an ever-increasing IT budget and established “kingdoms” within public school districts that know how to play politics.
Get “buy in” by kids that are given a choice of tablets or books. Do it “for the kids”.
I bet most of those kids already have access to iPads at home.
There will probably be a run-up in supplies for screen cleaners to reduce the finger oil, etc.
It’s Texas. Makes sense.
Very likely the students who can afford to will just bring their own iPads.
The point at which I stopped giving the benefit of the doubt was when it quoted the kids saying the Dell would better prepare them for the job market. What kid says that? And what would a kid know about the job market anyway? I think these were heavily subsidized and the kids were somehow conned into going along with Dell’s PR script.
“Several” students.
Wouldn’t anyone have said “hundreds” or even “several dozen” or THE ACTUAL NUMBER OR PERCENTAGE if they felt they could get away with it?
That, combined with Texanianism, suggests some kind of set-up.
They had to do it this way, the traditional way to keep Apple out is on unit price, but in this case iPad is cheaper so they used the old students found them easier to use. All participants were selected after reviewing their parents place of employment (Dell cough Dell).
Bosier reports, “Of all the tablets offered, the students preferred the Latitude 10 because of its ease of use and accessibility. Additionally, students specifically noted they felt the Latitude 10 would best prepare them for college and the work force.”
1) While student input would be helpful, no smart CTO would let the kids make a multi-million dollar technology decision. What he is doing is using them as a scape-goat for when it goes bad. “Well, that’s the STUDENTS said they wanted…..”
2) Since when have we allowed young students to best determine what would prepare them for the workforce or college? If we left those decisions in their hands, there would be no classes- just recess, lunch, nap time, and smoke breaks. Ok, I’m being snarky, but really, what educator would leave key decisions about a child’s education to the sole discretion of the child?
Bosier is either a figure head for someone else’s bad decision, or an idiot.
Not being snarky at all, just using possum sense. They are fooling no one but themselves.
These students will be prepared for the work force in Texas at the Dell plant if it still exists by the time they graduate.
East district of Texas?!? Isn’t that where all the patent trolls go to find friendly juries?
Bingo
The favored stomping grounds of patent trolls.
Blanco Cafe in old San Antonio.
Best Tex-Mex food In the world.
iPads welcome. 🙂
These kids are clearly psychics. They’re telling Microsoft and Dell what they want to hear: that they have a future with their OS and tablet and it’s bright. At the rate Microsoft is screwing up, and the rate at which corporations are NOT adopting Win8, these kids aren’t doing themselves any favors for the workforce that they might not get into anyway.
Apple, Macs don’t exist in TX. It’s all special effect like movies. Just like Dinosaurs, carbon dating the universe birth…it’s all special effects from Hollywood.
Just because I don’t believe this story all to well, i decided to do some research. I didn’t find any proof that said apple ipad was given to the students to play with…only that it was considered as an option when the school district was testing them out. But, lets just pretend they were available to play with.
“okay kids, we want you to go play with the tablets and come back and tell us what you think is good for business and ease of use.”
So the kids go and play with the tablets (which i could not find a full list of tablets they tested). When they come to an iPad, it is not connected to a keyboard, and probably doesn’t have a stand to rest upon either. When they come to a dell, it is equipped with a keyboard and a stand. Do you think the district made sure to have a keyboard set up with an iPad? I would venture to say no. Do you think a kid would come back to the staff and say the dell latitude is better for business and ease of use. I would venture to say yes, all because a keyboard was there.
But, at the end of the day latitude won. Now lets just hope there are a wide variety of educational apps and an ebook store with textbooks to help them with their educational needs !
“Judged on a number of factors”
What factors?
Also, “prepare them for the workplace”
This line was added to studies by our consulting firms back in the 90’s as a key factor for the presence of Word, Excel, Powerepoint on MS Windows computers.
It should no longer be an automatic requirement that “Windows” means “Office” and the prepare clause. The form factors today make this auto-checkbox irrelevant.
Therefore, based on what was said in this article, the study is invalid.
We have two almost-teenage girls of our own, and a seeming houseful of them and their friends on weekends . . . and NOT ONE OF THEM has even heard of this Dell “device.” When quiried on this subject, to a man (girl), they wanted iPads ONLY.
This Clear Creek ISD “experiment” is rigged, bogus, and clearly a hoax perpetrated upon the taxpayers of the district. We have NOT heard the last of this, I guarantee!
Yup. Even my wife, who inherited a used Android tablet, calls it her ‘iPad.’
clearly something in the water
This puts a whole new spin on why the dells were chosen:
http://www.ccisd.net/departments/communications/district-news/2013/06/17/ccisd-launches-latitude-to-learn
It wasn’t just the kids making the choice. IT doofuses strike again. Child abuse?
What will the school do when Dell drops the tablet in a year due to poor sales as they have done with every other consumer device?
Not to mention that Office on a tablet has not been an issue for most tablet purchases and it hasn’t help Microsoft to move the needle despite spending embarrassing amounts on advertising.
Seems very strange. Perhaps Apple should look into what went on. If true (which I doubt) then Apple could address whatever made these students prefer a Dell tablet over their product to ensure it remains competitive. If false, then Apple could expose the corruption.
Seriously, those students do NOT know what will be best for them in the job force.
If you want to start and stay at minimum wage or so, maybe a Dell is OK. MacBook Air is the next stop for a good college run and then a serious job.
awesome! we need more workers for taco bell and jack in the box!