“Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined the company’s education efforts with a $299 iPad for schools and more software to manage the classroom, teacher and student experiences,” Larry Dignan, Ross Rubin, and Jason Cipriani write for ZDNet. “Apple is going after the education market in a way that resembles how it appeals to creative pros with an emphasis on the company’s app ecosystem.”
“The big question is whether Apple can close its Google gap in education due to Chromebooks and Google Classroom,” Dignan, Rubin, and Cipriani write. “Apple’s plan revolves around a new 9.7-inch iPad that will support Apple Pencil and likely compete with its own iPad Pro. The new iPad will have updates to Pages, Numbers and Keynote to support Apple Pencil and annotations.”
MacDailyNews Take: It won’t compete with iPad Pro as soon as the new iPad Pro models with TrueDepth cameras and faster Apple A11X SoCs arrive.
“Apple also touted management features for the iPad. Apple School Manager was also introduced to manage apps, Apple ID setup for students, account sharing and bulk accounts,” Dignan, Rubin, and Cipriani write. “The company also noted that its Classroom software is coming to the Mac and available as a beta in June. Another app is called Schoolwork so teachers can connect with students. Schoolwork will allow teachers to assign an app and an activity within that software to see how an individual student is performing. A new API in ClassKit will connnect applications to Schoolwork.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As usual, it’s an IQ test writ large. The best-managed schools will have Macs and iPads and the lesser, poorly-managed schools will make bad decisions like settling for cheap test-taking machines and consigning their students and teachers to inferior educational experiences.
SEE ALSO:
Did Apple do enough to grab back education market share? – March 27, 2018
Apple unveils new 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support starting at $329 – March 27, 2018
Apple unveils ‘Everyone Can Create’ curriculum – March 27, 2018
Apple’s iWork update brings drawing, book creation and more to Pages, Numbers and Keynote – March 27, 2018
MacDailyNews presents live coverage of Apple’s March 27th ‘Field Trip’ event – March 27, 2018
Google’s Chromebooks are still spying on grade school students – April 21, 2017
Newsflash: Apple sells premium products at premium prices to premium customers – October 23, 2012
This is what I wrote the other day:
“My wife has a masters in education so i’ve an idea of some of the issues teachers find important with tech in schools. Teachers have said clearly they wanted control (some kind of admin hub) , multiple user ability for each device, keyboards as most assignments have lots of writing (and in not in pieces like attached keyboards which are hard to maintain) and cost.”
This is what Apple came up with today :
“Apple also touted management features for the iPad. Apple School Manager was also introduced to manage apps, Apple ID setup for students, account sharing and bulk accounts” and $299.
It has taken a while but Apple has covered some of the bases.
Now we’ll wait and see the reaction.
A step in the right direction but not sure if the pricing is still affordable enough after adding on a keyboard to ‘match’ a Chromebook let alone adding an Apple Pencil to the package. The boost from 5GB to 200GB (I’m assuming per student) of iCloud storage is a good perk too.
The most important thing is the ease of lesson creation and capability to teach them to code those lessons. The ultimate glue is accumulation is courses that support online books that are well designed to teach all kinds of classes.
$299 iPad w Education Discount
+
$99 Logitech Keyboard case
+
$49 Logitech crayon
=
$447
$233.10 (Amazon) ASUS Chromebook C202SA-YS02 11.6″ + G Suite Subscription
Ruggedized model with reinforced rubber guards, easy grip handles, and a spill resistant keyboard.
So the iPad is just shy of twice as expensive when equipped as Apple is marketing it.