“It’s midmorning and the faces of the students in Tim Wesmiller’s religious studies class are bathed in the baby-blue glow of their iPad screens,” Patrick May reports for SiliconValley.com.
“Faculty and students in this two-year iPad pilot project at Archbishop Mitty High School say this is the future of education,” May reports. “‘The richness and potential here is much greater than just e-books,’ Principal Tim Brosnan says. “The students have embraced the idea that learning happens not just in class but at home and anywhere else they can go online. The iPad’s not some magic pill, but seeing students collaborate on them seems to add more life to the learning process.”
May reports, “For the past two school years, Mitty’s pilot project has put Apple’s popular tablets in the hands of 250 students in 14 classes. Next fall the school will rent an iPad for all 1,680 students and 104 teachers, putting Mitty at the vanguard of a quickening trend toward digitalized education. ‘What’s coming this fall is huge, and I think you’ll see it happening in every school across the country in the next five years,’ Brosnan says. ‘It’s almost as if the iPad was the device we were all waiting for.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unfortunately for students and teachers, not all schools will go iPad. At some, ignorant, cloistered, and/or kickback-happy “decision makers” will instead opt for pretend iPads, dooming their students to inferior hardware, second-class (or worse or no equivalent) apps, security issues, and other problems. Schools that do not opt for iPads, like those who do not choose Macs, are doing a tremendous disservice to their students, teachers, and community.
Look at the private schools with top ratings: They almost always have Macs and, already, iPads.
If your child’s school, public or private, holds a meeting about buying “tablets” you should attend and voice your opinion that your students and teachers deserve the gold standard, Apple iPad, not some Chinese or Korean piece-of-crap iPad knockoff. All of the focus from quality e-textbook publishers and education app developers will be on iPad first.
Even today, some school’s computer labs still consist of a bunch of shitty Dells that are either broken and/or infested with malware because some clueless idiot blew it. Where were you when that horribly stupid decision was made? This time around, don’t fail your kids.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Madison, Wisconsin schools buy 1,400 Apple iPads – using Microsoft’s money – January 28, 2012
Colorado school goes all-Apple; iPads in classrooms spur student engagement to new heights – January 24, 2012
Student math scores jump 20% with Apple iPad; transforms classroom education – January 20, 2012
Apple reinvents textbooks with iBooks 2 for iPad – January 19, 2012
Schools expect iPads to outnumber personal computers in next five years – October 31, 2011
OSU study finds Apple’s powerful iPad decreases expenses, increases productivity – May 3, 2011
Growing number of U.S. schools embrace Apple’s revolutionary iPad as learning tool – January 4, 2011
Rising generation of iKids slipping Apple iPads instead of books into school backpacks – December 14, 2010
Steve Jobs met Obama to talk education, energy, job creation – October 22, 2010
Apple’s revolutionary iPad dramatically helps Illinois autistic students – October 15, 2010
University of Leeds gives medical students textbooks on Apple iPhones – September 29, 2010
N.J. schools explore using Apple iPads as teaching devices – September 22, 2010
Students in four California school districts trade textbooks for Apple iPads – September 09, 2010
Scottish school becomes first ‘iSchool’ where Apple’s revolutionary iPad replaces pencil and paper – August 31, 2010
Back to school personal computer sales slow except for Apple’s Mac – August 11, 2010
Incoming UC Irvine medical students to receive Apple iPads – August 06, 2010
New Hampshire school giving Apple iPads to incoming freshmen – June 15, 2010
iPad takes off as flight school teaching tool – May 12, 2010
California’s Monte Vista Christian School first to use Apple iPads in classroom – April 21, 2010
Seton Hill University to give new Apple MacBooks and iPads to every full-time student in fall 2010 – March 30, 2010
Kodiak Alaska school district to bid on upgrading to Apple MacBooks, iPads – March 24, 2010
Apple offering discounted iPad 10-packs for education – March 22, 2010
KeyBookshop has over 18,000 educational e-books ready and waiting for Apple’s iPad – March 16, 2010
Tupelo, Mississippi schools get 5,000 Apple MacBooks – October 29, 2009
Greater Atlanta Christian Schools to equip 1,200 students with new Apple MacBooks – October 29, 2009
Maine expands Apple MacBook program to high schools; 71,000 MacBook order is largest of its kind – June 30, 2009
I could see some schools getting knock off tablets… What a disaster that would be.
“We got tablets and saved some money”. “What do you mean there’s nothing to do on them?”
Maybe they be a good purchase for business and design schools, as an example of what not to do.
It happened at the college where my wife teaches. The Education department got 20 Scamdungs in a partnership with Verizon. I.e. the hardware was free, the students will be paying for data usage. Verizon actually has a “K-12 education solutions department” that came out and taught grad students how to use the tablets. (My wife is not in the Ed department, fortunately.)
Of course being the Education department, everything has to be called by a fancy name; a tablet is not a tablet, it’s a “mobile learning device (MLD)”. Then they are going to use them in cooperation with a local school. Only the Verizon coverage map indicates there is no coverage in the area of the school.
They are intended to replace the books used in teaching the course “”Literature Materials and Technology in Literature”.
This is from the folks who teach your kid’s teachers!
Be afraid for your children. Be very afraid.
iPads are fantastic in class – I’ve used them since the first one came out. BUT when there are schools starved for desks and paper — remember the teacher who sold advertising space on his tests so he could afford to buy paper for them? — iPads will be another point in the divide showing educational inequity. We need to fundamentally change our school funding system so that every student can have access to iPads, current e-textbooks, good teachers, and a chance.
Vouchers. Break the stranglehold that unions have on public education by creating a competitive environment. As Steve Jobs himself suggested:
No. Vouchers are a way to end public education and exacerbate the inequality divide; vouchers let those with enough income draw support away from problem schools, making them even worse, isolating the poor and keeping their children contained. If the unions had such a stranglehold on education, then why are the 5 states outlawing public-employee unions at the bottom? (VA: 34th SAT with 67% participation; TX: 45th SAT with 53% participation; GA: 48th SAT with 74% participation; NC: 38th SAT with 63% participation; SC 49th on the SAT with 66% participation).
Steve was brilliant in so many things, but that doesn’t make him an expert in education.
F**k the children!
Ah, George. We miss ya…
Nice! And start keeping score in their baseball/soccer games again (and any other sport parents force them to do).
Vouchers are a bad idea all around, they tried doing it in FL and I can tell you it was bad from both sides. I took money out of the public system and the private schools were being required to accept students for the amount of the voucher which in most cases was less than the normal tuition, decreasing the money per student. Also too many people have been drinking the coolaid in regards to teacher unions. I worked for a school district and I can tell you that the teachers where still overworked and under paid. The union would not stop a bad teacher from being fired but it would stop the knee jerk firing without looking into the cause. Things like oh students aren’t performing as well with you this year I am sure it has nothing to do the the district not fixing the AC in your room and it being 115 degrees let fire the teacher.
JeHessss! Vouchers! – to start to eliminate the teachers’ unions.
Unions – a great leveler – towards mediocrity.
Interesting. All the strength of the US -and the West in general- came during the time of strong unions. When the anti-union movement is the strongest, the West’s supremacy seems to be at it’s weakest. Funny, that!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. the same people can’t get enough rich cock up their backsides are outraged that workers unite to get a living wage. The irony that the lunatic right wing tea party fucktards are financed by oil billionaires to agitate for tax breaks that only help the rich is sad commentary on the US political situation.
You seem to be talking about vouchers towards tuition costs which would be used for private and religious schools not just public schools.
Perhaps if this voucher is used for certain types of textbooks, for all students, it might be plausible to appease everyone.
I am friends with a school board member, I always forward him these type of articles.
Well, I hope he stops at the end of the article and doesn’t waste his time reading all of these dumbass comments.
Now what would be the fun in that?
I think Jax might be smart enough to forward the original article, and not the MDN article.
Quite so.
Giving students iPads – or any other one-to-one computing device – won’t mean a thing unless the district is completely changing its teaching methods from the old industrial paradigm to the coming customized learning paradigm. Anyone interested in what education will soon be should read “Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning” by Schwann and McGarvey. It will open your eyes to the real potential that the iPad will offer.
Speaking of educational paradigms, see this manifesto for Seth Godin, “Stop Stealing Dreams – What is School For?”
http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams
It’s free, and it’s online and easy to share. Share it
Ya that’s my school, we’re getting iPads next year it’s amazing!
It will still come down to how well the individual teachers use the iPad or any other technology.
And speaking as a former teacher: if the parents haven’t done a good job raising the kid in the first 5 years of life, there is absolutely NO WAY that the teachers can do anything to change some of them. If the parents don’t do it with one kid, how can a teacher be expected to act as surrogate parents to 30! Especially when the parent teaches the 2nd grader the f-word because the they think its cute.
OH Yes, it does happen FAR more frequently than you might think.
RE; unions, teacher or otherwise. They have their place, but when the union reps are elected by popularity contest, what you may have created is a particularly nasty unqualified layer of management. Sorry, that is my experience.
Hey, Walter Mitty went ecclesiastical?