“If you’re going to charge more, you have to offer more. Apple wants to promote a vision of engaged, creative education in American schools,” Sascha Segan writes for PC Magazine. “Our schools just aren’t ready for it.”
“Apple doesn’t want to compete with Google’s Chromebooks on price. Its $299 iPads are really at least $450 when you include a keyboard case and stylus,” Segan writes. “To reverse Google’s takeover of the education market, Apple will have to sell America’s struggling, underfunded schools on its vision of a more creative education.”
“Chromebooks are very good at filling out forms, searching the web, and running quizzes,” Segan writes. “Apple’s kind of creative learning keeps kids compelled, and teaches a much broader range of thinking than writing reports and filling out web forms. Because it isn’t always teaching to a test, it doesn’t always result in higher scores on the specific, bubble-form standardized tests we use to measure progress. Rather, it encourages problem-solving, adaptation, and flexible learning skills.”
“These skills will be critically important in the 21st century job market,” Segan writes. “Unfortunately, the American school system is about delivering the best possible standardized test scores for the lowest possible budget. Yes, there are creative and bravely entrepreneurial schools out there, mostly expensive private schools or schools in well-off suburbs. In those places, teachers have freedom and schools have budgets. Many of them probably already have iPads.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup. As we wrote earlier today, “Children educated Apple’s way have a better chance of being hired than those “educated” Google’s way. Plus, they get to keep their privacy, which is a nice bonus.”
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. — MacDailyNews, March 27, 2018
[protected-iframe id=”e5038aa30364141a776f8a143e8c41b1-17146794-18685410″ info=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/110691305″ width=”570″ height=”321″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen=”” mozallowfullscreen=”” allowfullscreen=””]
SEE ALSO:
Apple banks on creative learning to convince schools that iPads are better than Chromebooks – March 28, 2018
New iPad’s enemy isn’t just Chromebooks, it’s the U.S. public education system – March 28, 2018
Logitech’s Rugged Combo 2 keyboard and case for Apple’s iPad has its own smart connector – March 28, 2018
Apple’s new 9.7-inch iPad offers 2GB of RAM, 2.2 GHz A10 processor – March 28, 2018
How Apple lost its place in the classroom – March 28, 2018
Apple bids for education market with new software, new iPad – March 27, 2018
Apple takes aim at Google Chromebook with $299 iPad with Apple Pencil support for schools – March 27, 2018
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
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Every junior high and high school student in the Arlington, VA public school system are provided with a MacBook for school and home use. All elementary schools students have an iPad. Of course, Arlington is a very wealthy DC suburb. The school facilities, programs, and technology reflect the investment.
https://twitter.com/StayPuftZombie/status/979081056300208129
https://twitter.com/StayPuftZombie/status/979064400740003843
“Or make a cheap touchscreen Mac that runs iPad apps.”
That one.
Education. Apple’s pipe dream. Wouldn’t the Apple investors just love it if Apple could really make it true.
Many in Silicon Valley are restricting or banning screen time for their kids. Wonder why?
The couple has devised a strategy to help them stick to their policy. When the two of them get home from work, they each put their phone by the door. On most nights, they’ll check the phones just once or twice before they go to bed, Boissiere said. Sometimes she’ll break the rule, but more than once her kids have entered the room while she’s mid-text, sending their mom fleeing into the nearest bathroom.
Around 10:30 p.m., Boissiere and her husband get in bed and end the day with an episode of “Black Mirror” on their laptop: a dose of morbid reassurance that the anti-tech approach is for the best.
“Low-tech parenting has been a quiet staple among Silicon Valley moguls for years.
Silicon Valley’s low- and anti-tech parents may seem overly cautious, but they actually follow longstanding practices of former and current tech giants like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Tim Cook.
In 2007, Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, implemented a cap on screen time when his daughter started developing an unhealthy attachment to a video game. Later it became family policy not to allow kids to have their own phones until they turned 14. Today, the average American child get their first phone around age 10.
Jobs, the CEO of Apple until his death in 2012, revealed in a 2011 New York Times interview that he prohibited his kids from using the newly-released iPad. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home,” Jobs told reporter Nick Bilton.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-parents-raising-their-kids-tech-free-red-flag-2018-2?r=UK&IR=T
If the well educated and well connected are raising their kids without tablets and computers, why would you want your kids to be? Young developing minds need books, puzzles, paper, crayons and pens- not an iPad.
I would agree with you on limiting screen time, replacing it more ‘hands-on’ manipulative toys whether it be books, writing material, or even ‘smart’ toys like blocks that interact with each other depending on what combination in which you connect them. Experimenting with electronic kits are also fun.
Apple may promote creative learning but it seems in opposition to Trump’s current aim to make manufacturing jobs more prevalent again.
DG, you forgot to add “paper books” to the last line of your note.
Tim Cook has kids!
I worked for Apple education for almost 20 years. Apple’s passion for education died when Steve did. Within a month after Steve’s passing, Phil “a*hole” Schiller decimated the education division to continue building his feifdom and within a year, 70% of the Apple education employees left the company. This latest stab at education is a joke. iPads are a horror to manage in a mass-deployment setting (they are great for individuals, I love mine) but try deploying hundreds or thousands of them to students….an absolute nightmare. Apple is GREAT as an individual, personal user….but that is not practical in a school. MDN never considers this when writing their sassy responses. Only after you have tried managing many, many Apple products will you understand. I still use Apple Macs and iPads personally but cannot in good conscious recommend their shoddy mass-deployment tactics.
Cook is a typical, although highly wealthy, West Coast gay liberal in that music (Beats), movies (hiring producers for Apple shows), fashion (Angela), books (Ive), architecture (door knobs, et al.) are ALL fun shiny celebrity bling things he cares deeply about.
What he does not care deeply about is rolling up his sleeves, digging deep and sweating dirty details on any products outside these areas that seem more of a distraction and off his prissy radar.
He would rather fly on a private jet to Paris and stroll the red carpet sipping fine wine wearing the coolest Apple Watch over visiting the backwoods of his rural home state to meet down to earth people and drive a tractor, change a truck tire or milk the cows. Just like elitist Hillary in that detached regard. OK, fine.
But that only adds to his neglect of the hard things of figuring out how to build, maintain commitment to software, upgrades to equipment, support for education and all things that BUILT the foundation of Apple.
We need a CEO that can do all these things and do them well. As the education event proves, just shaving $30 off another little less pricey product he and the rest of Apple just does not get educational needs in today’s economy. They may have the adoring cosmopolitan press on their side, but at the same time are clueless to cash strapped schools from the inner cities to the heartland.
The Chicago event was just a big show (hey look here we’re doing something, FINALLY) and will change little sadly, is my guess. Hope I’m wrong.
Another area I won’t even get into is Mac neglect …
My impression of his show was that the stuff was good but still too pricey to cause a big market shift. That little man Cook always seems to have his eye on the margins, the ASP, any metrics that would impress market analysts and traders, and improve his company’s standing with institutional investors. Steve would have ignored all that and thought bigger — boldly taking over the market with not only innovation but drastically competitive pricing, as he did in 2010 with iPad. That advantage held for a few years but faded after Steve departed and management became “distracted” as you put it. The only reason we are seeing an education show now is that Apple woke up from their iPhone delirium, smelled declining profits, and remembered that young people tend to continue their choice of platforms into adulthood. I am angry that Apple allowed Google to define the next generation of computer users as compliant, privacy-indifferent fodder for data mining. Apple sit on a high horse, moralising about social responsibility, all the while protecting their profitability — when they could have put their money where their mouth is by offering loss-leading products to education, the only way to counteract the free stuff that Google offered.. the 21st-century version of the Trojan Horse.
Agree, still too pricey and doubt it will move the needle much.
“That little man Cook always seems to have his eye on the margins, the ASP, any metrics that would impress market analysts and traders, and improve his company’s standing with institutional investors.”
Yes, you added the final component of distractions that preoccupies Cook and Steve would have none of it, including playing politics and SJW Warrior.
“The only reason we are seeing an education show now is that Apple woke up from their iPhone delirium, smelled declining profits, and remembered that young people tend to continue their choice of platforms into adulthood. I am angry that Apple allowed Google to define the next generation of computer users as compliant, privacy-indifferent fodder for data mining. Apple sit on a high horse, moralising about social responsibility, all the while protecting their profitability — when they could have put their money where their mouth is by offering loss-leading products to education, the only way to counteract the free stuff that Google offered.”
Grande Amen! No one has said it better than you. They moralize on one hand and bow to profits and Wall Street with the other hand. The company has simply lost its soul …
We are entering a digital dark age where people carry supercomputers in their pockets while their vocabulary continues to shrink. Many believe the Moon landings fifty years ago were an elaborate hoax, their rationale is that we cannot do those things today, so how could they possible have occurred in the past?
Really, MDN?
“an IQ test writ large”
Most of these school districts that choose Chromebooks are doing it because they are poor, not because they are stupid.
Equating wealth with intelligence causes disasters: while intelligence may help a smart poor person become rich, or a stupid rich person become poor, people generally stay in the economic bracket in which they were born.
Choosing Apple products is more a test of “how rich are the people who pay property taxes in this school district?” than it is of “how smart are the school administrators?”
Rich school districts who purchase non-Apple products arguably also prove my point: being rich doesn’t prove you’re smart. 😉
At least the ‘stupid’ rich districts are smarter than districts of poor schools that buy Apple products to fulfill their 1:1 mandate and don’t have the budget to replace units when some break (or stolen from students) part-way through the year.
Most excellent post and agree with every word. You not only exposed a rare elitist short sighted MDN post, you covered all the real life scenarios, both rich and poor … 👍🏻
“…$299 iPads are really at least $450 when you include a keyboard case and stylus,” Segan writes.
This is old-school thinking. The keyboard and stylus are for grown-ups who can’t imagine how to get by without them. The kids are alright, if you ask me, and that’s who this is for.
Ape have failed to make the business case for the iPad.
And I can’t be fagged to fix the first word typo in this comment on myiPad with. Y clumsy finger pointer device. Or the other two…
This pretty much sums it up:
https://9to5mac.com/2018/03/28/making-the-grade-why-apples-education-strategy-is-not-based-on-reality/
A couple of his arguments are specious at best, like if only Apple became a book publisher, all would be fine (paraphrasing).
But the two main arguments persist:
1. The CIO/CTOs’ needs take priority over that of educating our children
2. The cost and curriculum structures are overwhelming- cheaper wins, and the curriculum is what it is, whether we think it’s good or not.
Welcome to 1995
The have’s move forward, the have not’s settle with Google or Microsoft. In short.
Elitist economic racism, no thanks …
But when you apply to college and haven’t used or learned anything in K-12, then what? Get a do over.
You have a point about the failing education system in the U.S. Stats show year after year we spend twice as much as the other G8 nations and we get the lowest test scores. Hmmm, who to blame for wasted taxpayer dollars …