Apple Tries to Win Back Students and Teachers with Low-Cost iPad
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
At least with a Chromebook, there is a gate that you can open if you want. The Crouton project allows anyone to install a full OS. The best part is that if it gets broken, there is no danger or punishment. Just reset and everything is back to default and your files come back. Get good at it and then it is probably time for a real computer...
Some schools also avoid Apple and instead use recycled/repurposed computers that can run as a Linux or Windows thin client.
Edit: wording
In our case we were 3 weeks at sea with only email access.
Initially our school district planned iPads, but backtracked over cost. We were initially excited for them, so that our kids wouldn't have to carry so many heavy textbooks. But the quality of the textbooks on the Chromebook are terrible. It's as if the publishers simply took galley proofs and dumped them into a pdf.
Would you expect the textbooks to be better quality on the iPads vs on the Chromebooks? Why?
Back when I was in school, I was getting some of the textbooks second hand from the year older students and selling mine to the younger ones, on a fair organized by the school.
That being said you have to understand what chromeOS is and isn't.
When I started at that position, the school district (~5k students) was nearly 100% Apple. Nearly every device was the low-cost polycarb Macbook. The district purchased them with a heavy investment from "Classrooms for the Future" program, which covered a large portion of the cost.
Since that time, Apple retired the less expensive model and (same as they still are) trying to position the iPad as a replacement.
Here's the problem though: Students are never going to be effective at long-term use on a tablet. Can you imagine writing a grade 12 level book report on a touch screen? Budget-wise, the district would only be able to purchase the iPads, a case, and that's all. Bluetooth keyboards would not be able to fit in the budget.
Compared, feature for feature, and price- Chromebooks and other traditional low-cost laptops are much more effective to the success of getting technology into students' hands.
In fact, they currently run one of the largest 1-to-1 Linux laptop deployments in the eastern US: https://technology.pennmanor.net/11-laptop-program/
What is Tim Cook's vision for education? Nobody fucking knows. One year Apple is trying to sell iPads claiming it's "whole new kind of computer" then a few months later they are wondering "what's a computer". Without a compelling vision the iPad will continue to flounder.
p.s. I want a 7.9" iPad Pro
[1] there is no open source .txt equivalent for hand written notes. We'll need one if OneNote/Apple Notes ever takes off
'The Apple'? Apple is the name of the company, not any particular product or feature. What do you mean it should be compatible with all iPads?
- I initially liked the experience of writing on glass - its fast and the responsive but quality seriously suffers - letter roundness and stroke subtlety is lost to become spider-scrawl. This meant that reading it back later became a deeply unpleasant and difficult experience reducing the value of writing anything at all. I committed to it and it didn't seem to be a technique issue but a combination of the zero friction pen/screen interaction and how strokes are recorded and rendered. The one thing I did not try was a screen protector to add more friction.
- electronic store of handwriting did not not prove useful. It became a worse experience than flicking through loose leaf paper which you can layout, rearrange, pin up etc. There is no handwriting recognition or anything to add value like searching. If I ever wanted to make ink digital, I could take a photo in 2 seconds.
- There is something psychological and so special about ink, paper, flow experience. When you write with ink, you make a mark on the world. The experience and art is lost on a screen. Its also pretty weird when the screen gets hot and it increases the time you are staring closely at a screen which is more fatiguing than taking a break to stare at paper.
- IOS is just a bad productivity platform - copy text out of a webpage/ebook into notes? Ugh. Get a pdf onto the iPad. Ugh. It hobbles the user at every turn. Delight turns into impotent rage at anti-user design decisions to keep you buying media from Apple. I found I either wanted real text notes and all the high quality text tooling I am used to on a laptop or the real pen and ink experience for the flow and flexibility.
A week later, I returned the 12" pro and pencil - the initial wow-factor turned into loathing. Its worse than the cheapest pen and paper.
With traditional pen/paper, it leaves your computer fully available for research, videos, or quick references without having to switch around. Great products overall, but the experience is still lacking in that regard.
The current Air is larger for no particular reason and has a lower res display, so it's obviously the budget version.
I use an iPad Pro to grade math homework for my online students. I wish they all had iPad Pros (or Surface Pros) but I can’t force them to buy an iPad for one class. It would be nice if the college required their usage but there aren’t enough compelling reasons to do so at this time. I’m skeptical that there will be enough after Tuesday’s event.
The feature is not just on the Pixel book. It's also in the $400 Samsung Chromebook Plus or Asus Chromebook Flip.
The 'regular' iPad (and presumably this cheaper iPad) do not support the Apple Pencil. There are Chromebooks with wacom pen support e.g. Samsung's Chromebook Plus/Pro [1]. Those Chromebooks start at $499. The iPad Pro starts at $649 (+$100 for the Apple Pencil).
[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/all-chromeb...
When the iBooks development software came out I was excited. I create my own materials for my college math courses and I wanted to write a book. But iBooks is only on Apple devices so why would I spend time creating materials for iBook? Apple needs to open up some of their stuff if they want a wider adoption in education.
You do know they have the ability to keep notes, right?
It's not one or the other, even in the classroom. Computers didn't kill handwriting or print, and latter don't hinder the use of computers. They all complement each other.
Useless tangent: In my experience (= K-12 + 10 years at universities) the best way to lock things in ones head is to take quick handwritten notes and then reread, correct, and enter them as notes on one's computer.
It's still doable to only have a laptop and use that for everything, if not practical or quick enough in many cases. Pen and paper is nice to have, but it's not 100% required.
But you can certainly teach programming with pencil and paper. Some of the most influential programmers in history of computer science did not do their work on physical computers or used (now) esoteric methods like punch-cards as input. Several of my university CS classes were all pencil and paper, especially midterms and exams.
Even if you get a physical keyboard, are there any mature apps for writing and executing code on the device?
It seems that we need to build mature apps for writing on device.
Yes, yes, I know, Swift Playgrounds. Not convinced.
The closest I’ve come to a Chromebook is when Google offered our company one if we evaluated GCP.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10884918/i-bought-my-mom-a...
Hearing him complain was reminiscent of using Linux in the early 2000s. No one really wrote consumer applications for Linux at the time, and driver support was a nightmare. Once you figured out all the warts and quirk, it was fine.
This was 3+ years ago though, so I imagine things have improved in that space.
In my case I'm using it in the context of a master's degree, and it's more than enough. I use Google colab for assignments and sharelatex for any reports I have to write. It works quite well and the battery life is amazing. I also don't care if it gets stolen.