Ondrej Holzman One secondary school in County Laois, Ireland, got into huge trouble when it decided to replace paper textbooks with HP ElitePad tablets this year. But the experiment did not succeed at all, and the school principal had to admit after a few weeks that "it is a complete disaster." Where did the mistake happen?
Students Mountrath Community School they were to experience big changes this year. Instead of classic paper textbooks, they bought HP ElitePad tablets with Windows 8, which were supposed to become their main school tool. A student spent 15 thousand crowns for one such tablet. Parents had the option to take the device on installments.
Everything looked good until the real load came, because the tablets from HP could not handle it. They refused to turn on for the students, or on the contrary turned off by themselves, and the failure of hardware components was no exception. All of this happened with the facility, which according to headmaster Margin Gleeson, underwent eighteen months of testing as the school searched for the ideal candidate.
But when he saw how the experiment with the ElitePad, which he described as "a device that is actually a computer in tablet form, and offers students a text editor and enough memory", turned out, he was not surprised. "The HP ElitePad turned out to be a total disaster," he wrote in an apologetic letter to parents, in which he promised to go back to paper textbooks at the school's expense.
The school will now solve the problem with HP representatives, but it is not at all clear when they will eventually return to electronic textbooks. After such a negative experience, it will be a very hot topic for her, the second such trouble cannot happen again.
There is no point in disbelieving Director Gleeson that there was months of testing of all possible products, as that is standard practice. Moreover, if in Mountrath Community School they tried different variants for only a year and a half, we can consider it a fast process. Typically, educational facilities are much more reserved and have been testing tablet deployments for several years to see how describing from his acquired experience Elia Freedman.
It starts with teachers who review available applications and evaluate whether an electronic aid will be beneficial. In the following year, the tablets will be deployed in a selected class, and if this experiment is evaluated as successful, the school will begin to raise funds to purchase more products to be able to distribute them throughout the school in the following year.
This is roughly what the application of tablets for teaching at individual schools might look like. Although Freedman describes the American school system, there is no reason to think that the issue of tablets in education is handled differently in Europe. After all, a Czech example is eloquent enough.
[do action=”citation”]Apple has all the prerequisites to dominate school institutions of all kinds with its tablets in a few years.[/do]
For HP and Microsoft, the Irish fiasco can mean a big blow at a time when educational institutions around the world are preparing in larger or smaller steps for the transition to so-called e-learning. Apple, on the other hand, can benefit from this, which pushes its iPad into school desks in a big way, for example by signing large contracts with individual institutions for more favorable supplies of Apple tablets.
This is also the reason why, even after the introduction of new iPads this year, he kept the two-and-a-half-year-old iPad 2 on offer. Many people shook their heads in disbelief, especially when the price of the iPad 2 remained at 10 crowns ($399), but as Freedman explains, this the device may no longer appeal to the average customer, but it is absolutely crucial for schools that it continues to be available. Apple is obviously very well aware of this.
If the school has been testing the use of an element that has not yet been tested in teaching for several years, it is not possible for the testing to take place with more than one device. The school management needs to be sure that what was started to be tested in the first year and the functionality and usefulness of the equipment was verified, will also get into the hands of the students. In order to avoid a similar scenario as in Ireland, all risks must be minimized as much as possible. Otherwise, there is a threat to the stability and continuity of the teaching itself, as well as financial problems.
Apple offers schools certainty with iPad 2. While it releases new generations for the masses year after year, it continues to send out older iPad 2s to schools, which are verified and the school can rely on XNUMX%. They have a huge lead over the competition in Cupertino in this as well. Not only in the endless supply of educational applications in the App Store, tools for creating textbooks and other aids for teachers and students.
At the moment, Apple has all the prerequisites to dominate school institutions of all kinds with its tablets in a few years. If a company does not appear on the market with a product that guarantees similar stability and reliability, it will be difficult to compete. Let the current case of Hewlett-Packard be a clear proof.
The argument with the schools still seems stupid to me. iPad4 is also a tried and tested device and for the money it will last much longer in schools with its performance. That just doesn't make sense. No one will tell me that Apple's gluttony is not the only factor. I'm not such a sheep to let this peek ;-)
It also seems like crap to me... but maybe he sells those iPads for schools for 6000 thousand :-) and only keeps it on the menu to show schools how cheap it would be if they signed up for 4 years and 100 tablets, for example :-)
Maybe if you weren't so blinded and paid a little attention to the issue, you would know that the school buys not only tablets, but also boxes for their storage, power supply and central synchronization. Such a box for 20 iPads costs about 60 thousand. The biggest problem is changing the connector after the iPad 2. Buying these boxes again, which are equipped with old connectors, is quite expensive. There is a need for these old iPads to be available for replacement when broken. You see it very much from the point of view of the end user.
Of course, Apple is doing it smartly because, like the other big players, it knows very well that if it gives an iPad 2, which it would hardly sell otherwise, to schools at a lower price, then sooner or later the students will run (through their parents) to the store for their own new iPad . Besides, most people are kind of lazy to learn new things and so the argument is, I'll buy an iPad because I won't have to learn again what to control and how to work. And they will also write their homework in Pages. Personally, I think that a large tablet with a stylus is better for a child - on the other hand, the most important thing is the teacher.
How to put it simply... tablets are at first glance an excellent and practical solution. However, it is quite expensive for any school anywhere in the world... buying a tablet is one thing, but hand in hand the infrastructure of the school must also be expanded, Wi-Fi connections must be increased, charging docks must be found, users must be trained.
And how long does such a tablet actually last for children? 2 years? Three? Four? This means at least two devices per pupil for primary school attendance and one for upper secondary school. But that also means running for 13 years on one platform... which I don't know, it all changes quite quickly these days.
Who will legally own the tablets? School? Parents? Pupils? Will they have to pay extra for it? Who will charge them? What if the student forgets it or forgets to charge it? Will the school have a substitute?
Well, this news is really funny :-) "Apple has all the prerequisites to dominate school institutions of all kinds with its tablets in a few years."
In my opinion, a more reasonable solution is a virtualized OS, or an application, accessible at school, for example, on a thin client and at home from any device via GW. For example. Citrix, products from MS, Parallels, vmware... something from open source would probably also be found. I'm so good at work and I don't care where I am, I have my desktop everywhere and I've gotten used to it. Of course, it requires professional installation.. which is the bane of almost everywhere..