Ondrej Holzman Deploying computers and especially tablets in education is a great attraction and at the same time a trend of recent years, and we can expect that in the future, technology will appear in desks more and more often. In the American state of Maine, however, they have now perfectly demonstrated how iPads should not be used in schools.
They are going to carry out a rather unconventional exchange at several elementary schools in the American state of Maine, where in the upper classes they will replace the previously used iPads with more traditional MacBooks. Students and teachers at the school in Auburn prefer laptops to tablets.
Almost three-quarters of students between the ages of 13 and 18, as well as almost 90 percent of teachers, said in the survey that they would rather use a classic computer than a tablet.
"I thought iPads were clearly the right choice," said the school's director of technology, Peter Robinson, whose decision to deploy iPads was primarily driven by the success of Apple's tablets in the lower grades. In the end, however, he discovered that iPads have shortcomings for older students.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]"The use of iPads could have been better if there was more push for teacher education."[/su_pullquote]
The exchange option was offered to schools in Maine by Apple itself, which is willing to take back iPads and send MacBook Airs to classrooms instead, at no additional charge. In this way, the exchange will not represent any additional costs for the schools and will thus be able to satisfy dissatisfied teachers and students.
However, the whole case perfectly depicts a completely different problem regarding the deployment of computers and tablets in schools, namely that it will never work without proper preparation of all parties. "We underestimated how different an iPad is from a laptop," admitted Mike Muir, who deals with the connection of education and technology in Maine.
According to Muir, laptops are better for coding or programming and overall offer more options to students than tablets, but no one disputes that. The most important part of Muir's message was when he admitted that "student use of iPads could have been better if the Maine Department of Education had pushed harder on teacher education."
There is a dog buried in it. It is one thing to put iPads in the classroom, but another, and also absolutely essential, is for teachers to be able to work with them, not only at the basic level of controlling the device as such, but above all to be able to use it effectively for teaching.
In the aforementioned poll, for example, one teacher stated that he does not see any educational use in the iPad in the classroom, that students mainly use the tablets for gaming and that working with text is practically impossible on them. Another teacher described the deployment of iPads as a disaster. Nothing like this could happen if someone showed teachers how efficient and most of all effective the iPad can be for students.
There are many cases in the world where iPads are widely used in teaching and everything works to the benefit of everyone, students and teachers alike. But it is always largely due to the fact that the teachers themselves, or the school management, are actively interested in the use of iPads (or in general various technological conveniences).
If someone at the table decides to implement iPads in schools across the board without providing the necessary training and education about why it makes sense and how iPads can improve education, such an experiment is bound to fail, just like what happened in Maine .
Auburn schools are certainly not the first, nor the last, case where the deployment of iPads does not go quite as planned. However, this is definitely not good news for Apple, which has a significant focus on the field of education and most recently in iOS 9.3 showed, what is he planning for his iPads for the next school year.
At least in Maine, the Californian company was able to find a compromise and instead of iPads, it will put its own MacBooks in schools. But there are more and more schools in the United States that are already heading straight for the competition, namely Chromebooks. They represent a very affordable alternative to Apple computers and often win when the school decides on a laptop rather than a tablet.
Already at the end of 2014, it became clear how big a battle is going on in this field, when Chromebooks are brought to schools it sold more than iPads for the first time, and in the last quarter of this year, according to IDC, Chromebooks even beat Macs in sales in the United States. As a result, significant competition is growing for Apple not only in education, but it is precisely through the educational sphere that it can exert a great influence on the rest of the market as well.
If it can prove that the iPad is a suitable tool that will be used effectively by both teachers and students, it can potentially win many new customers. However, if hundreds of students return their iPads in disgust because they didn't work for them, it's hard for them to buy such a product at home. But the whole problem is not primarily about weaker sales of Apple products, of course. The most important thing is that the entire education system and all those involved in education keep up with the times. Then it can work.
The iPad is good for children in elementary school or kindergarten for interactive study.
At university, it is used more in the way that I carry the electronic version of the script in it, but it is not very suitable for notes.
The Chromebook R11, which has a hw keyboard and a flip-up touchscreen, can do both, an excellent convertible.
I think that the problem with the notes is gone with the ipad pro. with a pen you can write primo in electronic scripts. with the keyboard in the smartcover, it's easy even for long essays. I think only the applications and educational programs are holding it back. but I understand that it is not enough. for programming a really educational app, a person will not get such a package as for a stupid jump-start filled with advertisements. because the world is turning upside down.
iPad Pro with Pencil and keyboard in a smart cover is financially out of reach for students, and this device is impractical in many ways. Just copying texts is a big pain. Cheap, small iPad Mini for kids ok, I don't understand the "Pro" in its current form. Macbook12 is completely different.
In his last vlog, Vláďa Janeček talked about the very keyboard for the iPad Pro as a madness that he would tear apart in a review, even if it had been presented years ago by Logitech, which he says would never have allowed himself to put such a thing on the market.
I used an iPad at university 3 years ago with complete satisfaction. The keyboard is a piece of crap. It's just a habit. I was glad that I didn't have to drag monsters like my colleagues had to. In addition, the ability to write and record the lecture at the same time worked beautifully.
As I have commented on this article elsewhere on the server, to say that students only play games on it and therefore it is for children is really just a joke. Games can be played on everything.
Even an Asus netbook from the year of the king of the stick was able to write and record the lecture at the same time.
By the way, he managed even an old Compaq iPaq in 2002 with an external keyboard.
The iPad is suitable for studying for children in kindergarten and elementary school because it is the most suitable for this purpose, it has simple controls and there are many interactive teaching materials for children of preschool age and primary school, this is the biggest advantage of the simpler and considerably less user-friendly iOS.
Well, of course, and that's the correct answer to the fact that I used it to my satisfaction at university and was glad that I didn't have to pull the strings for the king of the stick, who were also able to record the lecture, but when playing it, I could barely understand every third word, let alone still handle handwriting despite video recording.
I have never had the slightest problem with the recording quality.
However, recording the lectures would not have much effect for them, although it is true that some weaker students did it and it worked for them even on the old Asus Eee that was the most common when I was a student at the university.
iPads didn't come until a few years later, when I was in engineering school, almost everyone in the circle had one, although some still relied on the Asus Eee. The iPad is more limited compared to the netbook and is not so suitable for notes, and no one has ever written on it. The iPad proved to be useful for my scripts and textbooks, it lightened the weight of my bag. The target group of the iPad in education is still kindergartens and elementary schools, which is why so many teaching materials are created in iBook author for preschool and elementary school children.
A college student just needs to open a PDF or .doc, both of which I successfully used back in high school on my first HTC Wallaby, it was able to record audio files in high quality, even ICQ, web, games, mp3, video files, ftp, and much more, at that time, the first generation iPhone didn't even exist.
I would argue about the quality because I have a comparison.
Yes, it is definitely good for teaching, especially for smaller ones. The older ones mainly only need the notes and I didn't have the slightest problem with writing. On the other hand, the silent touch keyboard suits me. And I don't need a laptop for these things. And the iPad always lasted a long time on the battery, so there was no need to worry about recharging or who would be where at the outlet.
The only problem was when someone came with a flash drive and wanted to record something :), but that was solved by sending it over the Internet.
And I thought that when someone wants to implement something like this in schools, that they have thought it through properly and at least they have done research or been trained in what is and is not possible... competition :-(
I don't know about Maine but I think it's the same in our area, when I was in high school I showed my biology teacher EO Wilson's Life on earth textbook, she was as excited as I was. I showed her iBooks author, where she could create her own textbook (including accompanying pictures and diagrams), which we all unnecessarily copied from the blackboard to the notebook every hour (her concept of notes and teaching was perfect!), instead of discussing the issue and the teaching itself. The problem, of course, was that the school had desktops with Windows. which cost a lot of money and someone greased their pockets and in reality were only suitable for computer science or working with office packages. It's the same at university, you sometimes at least have a skip, but you still have to copy it from lectures like an idiot instead of focusing on the material itself. In conclusion, if teachers do not actively use it themselves and are not enabled or supported in it, it will not work.
There is a theory according to which one learns by copying :-) But I agree with you. The quality of teaching is mainly determined by the quality of the teacher.
As part of the continuous education of teaching staff, we have been working for a long time with teachers throughout the Czech Republic who are learning to work with iPads in teaching. It is the only way to effectively use any technology and to implement its widespread use.