One of the key advantages an iPad has over other devices, such as Chromebooks, is it's portability.
There is a 3rd through 5th grade school in my town where each student has an iPad -- and no text books. The students use the iPads for content AND productivity. For example, a class will go on a field trip with their iPads, do research, photograph, video, sketch, and create reports on the go. Try that with a Chromebook.
Many of the teachers at this school have pre-service teachers. The teacher will video lessons given by the pre-service teacher. With each person in a classroom using an iPad, they become unobtrusive and allows the pre-service teacher to teach the children instead of performing in front of a camera. Afterwards the teacher and pre-service teacher are able to review and analyze the lesson together in a constructive manner.
The elementary students are so adept at using iPads that they are able to teach the pre-service teachers productivity tips.
I live in another town a hundred miles away (it might as well be a million) where they decided to purchase Chromebooks instead of iPads so the students have a physical keyboard to take standardized tests.
I did something similar and ran a Win 7 bootcamp setup on my first MBA in case I ever needed it.
After almost two years of having barely used it I just deleted the damn thing and took back the space.
I had Win 7 running on Parallels and deleted it after a few years. I spent way more time installing Win 7 than using it. I bought the version without the install disk and spent several days trying to make a bootable flash drive and get MS to accept the product code. Didn't work and MS wouldn't provide customer support for the download only version. I finally just repurchased the damn thing on a disk. I swore on a pile of holy books that I would never buy another MS product again. Only purchase so far is Office for Mac. My IT department at work said hell would freeze over before they would let me use a Mac at work. I started a campaign to get the IT manager fired and now we have Macs at work.
I had Win 7 running on Parallels and deleted it after a few years. I spent way more time installing Win 7 than using it. I bought the version without the install disk and spent several days trying to make a bootable flash drive and get MS to accept the product code. Didn't work and MS wouldn't provide customer support for the download only version. I finally just repurchased the damn thing on a disk. I swore on a pile of holy books that I would never buy another MS product again. Only purchase so far is Office for Mac. My IT department at work said hell would freeze over before they would let me use a Mac at work. I started a campaign to get the IT manager fired and now we have Macs at work.
Those are some good points. There is no exact equivalent of GarageBand but there are a number of web based audio editing applications. You can record video with a Chromebook. Kind of clunky though. You have to have an Internet connection. You go to YouTube and choose upload > record.
Bottom line is neither iPad or Chromebook is a complete solution for education or for anything else either. They both have their pules and minuses. I would guess most people who have an iPad also own a computer. I've never actually seen or used a Chromebook. I do have the entire collection of Apple products.
People in the US that own an iPad probably have a PC. However, the same is not true for developing countries. I know people from China that only use an iPad.
seems to me that the issue isn't the iPads so much as the staff. The focus on the lack of a built in physical keyboard sounds like they are trying to use them as laptops, seeing them as 'fun' devices means they aren't doing their research into how they can use the various apps, of which there are a ton that are very educational.
And any issues with adminstration sounds like they didn't do their homework fully on that either. There are lots of ways to lock down the iPads to avoid issues. About the only thing you can't do is block the software update server, which I admit you should be able to do and I hope Apple will add that in the very near future.
"<span style="background-color:transparent;line-height:1.4em;">Marshall's experience with Chromebooks doesn't surprise Bob O'Donnell, who surveyed K–12 Chromebook early adopters for research firm IDC. "We found that the Chromebook's more reliable operation significantly reduced time lost in the classroom due to PC downtime, help desk calls and operating system maintenance," says O'Donnell, IDC's program vice president for clients and displays. "This translated to an average savings of $84 per device in productivity."</span>
<p style="background:transparent;border:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-bottom:10px;vertical-align:baseline;">That proved to be the case for Iowa's Council Bluffs Community School District, which beta-tested 500 Chromebooks for its 9,000 students in early 2011, before they became commercially available to the masses.</p>
<p style="background:transparent;border:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-bottom:10px;vertical-align:baseline;">According to Director of Information Systems David Fringer, CBCSD teachers "transition frequently from lids up to lids down and back." With Chromebooks, he says, "it takes only four to five seconds before the computers are up again."</p>
<p style="background:transparent;border:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-bottom:10px;vertical-align:baseline;">Today, the district owns about 4,300 Chromebooks. All ninth- through 12th-grade students at CBCSD's two high schools received Chromebooks for the current school year. Students in the other 16 schools also have access to the devices, which are kept on mobile carts. Fringer says the district will expand the one-to-one program to students in grades six through eight during the 2013–2014 school year and to third- through fifth-grade students the following year."</p>
I'm sorry, but you're quoting an IDC source in order to attempt to prop up your assertion that Chromebooks are more reliable? The very same IDC that has now been exposed of lying thru it's teeth in order to prop up one statistic over the other, regardless of validity?
You have just discredited as much as O'Donnell, perhaps even more so!
They got some money and said, "Hey, let's buy some iPads."
There's no curriculum based on using the iPads
No guidelines
No approved list of apps
NOTHING
They basically just threw the iPads at the teachers and said "Make sense of this." As if teachers don't have enough on their plates already than to muck around though the sea of free/fremium apps on the App Store to find something relevant to their students.
With that kind of an attitude of course it will be a fail. And that might be why many of these schools are thinking iPads suck. they didn't do their homework
Quote:
Originally Posted by island hermit
The iPad, as complex and wonderful as it is, is not really ready for prime time. Never has been imo.
Great for content... not quite up to the task (yet) of workhorse.
I give it another 4 or 5 years. Tops.
depends on what your work is. I've been using an iPad, no computer, for two straight years at work and it does a hell of a better job than the computer ever did.
The chromebookes used in my 13y/o nephew's school system has been a disaster. My nephew always approaches me to help me diagnose/fix his chromebook, resolve WiFi connectivity issues, and spends more time getting fixed (under warranty) than he gets to use it.
Is this what the school system thinks is "useful"?
Lack of knowledge of administration and the fact you could add a bluetooth keyboard to an iPad obviously had something to do with it. Anyone who knows about iPads and using them in a corporate or school environment should know about how to administrate them properly. Obviously the schools IT has no clue or they would not have run into the problems they claim.
Chromebooks are glorified Network terminals that have no software. I honestly don't see how those actually worked better except they are cheap pieces of crap at about $300.00. That's what those schools were looking for not something that would actually work in a classroom.
Can't wait to hear about the many complaints that will come in when most of them fail, fall apart, or get infected with malware and viruses. Cheap is as cheap does which isn't a whole lot of anything.
The IT department never is ready for iPads, the go for chrome books because there nothing but web.
Agreed completely. This is a case of districts getting their hands on money and seeing something "shiny" to purchase without first thinking through how these devices will be properly integrated into the classroom environment.
They don't plan there decision on how to use iPads.
What can go wrong with a Chromebook other than total failure? It loads a fresh copy of the OS every time it's cold-booted, and generally impervious to viruses and malware (because it loads a fresh clean copy of the OS at boot). I suppose there might be occasional wi-fi connectivity issues but what mobile computer doesn't at least once in a great while? It doesn't get much simpler than a Chromebook.
Wifi sucks, your on a tottal web is so you end up do important data on google drive which ends up failing. When a school uses specific app site, is has neither the. App or the plugin for the sight. As well as a school with chrome-books is generally uses crappy wifi to start with that fails so all progress is lost when trying to use the web apps.
When writing a 15-page research report for you HS class, would you rather use an iPad or a MacBook Air/ThinkPad?
i've done quite a bit of typing on an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard, it's not impossible. Also when teachers really are thinking about using tech to the fullest they don't always come to the conclusion it has to be a typed paper. Maybe for English class where the lesson is how to do a research paper with all the bibliography etc, but in something like history class maybe a paper isn't needed. Many teachers that embrace tech also embrace this idea as well.
Lack of knowledge of administrators is the biggest issue here. Also, any story that brings up the LA United district as a reason for not to use iPads instantly loses all credibility. The LA USD roll-out was a disaster from the beginning with an obvious lack of understanding for what they're doing. Just listen to any of their presentations at a conference and you'll become furious seeing their ineptitude. They make all administrators and school district correctly managing iPads and doing transformational learning in the classroom look like morons. Come on, check your facts. That Atlantic story isn't worth the pixels it takes to display...
I had Win 7 running on Parallels and deleted it after a few years. I spent way more time installing Win 7 than using it. I bought the version without the install disk and spent several days trying to make a bootable flash drive and get MS to accept the product code. Didn't work and MS wouldn't provide customer support for the download only version. I finally just repurchased the damn thing on a disk. I swore on a pile of holy books that I would never buy another MS product again. Only purchase so far is Office for Mac. My IT department at work said hell would freeze over before they would let me use a Mac at work. I started a campaign to get the IT manager fired and now we have Macs at work.
Good man, could use someone like you in my IT department, one of those classic MS PC-hugging groups that constantly belittles Mac users, when in fact the PC's are the ones having all the problems.
Lack of knowledge of administrators is the biggest issue here. Also, any story that brings up the LA United district as a reason for not to use iPads instantly loses all credibility. The LA USD roll-out was a disaster from the beginning with an obvious lack of understanding for what they're doing. Just listen to any of their presentations at a conference and you'll become furious seeing their ineptitude. They make all administrators and school district correctly managing iPads and doing transformational learning in the classroom look like morons. Come on, check your facts. That Atlantic story isn't worth the pixels it takes to display...
THANK YOU!!!
I've followed the LA iPad debacle with absolute disgust at the complete and utter stupidity of their IT managers and administrators. Gotta love it when another article uses that scenario to justify their own stupid mistakes.
A thought: Don't know how it works in the US. But in my country it works like this.
A young IT administrator with ambition skills and knowledge of the OSX/iOS platform is one of the most sought after professionals in the private sector, where salaries are usually higher than in the public one. In the public sector you have, on a higher percentage (not talking about all of them, because I don't like to generalise, but a trend is a trend..) of "older" IT people. Or the ones that have a public job and don't care to stay ahead of the curve. So they defend Windows XP like it was the best thing ever invented. Because when they learned IT that was the gold standard. Such people, who happen to work also in major corporations like banks or big multinational companies, are entrenched in their jobs, because of internal politics. So, basically, if a school district has, let's say, 50 IT people, and deploys iPads what happens? No viruses, no issues, everything works as smooth as silk if properly set (I have an 8 people company and very rarely needed an IT professional after switching to Mac 6 years ago). They have a hard time justifying their jobs, or the number of IT people the department employs, moreover their flaws of not knowing the platform become apparent. When I had problems (with Canon image runner printer drivers) the it professional was basically paid to learn. As he had to search for a fix of a thing he didn't know how to fix.
Public sector jobs, to an extent (in IT to a great extent) are more about justifying the need for the job, than executing.
"We have chromebooks, they are dead cheap and the upfront cost is lower" "they have a ton of problems, so the IT people are running around fixing them" Result: upfront cost cheap = politicians can brag about how smart they are in keeping costs low. Lots of problems = the IT department doesn't need to be shrunk, but is already there. So I don't need to take a politically unpopular decision of reducing personnel.
A day of an IT person working on a chromebook problem easily pays an iPad or two.
But politically it is better that way.
You expect a teacher that has tought the same thing for 20+ years, year after year, with the same tools (clamshell notebooks) with the same power point slides and the same notes, to suddenly improve and change? He would be university professor or researcher or work in the private sector.
The school system, such as big corporations, are the toughest places to change. Apple got a hold in the corporate sector only because the top management demanded their devices to be used at work. And, since they are the ones pulling the strings, no one dared to say "no". In the public sector the politicians are pulling the strings. And they have, to a great extent, less clues on IT than a 3 year old nowadays. But what they have is a perfect understanding about how voters react and how to present things to voters.
"You see, chromebooks "look" like notebooks, so they are able to do the same thing" "They are cheaper too"
To buy... Not to maintain. But as we must create jobs nowadays, why should I be the politician that shrinks the huge IT departments? Give them stuff to do, let them be employed...
depends on what your work is. I've been using an iPad, no computer, for two straight years at work and it does a hell of a better job than the computer ever did.
Don't leave us hanging. Tell us what you do with your iPad at work.
I had Win 7 running on Parallels and deleted it after a few years. I spent way more time installing Win 7 than using it. I bought the version without the install disk and spent several days trying to make a bootable flash drive and get MS to accept the product code. Didn't work and MS wouldn't provide customer support for the download only version. I finally just repurchased the damn thing on a disk. I swore on a pile of holy books that I would never buy another MS product again. Only purchase so far is Office for Mac. My IT department at work said hell would freeze over before they would let me use a Mac at work. I started a campaign to get the IT manager fired and now we have Macs at work.
LOL
Remind me not to cross you.
That shouldn't be a LOL, he couldn't get what he wanted so he started a campaign to get someone fired!
Your selfishness quotient must be through the roof and I pity your colleagues if that's how you work.
That shouldn't be a LOL, he couldn't get what he wanted so he started a campaign to get someone fired!
Your selfishness quotient must be through the roof and I pity your colleagues if that's how you work.
Okay.
I reverse my position on the LOL.
And a LOL reversed is...oh shit...it still spells LOL!
Comments
One of the key advantages an iPad has over other devices, such as Chromebooks, is it's portability.
There is a 3rd through 5th grade school in my town where each student has an iPad -- and no text books. The students use the iPads for content AND productivity. For example, a class will go on a field trip with their iPads, do research, photograph, video, sketch, and create reports on the go. Try that with a Chromebook.
Many of the teachers at this school have pre-service teachers. The teacher will video lessons given by the pre-service teacher. With each person in a classroom using an iPad, they become unobtrusive and allows the pre-service teacher to teach the children instead of performing in front of a camera. Afterwards the teacher and pre-service teacher are able to review and analyze the lesson together in a constructive manner.
The elementary students are so adept at using iPads that they are able to teach the pre-service teachers productivity tips.
I live in another town a hundred miles away (it might as well be a million) where they decided to purchase Chromebooks instead of iPads so the students have a physical keyboard to take standardized tests.
Everyone's uses are most definitely different.
LOL@your POS comment.
I did something similar and ran a Win 7 bootcamp setup on my first MBA in case I ever needed it.
After almost two years of having barely used it I just deleted the damn thing and took back the space.
I had Win 7 running on Parallels and deleted it after a few years. I spent way more time installing Win 7 than using it. I bought the version without the install disk and spent several days trying to make a bootable flash drive and get MS to accept the product code. Didn't work and MS wouldn't provide customer support for the download only version. I finally just repurchased the damn thing on a disk. I swore on a pile of holy books that I would never buy another MS product again. Only purchase so far is Office for Mac. My IT department at work said hell would freeze over before they would let me use a Mac at work. I started a campaign to get the IT manager fired and now we have Macs at work.
LOL
Remind me not to cross you.
Those are some good points. There is no exact equivalent of GarageBand but there are a number of web based audio editing applications. You can record video with a Chromebook. Kind of clunky though. You have to have an Internet connection. You go to YouTube and choose upload > record.
Bottom line is neither iPad or Chromebook is a complete solution for education or for anything else either. They both have their pules and minuses. I would guess most people who have an iPad also own a computer. I've never actually seen or used a Chromebook. I do have the entire collection of Apple products.
People in the US that own an iPad probably have a PC. However, the same is not true for developing countries. I know people from China that only use an iPad.
And any issues with adminstration sounds like they didn't do their homework fully on that either. There are lots of ways to lock down the iPads to avoid issues. About the only thing you can't do is block the software update server, which I admit you should be able to do and I hope Apple will add that in the very near future.
You have just discredited as much as O'Donnell, perhaps even more so!
They got some money and said, "Hey, let's buy some iPads."
There's no curriculum based on using the iPads
No guidelines
No approved list of apps
NOTHING
They basically just threw the iPads at the teachers and said "Make sense of this." As if teachers don't have enough on their plates already than to muck around though the sea of free/fremium apps on the App Store to find something relevant to their students.
With that kind of an attitude of course it will be a fail. And that might be why many of these schools are thinking iPads suck. they didn't do their homework
The iPad, as complex and wonderful as it is, is not really ready for prime time. Never has been imo.
Great for content... not quite up to the task (yet) of workhorse.
I give it another 4 or 5 years. Tops.
depends on what your work is. I've been using an iPad, no computer, for two straight years at work and it does a hell of a better job than the computer ever did.
Schools too cheap for that.
The IT department never is ready for iPads, the go for chrome books because there nothing but web.
As would most.
They don't plan there decision on how to use iPads.
Wifi sucks, your on a tottal web is so you end up do important data on google drive which ends up failing. When a school uses specific app site, is has neither the. App or the plugin for the sight. As well as a school with chrome-books is generally uses crappy wifi to start with that fails so all progress is lost when trying to use the web apps.
Apple (who's always had this problem) should stop pushing "one size (product) fits all" scenarios on schools (or businesses).
They aren't. It's the schools that are deciding what they want. Not Apple
When writing a 15-page research report for you HS class, would you rather use an iPad or a MacBook Air/ThinkPad?
i've done quite a bit of typing on an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard, it's not impossible. Also when teachers really are thinking about using tech to the fullest they don't always come to the conclusion it has to be a typed paper. Maybe for English class where the lesson is how to do a research paper with all the bibliography etc, but in something like history class maybe a paper isn't needed. Many teachers that embrace tech also embrace this idea as well.
You can already get DOOM for the iPad...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doom-classic/id336347946?mt=8
...and it's a great educational tool too!
I know you mean that as a joke but some games can be used for teaching. A game like Clash of Clans can be an effective way to teach students.
I've followed the LA iPad debacle with absolute disgust at the complete and utter stupidity of their IT managers and administrators. Gotta love it when another article uses that scenario to justify their own stupid mistakes.
... diagnose/fix his chromebook ...
Sounds like a chromebroke.
Don't know how it works in the US. But in my country it works like this.
A young IT administrator with ambition skills and knowledge of the OSX/iOS platform is one of the most sought after professionals in the private sector, where salaries are usually higher than in the public one.
In the public sector you have, on a higher percentage (not talking about all of them, because I don't like to generalise, but a trend is a trend..) of "older" IT people. Or the ones that have a public job and don't care to stay ahead of the curve.
So they defend Windows XP like it was the best thing ever invented. Because when they learned IT that was the gold standard.
Such people, who happen to work also in major corporations like banks or big multinational companies, are entrenched in their jobs, because of internal politics.
So, basically, if a school district has, let's say, 50 IT people, and deploys iPads what happens?
No viruses, no issues, everything works as smooth as silk if properly set (I have an 8 people company and very rarely needed an IT professional after switching to Mac 6 years ago).
They have a hard time justifying their jobs, or the number of IT people the department employs, moreover their flaws of not knowing the platform become apparent.
When I had problems (with Canon image runner printer drivers) the it professional was basically paid to learn. As he had to search for a fix of a thing he didn't know how to fix.
Public sector jobs, to an extent (in IT to a great extent) are more about justifying the need for the job, than executing.
"We have chromebooks, they are dead cheap and the upfront cost is lower" "they have a ton of problems, so the IT people are running around fixing them"
Result: upfront cost cheap = politicians can brag about how smart they are in keeping costs low.
Lots of problems = the IT department doesn't need to be shrunk, but is already there. So I don't need to take a politically unpopular decision of reducing personnel.
A day of an IT person working on a chromebook problem easily pays an iPad or two.
But politically it is better that way.
You expect a teacher that has tought the same thing for 20+ years, year after year, with the same tools (clamshell notebooks) with the same power point slides and the same notes, to suddenly improve and change? He would be university professor or researcher or work in the private sector.
The school system, such as big corporations, are the toughest places to change.
Apple got a hold in the corporate sector only because the top management demanded their devices to be used at work. And, since they are the ones pulling the strings, no one dared to say "no".
In the public sector the politicians are pulling the strings. And they have, to a great extent, less clues on IT than a 3 year old nowadays. But what they have is a perfect understanding about how voters react and how to present things to voters.
"You see, chromebooks "look" like notebooks, so they are able to do the same thing"
"They are cheaper too"
To buy... Not to maintain. But as we must create jobs nowadays, why should I be the politician that shrinks the huge IT departments? Give them stuff to do, let them be employed...
depends on what your work is. I've been using an iPad, no computer, for two straight years at work and it does a hell of a better job than the computer ever did.
Don't leave us hanging. Tell us what you do with your iPad at work.
Your selfishness quotient must be through the roof and I pity your colleagues if that's how you work.
Okay.
I reverse my position on the LOL.
And a LOL reversed is...oh shit...it still spells LOL!