K-12

Apple pushes U.S. government to teach kids how to code

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Tim Cook takes home $125 million for Apple’s best year since 2009
Tim Cook added his name to this important petition.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

With its recent purchase of educational startup LearnSprout and its “Hour of Code” programming classes at Apple Stores, Apple has demonstrated that it’s pretty darn serious about education.

Proving this once again, CEO Tim Cook this week put his name to a petition asking the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts so as to allow every K-12 student in the United States to learn how to code.

Why Window 8 Tablets Will Lose To The iPad In Education [Feature]

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Microsoft may try to challenge the iPad's place in the classroom, but time isn't on its side
Microsoft may try to challenge the iPad's place in the classroom, but time isn't on its side

The iPad became a big hit in the K-12 education market over the past year. Pioneering schools that brought Apple’s tablet into the classroom last school year proved that the iPad can be a excellent learning tool – one that has immense power to transform education.

As the new school year begins, and hundreds of thousands of students across the U.S. become iPad users thanks to one-to-one iPad deployments, there’s already talk that the iPad’s success in schools will be short-lived. The belief is that iPads will quickly be replaced by tablets running Microsoft’s Windows RT or Windows 8.

That assumption is absurd and delusional.

How Hard Is It To Get iPads Into The Hands Of Thousands Of Students?

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Lexington School District One in South Carolina shows what it takes to to roll out iPads to thousands of students.
Lexington School District One in South Carolina shows what it takes to roll out iPads to thousands of students.

Many school districts around the country are embarking on new territory this back to school season – deploying hundreds or thousands of iPads to students. Most of the deployments will be one-to-one initiatives where every student receives a school-owned iPad to use for this school year or their entire scholastic career. Planning such a roll out isn’t easy, but schools and districts making the shift this year have the advantage of looking what worked and didn’t work from counterparts that pioneered the iPad in the classroom last year.

One school district, Lexington County School District One of South Carolina, has served as a model for many other schools around the country. The district offers a lot of insight into the technical requirements, education policy issues, and roll out processes in such a colossal undertaking.

How The iPad Is Transforming The Classroom [Back To School]

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The iPad is engaging students and transforming the K-12 education experience.
The iPad is engaging students and transforming the K-12 education experience.

During its education event in January, Apple unveiled its plans to revolutionize the K-12 classroom with the iPad, electronic textbooks, a revamped version of iTunes U that supports content for K-12 schools as well as higher education, and tools for educators to create their own digital content using iBooks Author and iTunes U.

In the intervening months, schools and districts around the country have made significant investments in iPads, including the San Diego Unified School District, which invested $15 million in 26,000 iPads for its students. Those sales created a record quarter for Apple in the K-12 education market.

With the back to school season upon us, it’s clear that the massive iPad deployments will give Apple the opportunity to disrupt the classroom in the ways it has whole industries and, in many ways, that’s a good thing.

School Technology Policies Are More Important Than Ever In The iPad-Enabled Classroom

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School technology policies are often restrictive, but circumventing them can be dangerous for teachers and students alike.
School technology policies are often restrictive, but circumventing them can be dangerous for teachers and students alike.

One of the challenges of 21st century education is determining the appropriate ways to use technology in the classroom. That’s a challenge that each school or district needs to confront in its own way. One thing that is universal, however, is that the policies and processes put into place around technology need to come from an ongoing dialog between teachers, school administrators, and IT professionals.

While some schools may have restrictive policies, those policies are emblematic of the community to which the schools belongs. They are the policies that the school itself and the parents of its students feel are needed to protect its students. Those policies also teach students what is acceptable behavior and how to protect themselves in the online world.

Schools Need To Tread Carefully When Hooking iPads And MacBooks Up To Cloud Services

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Cloud computing has great potential for schools, but isn't without some pitfalls.
Cloud computing has great potential for schools, but isn't without some pitfalls.

 

The summer break is winding up and many teachers are getting ready to head back to work for another school year (and many IT staffers in those schools are trying to make sure everything’s ready when those teachers return). Over the past several months, many schools and their IT departments have been struggling to keep spending down while also delivering a 21st century learning environment. That discussion has largely focused on how to most cost effectively deploy iPads, new MacBooks, and other technology systems.

One approach to that dilemma is moving away from traditional software purchasing and towards enterprise cloud solutions. That approach may give schools more control over expenditures and offer other advantages, but it also has downsides including the potential to raise costs and degrade the education experience.

The More Tech-Savvy The Principal, The More iPads In The Classroom

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iPad use in schools more likely when administrators like and use mobile tech
iPad use in schools more likely when administrators like and use mobile tech

With its e-textbook initiative, iTunes U, and a range of educational resources, Apple is pitching the iPad as critical element in 21st century schools. Many schools have already begun iPad tests or full-scale deployments. In other schools, however, there’s still a fight over where and how the iPad and other technologies fit into the classroom. A battle erupted between teachers and lawmakers in Idaho earlier this year over new technology requirements in the state’s schools.

So what makes some schools embrace iPads and other new technologies while others resist them? It turns out that the answer may lie in the personal technology preferences of school and district administrators.

New Nook Company To Take Apple’s iPad Textbooks Head-On

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Battle for e-textbooks heats up with new Nook company
Battle for e-textbooks heats up with new Nook company

Barnes & Noble’s announcement that it was spinning off its Nook business and that Microsoft would be a significant stakeholder in the new company raised a lot of eyebrows. The partnership seemed unnecessary in order to meet the goals of settling a patent dispute and ensuring a Nook app for Windows 8 tablets.

It turns out that Barnes & Nobel will be shifting its textbook business to the new company along with the Nook and that Microsoft’s $300 million investment will likely be centered around creating an e-textbook initiative that will likely compete head-on with Apple’s fledging iPad-based e-textbook business.

Apple Leaving Colleges Out Of Its iPad-In-Education Push Is A Brilliant Move

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Apple's e-textbooks and iPad in education initiative leaves colleges largely out of the picture - for good reasons
Apple's e-textbooks and iPad in education initiative leaves colleges largely out of the picture - for good reasons

Apple’s e-textbook initiative, which the company launched in January along with iBooks Author and a revamped iTunes U service is aimed at K-12 schools rather than higher education. Higher education has a different set of needs when it comes to textbooks, study, and reference materials. There are also big differences in device/platform selection between K-12 and the college market.

In fact, these differences are probably a big part of why Apple decided to focus the majority of its e-textbook (and, by extension its iPad in education) effort on the K-12 market. It’s a market that yields Apple more growth opportunities now and down the road. 

Apple Reveals Online Store Will Soon Get ‘Dramatically Simplified User Interface’

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Apple's new online store hopes to make make it even easier for you to hand over your cash.
Apple's new online store hopes to make make it even easier for you to hand over your cash.

Apple is set to overhaul its online store to introduce a “dramatically simplified user interface” that will make spending your hard-earned cash on Apple goods easier than ever before. And this isn’t just another story fresh from the rumor mill; it was revealed by Apple itself.

Schools Want iPads This Fall, But Are iTextbooks Worth It? [Feature]

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Is Apple's e-textbook ecosystem ready for the 2012 - 2013 school year?
Is Apple's e-textbook ecosystem ready for the 2012 - 2013 school year?

Many schools in the U.S. haven’t even had their spring break yet, but school administrators are already planning for the next school year. For public schools that means determining how best to allocate scarce financial resources and trying to determine how far they can push their budgets before the residents and homeowners in their district will vote them down. School IT departments meanwhile are beginning to consider what major projects and upgrades they’ll be doing over the summer recess.

Although this decision-making process tends to run like clockwork for most schools and districts, this year there’s a new factor to consider: Apple’s iPad-based iBooks 2 e-textbook initiative (as well as the iPad itself).

Apple’s New Annual Upgrade Cycle May Wreak Havoc On Schools

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Apple’s announcement of Mountain Lion breaks with the past in a few ways including by announcing with out a major Apple event. One of the other changes is the news the Apple is moving OS X to a yearly release cycle like iOS. That may be a great way to introduce new features for consumers, but it’s likely to create problems for organizations that have a large number of Macs.

Schools and colleges are still among the organizations that have large Mac populations and have always been a key market for Apple. A yearly release schedule stands to impact them more than any other type of organization and that impact isn’t likely to be a positive one.