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Apple's 'iPad Mini' to Strengthen Education Presence Alongside iBooks 3.0

Without mac and PC support, iBooks is a nonstarter. Hopefully they'll finally add it with the announcement tomorrow.
 
I just hope the new iPad mini is mini enough that I can fit it in my pocket, throw out my iPhone along with its voice plan and enjoy a data-only device with LTE for 1/3rd the price I'm paying monthly now. With a screen substantially bigger than 3.5".
 
education hm? i have yet to find a single book on the iBooks store thats of any use for my studies and that whole situation is even worse when i try to find anything in german.

cant really blame apple tho, most books id have an interest in dont have a digital edition at all
 
Is it just me that is thinking Apple might have leaked the $329 price out and will then reveal a lower price to get people excited?.

Kind of how we were expecting a much higher price for the original iPad and then it launched with a lower price to much fanfare.
 
iMacFarlane said:
Okay, cool. But how the foxtrot do you get the files into the iPad? If I have a few dozen scanned comics in cbr/cbz format, will they create a conduit of sorts so I can get them into my iPad without repurchasing them? Man, I really hope so.

I tried ages ago when I bought my first gen iPod Touch. There was an app called 'Pull Lists' which started off buggy and fairly useless and went . . . nowhere. It stayed buggy and useless.
Click to expand...

I use

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cloudreaders-pdf-cbz-cbr/id363484920?mt=8

Works really well for me.
 
Diiiiips said:
Is it just me that is thinking Apple might have leaked the $329 price out and will then reveal a lower price to get people excited?
Click to expand...
I'm actually more afraid of it ending up starting at $400.

Kind of how we were expecting a much higher price for the original iPad and then it launched with a lower price to much fanfare.
Click to expand...
Yes, that was a nice surprise. Imagine if the iPad started at $1000, it'd a be a different world today (cuz the competitors would also maintain high prices then).
 
$350 is nowhere close to meeting education or industry price points. Apple will have live with selling only to individual consumers, unless they come up with phenomenal education discounts.
 
Apple apparently doesn't want the Mini (minipad) to take business away from it's other products like the iPad (maxipad) and iPhone impact on iPod sales. This reminds me of how Kodak didn't develop it's digital camera inventions because it would impact film sales. That worked out really great for them. :(
 
skellener said:
Obviously Apple wants to sell iPads. But many out there in education already have Macs. Unless Apple starts supporting iBooks on Mac OS X as well as iOS, I don't see iBooks taking off.
Click to expand...

While I'd love iBooks to run on a Mac, Apple sells five times more iPads than Macs.
 
JHankwitz said:
Apple apparently doesn't want the Mini (minipad) to take business away from it's other products like the iPad (maxipad) and iPhone impact on iPod sales.(
Click to expand...
Says who?

Steve Jobs, as per Walter Isaacson’s recent biography, has been quoted as saying:

“If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”
 
Cockney Rebel said:
However, as much as I love my iPad it is just too big for me to take out & about with me ... it is purely an "indoor device" with me.
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I don't understand this thinking. It must be me growing up in a different time.

I have carried my original iPad with me every day for the past 2 years. I used to always lug around an appointment book and a few tech reading books. The weight I now carry is less.

To and from school - don't people carry around textbooks that are larger and heavier?

To and from work - don't people carry around appointment books and folders of documents that are larger and heavier?

To and from the library - don't people carry books that weigh more?

I'm not carrying my iPad to a bar or a restaurant. Maybe for those things, you'd like a smaller portable. But for those things, I'm not going online - I'm enjoying my food or company.
 
Rocketman said:
IT in education is currently institutional buying. Some day education may drift back to family centric or civic organization centric, which will drastically lower the cost of it as well as greatly improve the efficacy. It's just an iPad, but it is also every textbook and learning method right in the hand of the student. That could be a thing.

Rocketman

cite:
http://www.khanacademy.org/about
Click to expand...


Yet notice that the Khan Academy doesn't cover english or language skills.

http://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore

Family centric or civic focused eduction shifts 100% of the costs to the individual units involved in the eduction process. Sadly this means that families that have both (or in the case of single parent, the one) working full time can't really make use of the Khan Academy on an individual level. Even if they can pay for the internet access and devices, there'd be no one around to help monitor and ensure children's progress in academic studies. If one assumes that a neighbor or some such will gather up multiple families children... then we're back to effectively private schools and tutors circa the 1700s.

*rant against the systematic dismantlement of public edition snipped*

Keep in mind that mandatory public eduction is barely 100 years old in the United States. For some morons and elite plutocrats it's still seen as little more then a holding tank for the lower classes offspring. All the gadgets and gizmos in the world will not turn back the clock on underfunded school systems.


=====

On to teach. The iPad does nothing for eduction. It does have the tools necessary to be in any way shape or from effective at what it should be doing. What it does have is promise, promise that educators and tech nerds have been drooling at since the introduction of computers into eduction, which has never come to the for front.

You want peek into this mystical world? Go read up on Alan Kay's Dyanbook, especially the original technical paper.

Unless iBooks Author 3.0 starts including hooks for adaptive assessment and a paper-less class/homework environment I don't see much that will be useful. iOS doesn't provide the tools for student monitoring or remote device control that are absolutely critical to classroom management in a purely digital era. Apple's Mac software does a better job of that at this point.

Unless Apple accounts a multi-user iOS for schools with Remote Desktop and Device Profiles (through local server software), the iPad(s) remain little better then a supplemental toy and not a real tool.
 
It's a given that Apple was going to try and lock up the education market.

The iPad is already the darling of education. Making it cheaper and more accessible is just gravy.

...an iPad in every backpack...
 
Dorje Sylas said:
Yet notice that the Khan Academy doesn't cover english or language skills.

http://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore

Family centric or civic focused eduction shifts 100% of the costs to the individual units involved in the eduction process. Sadly this means that families that have both (or in the case of single parent, the one) working full time can't really make use of the Khan Academy on an individual level. Even if they can pay for the internet access and devices, there'd be no one around to help monitor and ensure children's progress in academic studies. If one assumes that a neighbor or some such will gather up multiple families children... then we're back to effectively private schools and tutors circa the 1700s.

*rant against the systematic dismantlement of public edition snipped*

Keep in mind that mandatory public eduction is barely 100 years old in the United States. For some morons and elite plutocrats it's still seen as little more then a holding tank for the lower classes offspring. All the gadgets and gizmos in the world will not turn back the clock on underfunded school systems.


=====

On to teach. The iPad does nothing for eduction. It does have the tools necessary to be in any way shape or from effective at what it should be doing. What it does have is promise, promise that educators and tech nerds have been drooling at since the introduction of computers into eduction, which has never come to the for front.

You want peek into this mystical world? Go read up on Alan Kay's Dyanbook, especially the original technical paper.

Unless iBooks Author 3.0 starts including hooks for adaptive assessment and a paper-less class/homework environment I don't see much that will be useful. iOS doesn't provide the tools for student monitoring or remote device control that are absolutely critical to classroom management in a purely digital era. Apple's Mac software does a better job of that at this point.

Unless Apple accounts a multi-user iOS for schools with Remote Desktop and Device Profiles (through local server software), the iPad(s) remain little better then a supplemental toy and not a real tool.
Click to expand...
I normally liberally edit post replys but this one deserves some attention. The lack of particular content at one vendor is noted and even the guy who started it was on CNBC (financial) the other day talking about this topic and the fact there are now a wider range of folks creating content for the site. But any well versed teacher could create a 20 minute video as a tool for this or any other site.

The primary concern that vendor has with education is the methodology of teaching in groups which tends to stunt the leading students and the slower ones have a constant sense of being behind. So whether or not you have brick and mortar owned by the government, funded by confiscatory taxation, and populated by union members or some other meme, the idea of having each student learn at their own rate is the point. I actually had that experience myself in 3rd grade in public school and it really gave me a head start for the remainder of my school experience.

It is objectively true the current public school system is "failed" by any standard or metric to the degree even politicians almost universally agree.

Steve jobs famously ranted against the current educational system.

I say any tool or scheme that changes the approach, even if incrementally and gradually is good. Once I was able to do my work from anywhere using telecommuting, it became clear public education was in fact child care and a means to justify a system that is already in place. There has not been a large change in the "setting" of education in decades and perhaps some leaking in of telecommuting would be one large step in the right direction.

Rocketman
 
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mehanika said:
Wrong

If you are lucky, Apple will gracefully give you 10% off.
I work at a school where we buy more than 500 macbook pros EVERY YEAR, no exception - and we can't get anything but the 10%.. which is not even for sure from year to year.
Click to expand...

Well then there is something rotten in Denmark. Ha! Apple in the EU might be different that Apple in the U.S. In the U.S. Edu accts have human acct reps who give decent discounts for serious orders.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
At what price point? Apple hasn't announced any yet. Also no school or business that buys in bulk pays retail. Prices are negotiated, and often 20-40% below retail. Most companies think of Edu sales as a "loss leader," because students then go home and ask the parents for their own.
Click to expand...

This is a good point Apple has always done deals for educational purchases this is why so many schools have macs. Something like this is a good candidate for volume purchases also which lower the price even further. Apple will cut the markup to the bone for the educational market because they want to catch future users young.
 
iBooks 3.0 - Cross Platform Compatible

iPad
iPhone
iPod
Android
Kindle
OS X
Windows 8
Windows 8 RTM
Linux
 
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