this experiment has been tried at schools several times in the USA and in every instance has failed.
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Nearly 50,000 Students in Glasgow, Scotland to Receive Free iPads to Assist With Education
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What makes you think Apple is providing the iPads for free?
This isn't negative or positive. It's more a nothing to see here as far as Apple.
The only way I can see it being helpful is if it allows you to ignore the teacher and go on Khan Academy instead. My school days were filled with long torturous hours of unmitigated boredom. On the rare occasions I learned anything, I was elated. I can remember very few days like that.
There better have MDM enabled! Hopefully some IT policies in place as well to prevent that very thing.
Except the article said this school bought them, so I guess your statement is just wrong.
The school purchased them from a Canadian it company.
Why are you claiming apple gave them away?
But they are buying iPads according to the article. Don’t think Chromebooks were ever a consideration.
Good grief.
Literally the FIRST SENTENCE mentions this is part of a £300 million deal between the government and an IT firm.
Catch then whilst their young!
Let's be honest, Apple should do this for loads and loads of kids, it simply makes long term sense.
You give a class of children iPads to use for say 5 years, and when they are out of school or leave school, having been immersed in iOS for all that time, what are they going to buy, and Android device?
Apple can milk literally tens of $1000's each out of many many children during their life, simply by throwing them a free iPad for their learning years.
Let's be honest, Apple should do this for loads and loads of kids, it simply makes long term sense.
You give a class of children iPads to use for say 5 years, and when they are out of school or leave school, having been immersed in iOS for all that time, what are they going to buy, and Android device?
Apple can milk literally tens of $1000's each out of many many children during their life, simply by throwing them a free iPad for their learning years.
Better than using anything Google related.
How many times have they gotten into trouble for tracking everything kids are doing on education supplied devices or G Suite? I’ve lost count.
How many times have they gotten into trouble for tracking everything kids are doing on education supplied devices or G Suite? I’ve lost count.
Well they are paying £300 million to avoid chrome books and google that much is clear.
Evidence that this helps kids learn? Near zero. Don't get me wrong, I think AI assisted learning will replace public education but right now most of the evidence says this adds nothing but cost.
Doesn't the school know they can buy them from apple?
So it is better for these kids to be tracked by some no name Canadian company? iOS devices are trojan horses.
I went to a technology school in high school. Bill & Melinda Gates funded. Thousands of educators flew from all over the US every year to check out our school and to see what the "future of education" looked like. Hint: not very good. They had this idea that computers would make up for poorly paid and trained teachers and somehow they would prepare us for the future. It didn't. The part they got right was project based learning, but guess what you don't need computers for that.
Frankly as an educator in a university I think that there is nothing magical about using technology like iPads to teach. Most students and most teachers will use the iPads as interactive books and nothing more. Also, I don't think the future holds much promise for refining IT-based teaching. Conveying knowledge in person verbally has worked efficiently and well for our entire history, and interposing computers in that interaction is no panacea. Lectures and teacher-led talks might bore some, but the purpose of education is conveying knowledge and skills, not entertainment. There is an inverse relationship between course evaluations by students and their actual academic performance. If educators start seeing their mission as entertaining students, then teachers and students will simply conspire to dumb things down even more than they are now.
If I hear one more clueless manager spouting off about how IT will solve everything I am going to lose it - at best the effects of using IT are smallish. In one meta-analysis there was about half a standard deviation improvement in academic achievement (see link) - detectable, but modest, and £300 million would but a lot of teachers. I am a US citizen living in Scotland, say maybe it's not my place to offer an opinion, but I do pay Scottish taxes. I wonder if this is really worth it. I don't mind the money being spent - I just wonder if this is its best use.
There's a whole lot of not reading beyond the first half of the headline going on in this thread - the school system contracted with an IT firm for (roughly) 50k iPads (as part of a package deal, likely with all sorts of other equipment, support, and infrastructure, at considerable expense), which the school will then provide to the students at no (direct) additional cost. Don't get so worked up - no generosity translating to higher prices for you, going on here.
What does that have to do with the other poster falsely claiming they were free because apple couldn’t sell them over cheaper chrome books.
Can you elaborate? My school is rolling out a similar program this year. I had my doubts already, so I'm not surprised to see comments like yours, but I'm curious what the primary issues with these programs are.
shame on you sir!! glasgow is fab
See post #43 above. The evidence we have is that this kind of thing will have a modest impact. The question, though, is whether that impact justifies the money relative to other initiatives that might be undertaken, such as hiring more teachers or providing better salaries for teachers so that they are truly valued as the professionals they are.
Let me put it this way: What do iPads solve that books, good verbal teaching, and interacting directly with students does not? The University I work at is over half a millennium old, and when I hear the pro-IT guys spout off about the benefits of these machines to education I think 'My god. How did we ever survive the last 500+ years without IT?
'.
Have you been to Glasgow recently? As a proud Glaswegian I am very disappointed by your ill-informed comment. Maybe you thought you were being funny?