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Apple’s Education Plans Fail to Wow

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Last Tuesday, Apple held an event centered around education. They introduced a new iPad to replace the $329 model they began selling last year. It contains an updated A10 Fusion processor, along with, for the first time in a device under $649, Apple Pencil support. Apple hopes it’ll be the perfect device for the classroom. Apple even sells the iPad for $299 to schools, with a special “Crayon” from Logitech for $49.

Apple didn’t update the MacBook Air, the Mac Mini, or iPad mini, all devices that educators would appreciate. But, will the updated iPad be enough to win over educators and students? To reclaim the market from Google’s Chromebooks?

Probably not. In fact, it came off as tone deaf. Consumers are getting a cool new iPad with Apple Pencil, but it’s not what educators need.

Is Apple Tone Deaf?

The cost of an iPad, Apple Pencil, and Keyboard adds up quickly.

The iPad with an Apple Pencil or Crayon will cost educators at least $350-$400 for each student. These are schools that are struggling to buy new text books and pencils, things that can be carried over year to year. They’re not capable of buying ebooks and iPads for each student every year. Not to mention the fact that helping students is more difficult under the Trump administration.

Thanks to Trump’s education secretary, Betsy Devos, public schools will likely get far less funding. Trump’s new tax plan means teachers can no longer deduct supplies for their classrooms on their taxes, so they won’t be buying devices to help their students. Speaking of teachers, Apple’s ecosystem adds a lot of work for teachers to incorporate multiple curriculums, untested hardware and software, and experimentation, which sits heavy on the shoulders of our already hard working teachers.

Once students get into more advanced programming classes, the basic Swift education the iPad offers through Swift Playgrounds won’t be enough. Kids will need real Macs to learn programming, and they’re going to have other languages to learn. Over my career I’ve likely written in a dozen programming languages, Swift alone could never be enough. The iPad would be great for ebooks, homework, and art, but Apple’s lying to themselves if they think a $300+ iPad will fix the problems with American education.

The iPad doesn’t even have a native calculator app, for crying out loud!

Apple’s Other Announcements

Schoolwork

There’s a better way for teachers to collect papers than to… well, collect papers. It’s called Schoolwork, and it’s an app from Apple for the iPad. With it, teachers can check in on their students to make sure they’re understanding their assignments, collect their work when they’re done, and send results back.

For students, apps use ClassKit to communicate through Schoolwork with teachers. ClassKit will be built in to a number of apps, allowing students to complete assignments in apps made for education. Teachers will be able to assign work using Schoolwork, and students will be able to submit their assignments through the chosen app. Schoolwork will allow teachers to better track and give feedback to their students.

Classroom

Now on the Mac, Classroom helps teachers keep track of their students.

Classroom is an app for iOS and now the Mac that allows teachers to keep track of their students and what they’re working on. It also allows iPads to be used by multiple students, each with their own individual sign on, so classes can rotate students without having to rotate iPads. Teachers can have a live view of each student’s screen while they’re in class, so they can make sure no one is falling behind (or getting distracted). Teachers can even launch apps on iPads, so they can quickly help students find exactly what they’re looking for. They can also send and receive documents from their students through the app. The Mac version will release in June, so teachers will have time to practice their lesson plans with it before the fall.

Everyone Can Create

Everyone Can Create isn’t necessarily one app. Instead, it’s a curriculum, which Apple will release this fall and keep updated as the school year goes on. The objective of the coursework is to help students mix art and creativity into their curriculum. It allows teachers to take subjects, like history, math, geography, or science, and work in artistic expression. This will help students explore their creativity from a young age, encouraging ingenuity, artistic merit, and enjoyment of the arts. On top of that, students who usually find themselves bored by anything but art will have a new way to learn about their least favorite subjects. Perhaps it’ll even encourage students to grow their interests.

The supplementary coursework will focus on drawing, music, and creativity in subjects that usually lack these areas of study. As someone who didn’t encounter a good art program until middle school, and someone who was inclined towards science and math from an early age, I would have greatly appreciated something like this. I often find myself unable to express my artistic notions through any way but writing and photography, having never learned critical drawing skills. And, let’s face it, my singing voice is considered a war crime in 37 countries. Teaching kids that art and creativity can be woven into any field is a great way to both foster a love of the arts, and a love for STEM. Everyone Can Create may have been Apple’s most exciting announcement on Tuesday.

iWork Updates

Apple updated their iWork suite, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, to make better use of the iPad and the Apple Pencil. However, they also added a bunch of new features that greatly improve the apps. In fact, it’s almost like they make up a completely new generation of iWork.

Pages

Pages can now track annotations made with the Apple Pencil. If you circle a word, and the page is later edited, the circle will follow the circled word. Pages can now be used to make books for the iBook Store. Pages will come with templates that make creating new books easy. Teachers and educators, or just those interested in publishing, will be able to compile their own books, complete with illustrations and interactive elements, and release them on Apple’s iBook Store. Optimally, teachers could use it to create their own learning materials.

I had a few teachers hand out their own printed out “books” in high school and college, and it was always fantastic. The book would have all the material of the class, and the professor used supplemental books to expand upon the information. It’s a lot of work for teachers, but students appreciate it.

Numbers and Keynote

For Numbers and Keynote, Apple introduced more functionality for the Apple Pencil, including easy drawing. Drawings behave like photos, and users can control how they appear on the page, how other images and text wrap around them, and layering. It’s a great new tool that, unfortunately, only the iPad will get. The macOS version of iWork will be able to work with these, but since the Apple Pencil only works on the iPad, the (often superior) macOS versions of these apps won’t have access to all the features of the iOS versions. Apple truly should consider releasing a Mac with Apple Pencil support.

200GB of iCloud Storage

200GB of iCloud storage is available to anyone, however, it normally costs users $36/year. It’s not a huge savings, but since teachers can’t write off their business expenses (school supplies) the way real estate moguls can, that’s a nice savings of $36 per year.

What Apple Could Do

It’s hard to disagree with what Apple has shown off. The iPad, Apple Pencil, iWork updates, Schoolwork, Classroom, Everyone Can Code and Everyone Can Create curriculums, and iCloud storage are great for teachers and schools. I wish my schools had had cool things like this! However, buying iPads and ebooks every year is expensive. As such, Apple’s brilliant vision for education in the future is just a dream.

Sell at Cost

What could Apple do? They could sell the iPad, Apple Pencil, and a keyboard/case at cost. They could even bundle them together in an education package to reduce costs further. Apple shouldn’t profit off of sales to schools. They should see these sales as marketing. Students who use Apple devices grow up to adults who buy Apple products. By selling at cost, it’s essentially free marketing for Apple, an investment in both the future of students, and their own future.

Ebook Exchange

The other feature would be ebooks that students can download through their school’s account. Every year, the school could delete the books from students who went up a grade. This way, teachers and schools could buy an iBook and pass it down every year, as they do for physical books. Book publishers could do a subscription with updating books every year, or require schools to continue their current behavior, only getting new books when they choose to. Or, Apple could release their own textbooks, and bundle them with the sales of iPads. However they do it, Apple needs to make using the iPad for books less expensive than buying new books every year and having students keep textbooks they often won’t need anymore.

Liberate Teachers

Finally, teachers are too busy to be managing hardware, researching news techniques and brushing up on their lessons, creating new lesson plans from a range of curriculums, and writing their own books. Apple’s asking a lot of teachers here. Don’t teachers already do enough (for not enough pay)?

Announcements More About Marketing than Education

Apple has a lot more work to do here before teachers will be on board with their plans. Everything is just too expensive, and education in the United States is only going to be getting worse, not better over the next few years. As financial situations tighten, schools ill struggle. Apple is definitely creating some fantastic education tools, but if only wealthy school districts and private schools can afford them, how is it helping all kids learn? I think Apple continues to take jabs at education, but fails every time because they’re forgetting that it’s not about their bottom line, it’s about providing the best tool for the job. Constantly, Apple hasn’t provided that tool.

At least we have a $329 iPad with Apple Pencil support though, right? That’s pretty cool.

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