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School Regrets Swapping Laptops For iPads
Barence writes "A school swapped all its staff laptops for iPads — and now wants to switch them back. 'Most staff are IT illiterate and jumped at the chance of exchanging their laptop for an iPad,' a teacher from the school told PC Pro. Now, however: 'the staff room is full of regret.' Difficulties editing old Word and PowerPoint documents, transferring work to and from the device without USB sticks, and problems with projecting the iPad's display to the classroom — bizarrely, using an Apple TV — have led to staff once again reaching for their Windows laptops."
Because for about a year now I haven't taken my laptop out of the house, and mostly using it for programming, and photo editing. I have spent all this time writing fiction, poetry, outlines, technical documentation, etc; built websites, created diagrams (I prefer using OmniGraffle on the iPad to the desktop version); doing some light experimenting in Lua; making graphics and other things... all because no one told me it sucked at creating content.
But now that you told me, it is all ruined. I will have to lug around the laptop, aggravate the bone spurs in my neck and shoulders, have to put up with shorter battery life, and all that.
Gee thanks
What do you know I wrote a novel
That definitely sounds terrible, especially the twist of forcing families to buy the apps (that's one I've never heard of before).
At the K-8 school my friend works at, the school purchased about one hundred iPads (enough that the average class can spend half a day with them in class every other day). He was hired to manage and maintain them (so it isn't an extra burden on the preexisting IT department, or the teachers and parents) and does so using Apple's enterprise tools which allow him to push updates and new software, volume license software (cheaper than everyone buying individually), image/restore, manage age restrictions, etc. fairly easily. He is also responsible for researching/purchasing new educational apps and training teachers and students how to use them. It's a great system, because the iPad becomes an asset to the teacher and students rather than a burden, and IT is happy to work it into the existing infrastructure because it isn't a huge new burden on them, either.
My other friend (5th grade teacher) works at a much poorer school (one of the poorest in the state actually) and just has one iPad in his classroom that he purchased himself, filled with apps that he purchased himself. Until this year it was hooked up to his projector via physical cable (that he purchased himself) as the submitter's article suggested was the best way to go, but being tethered was a huge annoyance. I was going to buy him an AppleTV for this year, but the school IT department somehow manage to lose his connector cables over the summer and ended up offering to buy him one out of their budget. Needless to say, he's been thrilled being untethered from the projector. He's always been ecstatic about what a difference the iPad has made in his classroom, even though he only has one and he has to do the support for it himself.
The iPad really is an awesome tool when used in the right way, but a replacement for a work laptop it sure isn't. What's sad is people are going to generalize from this and decide the whole thing is worthless overall rather than a specific tool for a specific job.