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."

Comments

Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[thammoud]

I love my iPad for reading and viewing stuff. Editing? Not so much. I dread the moment where I have to hover over, click on the right place and edit. Useless.

Re:Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[Naatach]

Tablets make a great spoon and terrible kitchen tool. They're good for consuming, but not much else.

Re:Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[Naatach]

Tablets make a great spoon and terrible kitchen tool. They're good for consuming, but not much else.

They do, however, make an excellent cutting board.

Re:Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Spoken like someone who's never tried to write a research paper on a tablet/smartphone.
My wrists cringe at the very thought of having to do such.

Re:Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[PeanutButterBreath]

Sorry, you have violated the groupthink by posting that people are creating content with tablets. You will now be modded down for telling the truth.

Assuming any tablet users are able to actuate the moderation widget.

Re:Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[immaterial]

I have one friend who is a 5th grade teacher and has been using his iPad in class for two years now, and another friend who has been a dedicated K-8 grade iPad technology manager (ie. he stands somewhere between the regular IT staff and the teachers; managing tech support for the tablets, researching and testing educational apps, coming up with iPad-based lesson plans, and teaching students and - most importantly - teachers how to integrate use of the tablets into lessons and workflows). I'm basing my opinions here on their experiences.

There is no question what an awesome tool the iPad can be for education. The ability to instantly interact with information in such a visceral and responsive way can be very powerful for the students. Touch, physical interaction, and instant feedback are fundamental to kids (and everyone else, but particularly to kids since they haven't mastered abstract thought). Live charts/graphs and other graphical representations can help kids better grasp what the numbers they're looking at are actually doing; the ability to explore and interact with a science "textbook" (not a useful word anymore) so the student can follow where her curiosity leads her is amazing. Etc. Etc.

But as you say, this is mostly reading and viewing; very little heavy editing. Tablets (especially iPads) are not particularly well designed for heavy-duty text editing (basic note taking or numerical input is fine though). Buying a bunch of iPads and attempting to use them as the only tool for the job is just as stupid as buying an awesome chef's knife and then tossing out all your spoons.

Based on my friends' experiences, the biggest roadblock to proper iPad usage is nobody is around to explain things or set things up. Teachers have a million other things to do in class, and often a school administrator decides "this iPad thing looks neat" and dumps the technology on them with no training whatsoever and zero support from IT, and suddenly the teacher has one more thing to try to figure out. Teachers that are already tech savvy (like my first friend) can do great things with them, but most are not. It takes a properly organized program (like my second friend is involved in) to get it working at a school- or district-wide level.

As to the nonsensical complaint about the AppleTV: huh? The article complains they could have done it "much cheaper" for ~$30 rather than the $99 cost of an AppleTV, but that small savings requires teachers to be tethered to a cord at the front of the classroom. The ability for the teacher to walk around the classroom and interact with students while streaming information and interactive results wirelessly to the class's screen is a HUGE advantage that is more than worth $69. The issues mentioned in the article are due to inadequate IT support and training.

Re:Forget about editing just old Word and PP

[immaterial]

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.

Re:What were they expecting?

[AaronLS]

This speaks to the fact that every time I hear someone wanting an iPad at the workplace, it is accompanied by a big grin. They want a toy. They are not even thinking through how they would accomplish their day to day work with an iPad instead of a desktop/laptop.

Tablets in education

[Missing.Matter]

I've been using tablets in an educational environment since about 2006. I guess today they would be called Tablet PCs, but they were infinitely more useful in an educational setting for one reason, and it's not that they ran standard PC apps (in fact quite the opposite because most apps were no optimized for touch, etc.). It was the stylus, which most "tablets" lack today. Writing on my tablet with a stylus and being able to archive notes, search handwritten notes, reference supplemental materials and paste them into my notes, etc. were killer applications. The fact that my tablet was convertible also meant that when I needed to, I could set up my tablet PC like a regular laptop with a full monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and use it like any other laptop with fully fledged Office. Many here balked at the Tablet PC then, and continue to balk at the tablet PC now, but it was a hell of a lot more useful for me than my iPad ever was, if not only for the ability to support a proper digitized stylus and robust handwriting recognition.

Tablet PCs today still have major disadvantages, but I'm very intrigued at the new crop of hybrid tablet/laptops coming out from Samsung, Asus, and Microsoft. Transformer prime was half way there, but it still was a very poor laptop substitute in laptop mode (couldn't run full desktop-class apps, mouse support inconsistent across the OS and apps).

IT Illertate Staff?

[wiegeabo]

So...The staff, a bunch of teachers, are IT illiterate. And, instead of TEACHING them how to actually use a computer, the answer is...to buy them iPads to try and avoid the issue.

No teacher has a right to complain about students not wanting to learn if they're not willing to learn how to use the tools required by their job.

And when are school boards and parents going to learn that throwing fancy new tech at a problem doesn't fix the problem...or even the symptoms of the problem? Changing tech doesn't fix things. Changing PROCESSES fixes things.

Re:What were they expecting?

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> ...how they would accomplish their day to day work with an iPad...

I can browse /. on an iPad just fine, thanks very much.

Re:Let this be a lesson

[vonwilkenstein]

The users of GarageBand would also probably disagree with you as well.

As a user of Garageband, I do not. I can not connect my firewire audio interface to an ipad.

It's a status symbol.

[khasim]

The iPad is GREAT for CONSUMING content.

It suck for GENERATING content.

So anyone with an iPad has more status than anyone who does their work on a laptop (which has more status than someone with a desktop).

And they get to watch movies and stuff on it at home.

Re:It's a status symbol.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

It suck for GENERATING content.

You wrote this post on an iPad, didn't you?

Re:What were they expecting?

[gid]

Yeah, but typing more than a sentence or two will make me go bald.

Re:when real learning needs to be done

[mikestew]

It wasn't modded down, he has crappy karma and starts at -1.

Re:Sounds like a training issue..

[Spad]

Having been in this situation twice in the last couple of years, I would bet the IT department did explain the limitations of the iPads and were overruled by the teachers who wanted shiny toys they could show off to their friends.

Re:What were they expecting?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Based to your UID, you're probably already bald.

Why did you tell me that?

[jockm]

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

Re:Why did you tell me that?

[minus9]

"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;"

Maybe if you had used a laptop it wouldn't have taken you all year. ;-)

Re:Sounds like a training issue..

[jedidiah]

But they are Apple products. They are not supposed to be a "training issue".