Is a Super-Sized iPad the Future of Education?

theodp writes "Perhaps people are reading too much into Apple CEO Tim Cook's 'Big Plans' for 2014, but hopes are high that the New Year will bring a biggie-sized iPad. Over at Forbes, Anthony Wing Kosner asks, Will The Large Screen iPad Pro Be Apple's First In A Line Of Desktop Touch Devices?. 'Rumors of a large [12.9"] iPad are many and constant,' notes ComputerWorld's Mike Elgan, 'but they make sense only if the tablet is a desktop for schools.' Elgan adds, 'Lots of schools are buying iPads for kids to use. But iPads don't make a lot of sense for education. For starters, their screens are too small for the kinds of interactive textbooks and apps that Apple wants the education market to create. They're also too small for collaborative work. iPads run mobile browsers, rather than full browsers, so kids can't use the full range of HTML5 sites.' Saying that 'Microsoft has fumbled the [post-PC] transition badly,' Elgan argues that 'the battle for the future of education is likely to be between whatever Google turns the Chromebook into against whatever Apple turns the iPad into.'"

Comments

iDesk

[DigiShaman]

Just make an iDesk and be done with it already.

Re:iDesk

[ecotax]

Kids are just going to destroy, abuse, and lose the expensive tech.

You are overgeneralising. My youngest son goes to a school that uses iPads. The kids all take their iPad to school every day, and after one and a half year, his one is still in perfect condition, and I think the whole class had one 'accident' over that period. The school found a pretty simple solution to prevent this: the parents pay for the iPads themselves...

Re:iDesk

[red crab]

Expensive tech aside, this is an example of monopoly even worse than MSFT's. Schools should have a say only over the course content, and that can be in form of a generic app designed to run on any device, even on a $25 Android tablet.

Re:iDesk

[tompaulco]

You are overgeneralising. My youngest son goes to a school that uses iPads. The kids all take their iPad to school every day, and after one and a half year, his one is still in perfect condition, and I think the whole class had one 'accident' over that period. The school found a pretty simple solution to prevent this: the parents pay for the iPads themselves...

This is just stupid. An ipad is a specific device by a specific brand. They can tell you to bring a pencil or paper, and as long as it meets specifications, it doesn't matter what you bring. But to specify a certain brand of tablet is not right. First of all tablets are expensive. Only rich people or people who are bad with money can afford to have them for their children. I'm sure that Obama will buy them for the poor folks. But the middle class people are then left out. They can't afford to buy one because they are subsidizing them for the poor people. This is just corporate graft an d corruption to use our tax dollars to shore up an industry that is drowning in its own profits.

Re:iDesk

[jedidiah]

There's already lot of inequality in the learning environment. It's called suburbia.

Re:iDesk

[Dcnjoe60]

Expensive tech aside, this is an example of monopoly even worse than MSFT's. Schools should have a say only over the course content, and that can be in form of a generic app designed to run on any device, even on a $25 Android tablet.

That would really be doable, particularly if the course content is all in HTML5. Then any device with an HTML5 capable browser could access the content. If the content doesn't need to be interactive then straight HTML or PDF would suffice.

Of course, with such an open approach, it is hard for any one company to monopolize the system, which is probably why it won't be done.

Re:iDesk

[noh8rz10]

you can buy whatever brand tablet you like as long as they run iOS apps.

Re:iDesk

[mlts]

I thought of that, but it would replace bad public schools with bad private schools, likely owned by a large company which would pay the teachers and everyone minimum wage, provide a craptastic education, skim everything off the top, get lawmakers to enact barriers to entry, preventing smaller schools from being able to get by, and make life a living hell for any kids who are not willing to toe the line 100% until they graduate. It would be extremely doubtful for graduates to have an education good enough to even secure a berth in a tier 1 college versus the stiff foreign competition.

Re:iDesk

[morgauxo]

I think the problem the AC was getting at is that a tax-funded organization is making the decision that people will spend their money with a specific company. It's basically a case of the government deciding that Apple wins, Google and any other competitors lose. Free-market competion doesn't happen. If you make the assumption that kids will chose as adults the platform they started on all schools chosing iOS (and that's what they seem to be doing) creates a defacto command economy in the mobile market.

Re:iDesk

[BasilBrush]

Universal education is one of those things that are best done by the government rather than the private sector. It may not seem so because private schools do tend to get good exam results as things stand. But that's only because they select pupils, both literally, and as a result of kids with social problems not tending to have parents that are willing and able to pay the fees. Start paying private schools, to take every kid, at the same price per kid as government schools, and their results will dip below existing schools. Profits have to come from somewhere, and in such situations they come from cutting corners.

Re:iDesk

[BasilBrush]

You have a house to rent out, and yet you feel sorry for yourself? Because you feel poor people aren't as poor as you want them to be. How pathetic.

Tablets will be good in education

[rolfwind]

Idk, I don't think for kids bigger is better. I guess I know when I see it, but the current iPad is already heavy after a while for my hands.

But tablets in general will be awesome in education coupled with programs like DuoLingo. Some kids really need to learn at their own pace (with a minimum requirement), that factory like schoolrooms just don't provide.

But as much as I like Apple tablets, not for school. Just too expensive. I bought from Aldi a 7" $99 medion brand tablet for family recently (free and clear, no 2 year plans attached), and I'm impressed how competent it is. Not the most beautiful screen, some things take several clicks, and battery life isn't an iPad.... but it plays netflix, has skype and most other programs, and surfs the net, and google's voice to text was surprisingly good. $99. I was blown away. Who knows how cheap they will get. If a kid breaks or loses that, who cares compared to an iPad.

iPads do support HTML5

[MikeMo]

TFA is a bit fact-challenged. Safari on the iPad is not a "mobile browser" and supports HTML5 (although it could do better).

Re:iPads do support HTML5

[MikeMo]

Certainly touch support is significant (and is a rather obvious difference, no?) as is the small viewport, but these differences are not significant limitations and don't make it a "mobile browser". To me, the term "mobile browser" brings up the specter of the old browsers one typically found in phones before the iPhone, and it certainly isn't that. Aside from the size and touch issues, there are no major distinctions from the desktop version of Safari. Apple doesn't even bother to have a separate page of specs for the two browsers.

I have implemented two rather complicated web apps and Safari ran fine. Just make sure you don't depend on mouseovers and keep all of the element sizes dynamic (which you should do, anyway), and you're set.

Yes!

[amiga3D]

To heck with schools. I think I'd like one. Finally large enough to be able to use. The market for tiny devices for people with microscopic vision is saturated. Time for a tablet people can actually see. I looked at an iPad but it's just too small. The mini is okay as a book reader but I can use anything for that, no need to spend that kind of money on a book reader.

Need a stylus for math class

[sjbe]

Tablets for school make a lot less sense if you cannot write equations or draw detailed diagrams with them. A fingertip is simply too blunt an instrument to be used for writing equations or drawing - for that you need a stylus. I would dearly have loved to have a tablet for note taking when I was in school but not if I had to do it with my fingers. A keyboard is fine for taking notes if you are in something like an english class and a finger based touch interface is fine for navigation and reading. But to take notes in math class (or any class that uses equations or drawings) you absolutely have to have a stylus. I'm not sure how they are going to reconcile this problem in the current generation of tablets. They simply were not designed with a stylus in mind.

Note that not having a stylus isn't entirely a bad thing. Software developers have a terrible habit of mistaking a stylus for a mouse. A stylus should not be used for navigation. The sole purpose of stylus should be for drawing (diagrams, equations etc) which requires detail greater than can easily be achieved with a mouse or fingertip. While a stylus can be used for navigation, it does a pretty poor job of it.

The future of education

[qubex]

The future of education is human teachers teaching human kids.

Please stop using prospective educational uses to justify technolust. There’s no harm in wanting better gadgets, but there is harm in fixing things that aren’t broken.

The best thinkers in history were educated by people. I see absolutely no reason to replace competent, compassionate humans with impersonal and inflexible machines.

Re:The future of education

[ecotax]

The best thinkers in history were educated by people.

And the best teachers in the world have always used whatever tools could help hem in that. Crayons, cave walls, scrolls, blackboards, pens, notebooks, televisions, you name it. And now they have iPads.
Not to replace them, but to assist them.

Re:The future of education

[zlives]

"In the end, it doesn't matter what school district you reside in, or how much money they can throw at each child... expectations of good education from public schools are misplaced."

I beg to differ, though I agree that more money does not solve the problem, expectations of good education from a public school are certainly not misplaced.
The public school I attended, had recruited and retained great teachers from all over, including some from outside the country.
The administration and the parents takes education seriously, 80 percent of students go to some sort of higher education, graduation rates are above 98%... all from a public school.

Now!! how many schools are like this? and is there will to make "it" happen elsewhere? i don't have those answers.

I fear a monoculture

[Alain Williams]

whatever that monoculture is based on, especially in education. Pupils will just end up learning how to drive one device, become familiar with its applications (and implicitly whatever file formats and wire protocols underpin it) and conclude that everthing else is broken. They will then demand/expect future employers to use the same kit. We don't want the next 25 years to be dominated by Apple in the way that the last 25 years were dominated by Microsoft.

I even would not want a school system that had a monoculture based on some Linux distro, it is good for kids to have to understand what they are doing rather than just knowing which buttons to press - blindly. OK: Linux is not as bad since file formats & protocols are open and thus different products can compete.

Re:I fear a monoculture

[supercrisp]

As a professor, I'd welcome a monoculture. I'd love for all my students to have the same machine with the same OS and the same apps. Otherwise, every class with a computer component becomes a class in teaching half the students how to change systems settings or whatever on different machines. The average student doesn't have any great computer competence, despite the "digital natives" hype. They can get on Facebook or use Google, but inserting a header in a document or hooking up to an external monitor is beyond them. I can really understand why other educators would want a "monoculture." (However, I think the emphasis on computers in education is misplaced and overhyped. My students, at the college level, would benefit much more from learning touch typing and a few basics than from whatever malarky they're being taught now.)

Re:I fear a monoculture

[Alain Williams]

If the students are not competent with the tools that they have then should your college not provide remedial classes ? They would if a student could not speak English (or whatever) or had problems in writing or maths. It should not be down to you as a professor in something (I assume not computing) to provide that education - but down to your college.

There is an unfortunate assumption made by many employers (also colleges, etc) that people do understand how to: use a computer file system; use a word processor; write emails that others can understand; ... This is often false (or their knowledge is rudimentary) with the result that huge amounts of time are wasted. These skills need to be taught - unfortunately many school teachers that I have come across only have a hazy understanding themselves; these skills are rarely taught to adults.

Title is moronic.

[no_go]

-20 , Title is moronic.

Why should any product (commercial or otherwise) be the future of education ?
The future of education isn't on buzzwords/marketing items/products with a limited shelf life.
It's on philosophies, methods and concepts.

Sorta makes sense

[motang]

Given it's ease of use, it sorta makes sense to have it in schools lower grades.

Technology is not a panacea for education's ills

[Akratist]

While I admire the willingness of the tech industry to try to find solutions to some of the issues with education, the real issue that is being missed is that education's problems, at least in America, are cultural, not technical. It's been shown in numerous studies that parental attitude toward education is the single biggest predictor in educational success. Unfortunately, we're a culture where people are focused on entertainment and sports, where parents may be working two or three jobs, and where education itself is looked at by many as a burden, instead of as learning how to use a knowledge as a tool to bring success in life.

Re:Technology is not a panacea for education's ill

[qubex]

I absolutely agree.

Let’s remember that all those figures in history (both recent and remote) whom we admire were educated the old way: by one-on-one contact between educators and children. Tech industry’s drive to replace that quintessentially human bond with mechanistic devices strikes me as fundamentally misguided.

Wanting better technology is fine. However the best technology for dealing with people (particularly kids) is still other people.

It seems like we’re on the verge of institutionalising autism.

Re:Tablets will make a difference

[Pumpkin Tuna]

From a principal’s publication in 1815: “Students today depend on paper too much. They don’t know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?”
From Rural American Teacher, 1928: “Students today depend upon store bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education.”
From Federal Teachers, 1950: “Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Businesses and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.”
From a science fair judge in Apple Classroom of Tomorrow chronicles, 1988: “Computers give students an unfair advantage. Therefore, students who used computers to analyze data or create displays will be eliminated from the science fair.”

Re:Elgan is a Google sycophant; biased in the extr

[postbigbang]

Dude, understand what an intraveneous abbreviation is. IV, as in his freaking veins.

We already have a standard math notation

[sjbe]

I find text-only entry to be very comfortable.

That makes you very unusual. While I applaud your flexibility on the matter, it is not nearly so easy a matter to get the entire global population on a new mathematical notation. Frankly I have zero interest in using a different notation when doing so provides me no additional value. Putting a stylus on to a tablet is a MUCH easier solution for note taking than trying to retrain everyone on some new notation. Those who have a specialized need for different notation (such as yourself) are not hindered in any way by providing technology to utilize the standard notation.

Mathematica even has photoshop-style palettes if you wish to choose familiar notations.

VERY awkward for note taking which needs to happen quickly. You need a notation that can be done with a pencil and paper and which does not change.

Don’t confuse mathematics with mathematics notation. The latter is totally arbitrary and can easily be replaced

I'm not confusing them a bit. We have a standard mathematical notation already which works just fine. Yes it is arbitrary and no it cannot be "easily" replaced. You are seriously proposing that we suddenly have everyone throw out the math notation we have been using for centuries just because it doesn't easily work on a keyboard? The economic cost alone makes this a prohibitively bad idea. Do you have any concept of the amount of retraining that would be required? Providing a stylus and some decent note taking software is a MUCH cheaper and simpler and better solution than trying to retrain everyone to some new keyboard friendly notation. Look up what Richard Feynman had to say about changing notations when he tried to invent one.

Nothing education centric about these

[onyxruby]

I worked at a University for a few years where we had thousands of staff tablets. I can assure you that the tablets never got used for anything other than consuming content, status symbols and brief emails or notes. Even when they were actually used to produce content it's always easy to tell when an email was written on a tablet due to the short and abbreviated way it was composed.

If your in school you should be there to produce content (homework, research etc) and for that a tablet is the worst choice possible, and it's no different for industry or government. It's the one thing Microsoft got right about the Surface, give it an integrated keyboard to make it feasible to actually produce content. Without the keyboard your left with a consumption device or a status symbol.

That being said, if Apple makes a 12.9" tablet, there are a lot of people that would buy it for a content consumption device just like they do with any other apple tablet. Apple should make it just for all the people that would appreciate a larger tablet for lounging around the house with and it would do quite well there, especially if it gets the upgraded screen that was talked about. But don't fool yourself into thinking that a larger tablet would have a damn thing to do with either education or producing content.

Simple answer

[daem0n1x]

No.

tablets suck for education

[whistlingtony]

Part of educating is creating, messing up, creating some more. Tinkering. Ipads(and all tablets really) SUCK at creation. They are content consumption devices. They are nothing more than smart TVs in your hand. Stop giving them to kids!

Can I code on a tablet? No thank you. Can I pick one up in shop class and do the math to figure out the angle of a roof beam? No thank you. Can I sketch out a new idea? Maaaaaybe? Can I easily take notes on it? No thank you. Can I use it to take pictures of all the steps in a chemistry or physics experiment? Yes! Can I use it to record all the temperatures from said experiment? No thank you. Ok, yes, I can do all those things, but it takes FOREVER on a tablet.

Sad fact, to do meaningful work, tablets need KEYBOARDS!!!! To consume media, all I have to do is point and click. To CREATE(at any sane speed), a keyboard is necessary.

Get off my lawn!

two cheaper tables joined together?

[peter303]

Several eyars back MicroSoft toyed with the FlipBook tablet - two page-size tablets side-by-side and foldable. You could fold it to fit into a purse or briefcase. An author could make one tablet text dominant and the other graphics dominant.

Barnes and Noble had similar split screen tablet at one time, except one screen was LCD and the other e-paper employing the advantages of each.

Nearly all of my desktops the past 15 years have had 2 or 3 full size screens. I put code on one side and the applciation on the other. Or browser on one side and text terminals on the other.

No, tech alone will not save education

[boteeka]

--rant--

I am always amazed how everyone seem to think that throwing money at the educational issues will somehow solve them. The biggest problem is not with the lack of funding in general especially in western countries (although there are exceptions).

The biggest problem lies much deeper than that in the fabric of society itself. Parents just want the state to take the problem of properly raising their children away from them. They send their children to public schools and expect that the children will be educated so they don't have to do it themselves.

Look at the standardized testing system. It is utter BS. The notion that all children across a country or even across borders have to be tested against (more or less) the same set of standards is just nonsense. It's a tool of the establishment to dumb them down and make everyone conforming and easier to control.

Add to this this kind of corporate agenda pushing like give children iPads. Sure Apple gets to make a good money on it and expand their market share and vendor lock-in while the taxpayers will subsidize the cost for little or no benefit for the children. Even if we agree that tablets are useful in education, why does it have to be iPads? A single brand of tablets? And arguably the priciest.

And what sorts of things can you use a tablet to enhance education? Provide cheap/free textbooks which won't wear out? Doesn't happen, because of copyright issues. You will have to sell a copy to all children. And every couple of years the textbooks get rewritten so that somebody makes more money on it. In the days when I was a kid, the school issued paperback textbooks which were re-used year after year until they were completely worn out.

You would think that with the digital textbooks all this is solved: no wear and tear, you can make many copies of it for absolutely no cost, can be upgraded whenever necessary for free. Guess what: it does not happen! Even worse, it probably costs more nowadays then back in the days. Just because of stupid copyright issues and the push for constant consumption for the benefit of a few large corporate entities.

--/rant--

Anyway, Happy New Year to all of you, fellow Slashdotters!