Apple doesn't give a shit about your kids

boing
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I wasn’t proposing “BYOD” – I was just pointing out the differences between the brave new world of Technology in the Classroom and the very limited though valid use case you brought up.

Your point is ignoring the actual argument I am making, which is that “Technology in the Classroom” leads to even more students that don’t listen in class than we would otherwise have.

She wasn’t allowing them – she didn’t realize that with that particular class she would have to go through the time and trouble (~5 minutes or more of classtime lost every day) of collecting their phones at the beginning of class. The reason for this is partially because she had a different section of the same class that didn’t have these same struggles – those kids could handle the temptation.

(Not foolproof by the way. I’ve heard of kids bringing two smart phones so that when the teacher collects one they can keep using the other.)

As far as seeing the kids use the smart phones when they should have been listening – kids are actually pretty good at figuring out how to get away with stuff. They hold it behind the desk where the teacher can’t see it and glance down at it when they’re pretty sure the teacher isn’t looking.

“Calling them out on it” doesn’t do much to make them actually stop using it. They often put it away and then take it out again when the teacher isn’t looking. Or in some cases just not put it away because it’s not like there’s much a teacher can do to make a student do something he or she doesn’t want to do.

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If I were Apple, I’d consider the education market a loss leader – that is, I’d sell everything to these kids and teachers essentially at cost + handling, and I’d consider my profit to be the indoctrination of the kids into my app and hardware ecosystem.

I know it works, because I started with an iPhone and now I am hopelessly ensnared in the Apple ecosystem and don’t know how to escape. My partner and my entire family use iPhones, and every time I mention moving to an Android device they all panic, as if my text bubbles turning from blue to green would fundamentally change who I am as a human being. They didn’t care nearly as much when they found out I was gay …

But, I have an iPhone, so it makes sense to have an iPad, since my eyes aren’t the greatest anymore and the bigger screen is great for when I’m on the sofa or reading in bed, right? Totally logical. And since I have an iPhone and an iPad, it just makes sense that I’d have a MacBook Pro also, for things that the iPad can’t quite do yet. And so forth.

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Lookit that, a one sentence explanation of what went wrong with every failed US educational initiative in my lifetime.

That is the classic model for the last 50 years, yes. And not just Apple, but pretty much all computer companies. The University of Delaware has received discounted hardware and free software since the 1960s at least.

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I wish it was that intentional. Unfortunately, I think the reality is that just like most consumers, the district and tech admin really don’t understand what they’re doing and the access they’re granting. They see a free app and buy in to the assurances that the ads the kids are seeing are “age appropriate” and say “good enough for me!”

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I came to post (after reading through) to simply say - I think Apple does care, and this feels a bit like an “If you hate Apple click here” kind of thing.

Your post states it much better. Thanks

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This kind of feels like an anti-bb post to me, not because I expect bb posts to heap praise on Apple (by any means), but because it’s so… cranky and bitter. You know? It feels grudgeful. Not buying the hype is always valid advice, but coming to it at the end of this piece I kind of feel like buying a little bit of the hype just on general principle.

I do fully appreciate that the bb in my head is a) in my head and b) my own responsibility.

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WTAF. Is this Gawker?

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In a recent passport post Seamus said he has imposter syndrome. I wonder if this generalizes to being paranoid about others being imposters.

A friend made the argument to me that corporations are people because they are made of people. I disagree; corporations develop their own antisocial personality which is much larger and stronger than the morals of the individuals involved. Expecting them to care is setting yourself up for disappointment. Sure antisocial people can be useful. Many of not most politicians are antisocial and yet they sometimes do things that benefit me as side effects of their mission. Don’t expect too much of corporations (or yourself) and you won’t be disappointed.

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No need to explain. It doesn’t feel like a BB post at all. It feels like a cheap click bait Gawker post.

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I would say that, to me, it feels like Seamus is taking his cues from the Doctorow School of BoingBoing, rather than the Frauenfelder School of BoingBoing. Going straight for outrage and controversy, rather than something joyous and wonderful. Something that diminishes our faith in humanity, rather than restoring it.

I know which I prefer.

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You are not all teachers and your students are not all students. There are schools that have implemented 1-1 tablet/computer policies where the teachers are pleased with the result. As @Chuck_Steel says, teaching methods that worked in the pre internet era do not work with 1-1 deployment.

Making computing devices in the classroom (tablets or notebooks) universal liberates you from a huge list of paper-based restrctions, from needing to keep within a photocopying budget, to not being able to integrate intelligent and critical internet use into the day to day curriculum. Computers in the classroom are a tool, with the power to benefit or harm teaching depending on how they are used. Ranting against them as distraction machines blinds you to the benefits they can provide, and have provided to other teachers in other schools than yours.

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So many back and shoulder problems in my cohort of late GenXers, starting in our late teens and early 20s. Yes, some of our problems are due to our stupid pastimes, but we also started carrying backpacks weighing a quarter of our body weight by 4th grade. Soft tissue damage is harder to heal than bones, too.

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The best anyone can hope for is the win-win, wherein the company is able to operate profitably and the customers are able to realize more value than they’ve paid.

Any other outcome is exploitative.

The more relevant question is:
Would you rather have the customers be only parents and students, buying hardware + software?
Or do you want that hardware + software to subsidized (in part or whole) by advertising customers, buying data harvested from students?

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It sounds to me like this is a very strong argument for more tablet / digital access in libraries, which is also the context where I’d expect those kind of classes to take place.

What an awesome observation about print vs cursive! I’d not heard this argument before, and never liked cursive because I’m terrible at it, most likely due to lack of use / practice.

I’d love to see grade-school curriculum evolve to embrace the efficient yet difficult to learn, rather than simply what’s easy, traditional or common. E.g.: Gregg Shorthand is even better… from the wiki article: (emphasis added)

Speeds of 280 WPM (where a word is 1.4 syllables) have been reached with this system before, and those notes are still legible to others who know the system.

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Here’s the thing: unless specific class time is set aside for library use, a library as a school resource gets about half the students to use it, assuming the library is fully staffed, accessible, and every student feels fully welcome all the time by every staff member. Cut hours, cut staffing (which many public schools have done) and the percentage drops. Even one subtly racist staff member, or just one who had a bad day and was rude once to one kid, can discourage use. So putting tablets/computers in the library is automatically limiting access because there will be kids who just don’t feel confident enough showing their vulnerability to go in search of information.

Being in the state of learning is a deeply vulnerable state; it’s admitting that you don’t know and can’t figure it out on your own. This may not be a big deal for a kid who has all of the various securities: food, medical care, housing, economic and family. That kid has a big vulnerability budget they can afford to spend. But a kid who has lots of points of insecurity? They don’t have a budget to spend, and may not have the words to articulate how vulnerable they are. They just know they can’t afford to protect themselves more, so they stay out of an environment where they have to open another front to defend.

The one place they may feel confident is in their fifth period English class, because that teacher connects with and encourages them, they’ve got enough calories (thanks to school lunch) to fully engage for that hour, and they’re confident enough in their writing skill to spare just a little vulnerability. (Or whatever class, whatever time, whatever skill.) That kid needs the ability to access further information in the space they feel most comfortable, with guidance they trust.

When we design systems for privileged kids, we perpetuate the privilege. When we design to compensate for as many points of vulnerability as we can, we extend privilege until it becomes egalitarian. And that’s the point of public education.

On cursive versus print… it’s a cognitive argument that came out of both cognitive language studies and the d’Nealean movement, which teaches a form of italic script that flows like cursive, but can serve as print. (My personal spin, from observing multiple kids with writing disorders, is start with sturdy-nib fountain pens or flowing markers, not crayons and pencils, which both require a lot of pressure and fine control. Apparently, this is in test with occupational therapists.) It’s been around for about 20 years, once we started realizing the flaws in hard phonics language learning.

As for short-hand… eh. Not anymore. We’d have to retrain the 75% of the population who are adults, and we have technology (recorders, speech to text) that do the job pretty well. The point is to teach one form of script, that’s as much like how our brains process language as possible, and maximizes the writing acquisition time, without changing methods the moment minimal competence is achieved.

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Oh, I know, and I’m not shocked at all. I was fortunate to get a grade-school education in a county that did have a tech budget, and this was back in the 80’s when Apple IIe’s were the norm. But sadly, I’ve seen enough schools and districts to know that all too often the tech budget gets cut down to the bone, or free computers languish due to being broken/outmoded, or hey, labs collecting dust because there isn’t money in the budget for computer teachers. Without a rigorous program backed by a steady budget, teaching technology to kids in school can rapidly become an outright sham. My apologies for being glib.

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They need to sit on more money than some entire countries? For what end? To make the shareholders even richer than they already are?

they are doing this because the schools often can’t afford to buy students BASIC NEEDS FOR THEIR EDUCATION. I know for a fact in some school districts, PTA aren’t fund raising for extras for the kids - they are raising money for basic maintenance FOR THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

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Good that have you have choices not everyone can afford to live in better school districts.

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11th-doc-this

(just not the google variants)

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Schools can run Linux on much older, simpler machines and get more out of them. Support is decent, its cheap/free, and if schools were clever they’d set up their computer classes around learning how to make apps/software/code for Linux and create a self-sustaining system where the students are helping develop the school’s open source software.

Talking about this, it reminds me of way back in the day in middle school we used to use a program called Logo Writer to learn how to do basic coding and you could make animations, create music, quizzes, simple games, etc. It was awesome :slight_smile:

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