Another loss for Apple in education, win for Chromebooks

[sekker]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-...-macbooks/

[btfc]

It seems like a loss for the students to me!

[sekker]

btfc wrote:
It seems like a loss for the students to me!

Not at all. The google software suite is preferred by many, many students over Apple and iCloud. My two high school/college kids are good examples. They love their Macs, but they are far more loyal to google.

My daughter has been wondering about getting a Chromebook in addition to her older Mac - let the Mac stay in her dorm room, only bring the Chromebook to classes.

[hal]

That's a biz that apple clearly doesn't want - they aren't even trying to compete. Apple is going after the top margins and that ain't low-cost, low level computing. It would be nice to use some of that excess billions to help out schools. They COULD play in that market, but choose not to. I'm sure the thinking use to be, get them on Apple when they are young and we'll have them hooked in adulthood. But the iPhone happened...

[Markintosh]

The story is different in my school. I have the one iPad lab in the school. Everyone else went to Chromebooks this year. Most of the students beg to check out one of the iPads when they are trying to get real work done.

Note they are 4+ year old iPad 2's! They much prefer Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Photos to the equivalent Google apps. They also can type faster on the virtual keyboard of an iPad than on the cheap keyboards of the Chromebooks...and if you need to use the trackpad for anything on a Chromebook, like a painting program - they would rather fail than use a CB.

FWIW, Apple will be upping the game with iPads for education with the release of iOS 9.3, which offers some awesome tools for classroom iPad management. Hope it's not too late!

[btfc]

Interesting, sekker. I can see the advantage to running around school with a $200 chromebook vs. a $1000 Mac. I'm not a big fan of iCloud and I haven't really used the Google software much, but I'm not a big fan of giving Google even more of my info than I already do. I'm guessing that user satisfaction would be based on how each platform is implemented though.

[C(-)ris]

I tried to get Chromebooks for some of our interns, but the lack of Office apps and being able to connect to Windows shares slammed that door shut. Both of which you can do on an iPad....

[jdc]

Cant argue with the cost.

Seems like everytime theres a budget crisis the first things people say are going to get cut are 'schools, fire and police" -- its never "the senators special interest groups" or "the new football stadium"

[Paul F.]

A Chromebook is not an iPad.
An iPad is not a Chromebook.

The Chromebooks do some things better than iPads. iPads do some things better than Chromebooks.

We have six class sets of Chromebooks, and we have at least three iPads in each class (more in the K-3 grades).

For educational apps, the iPads beat the Chromebooks all silly.
For web research and typing up papers, the Chromebooks rule.

Neither of them are a desktop computer.

[Ombligo]

Our district went all iPads and they make decent paperweights at the high school level.The teachers find them restrictive, the students find them frustrating. They are not useful for research or typing up material. The printers never seem to connect. Most textbook sites seem to use flash, making them incompatible.

The high schools all asked for Chromebooks (which were ~$100 cheaper) but were turned down by the school board (the self declared tech guru on it is a fanboy).

I'll admit a great deal of the frustration is because the iPads were dumped on the staff in two days with minimal training. So the first time there is an issue, it got set down and never picked back up.