Apple creates iPad-based at-home learning program for kids enduring COVID-19 lockdowns

Last updated 4 years ago

With many children out of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple on Thursday published a collection of 30 educational activities that leverage iOS technologies to teach young learners a range of useful lessons.

Aptly dubbed "30 Creative Activities for Kids," the program is designed to foster and support at-home learning for children ages 4 through 8 years old, or pre-kindergarten to second grade.

Apple relies on iPad's — or iPhone's — built-in technologies to guide kids through a series of challenges like capturing a time-lapse video, creating a comic strip, making cards and more. Along with projects that yield tangible results are esoteric thinking puzzles, like writing sentences and phrases using emoji characters.

Many activities tap into iPad's camera and first-party apps. For example, Apple suggests making a simple storybook by adding photos and video to a template in Pages, writing captions and decorating each page with drawings.

Other projects involve recording audio messages with the Voice Memos app and sharing them via Messages or Mail, using the audio recorder in Garage Band to practice skip counting, creating a photo walk with Keynote and asking Siri to tell a joke.

"We know parents out there are juggling a lot in this challenging time. Apple's education team has some fun ways to keep kids everywhere creating," CEO Tim Cook said in a tweet.

For more fun activities, Apple points parents to its "Everyone Can Create Teacher Guide for Early Learners" e-book, available for free on Apple Books.

Today's activities list follows the March release of the Apple Education Learning Series, a collection of videos that helps educators facilitate remote learning with Apple devices.

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7 Comments

KTR 280 comments · 4 Years

About 4 years ago

Would be a good time to learn coding from home too.

GeorgeBMac 11421 comments · 8 Years

About 4 years ago

Perhaps more significantly, Apple is helping strapped New York switch to online learning. As reported by CNBC on April 5th:

"The first challenge for many schools has been making sure each student has access to an internet-connected device. At Harvest Collegiate High School near Manhattan’s Union Square, math teacher Julia Shube said about 50 of 450 students initially said they’d need a computer, but once it became clear the school would move to remote learning, that number doubled.

“Even if you have a computer at home, you might have three siblings and you’re going to end up vying for that computer at some point,” Willie said. When his school surveyed students, 85% said they had a computer at home but almost 70% said they would still like to sign out a computer if given the opportunity.

To supplement the 175,000 devices schools have already given out, the DOE said it’s working with Apple and T-Mobile to provide LTE-enabled iPads to 300,000 public school students without access to devices for their school work. The agency said on its website it’s receiving about 50,000 iPads a week from Apple. Its partners at IBM then set them to get them connected to the internet and activate appropriate content filters."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/how-nyc-public-schools-are-shifting-online-during-the-coronavirus.html

gatorguy 24608 comments · 13 Years

About 4 years ago

GeorgeBMac said:

Perhaps more significantly, Apple is helping strapped New York switch to online learning. As reported by CNBC on April 5th:

"The first challenge for many schools has been making sure each student has access to an internet-connected device. At Harvest Collegiate High School near Manhattan’s Union Square, math teacher Julia Shube said about 50 of 450 students initially said they’d need a computer, but once it became clear the school would move to remote learning, that number doubled.
“Even if you have a computer at home, you might have three siblings and you’re going to end up vying for that computer at some point,” Willie said. When his school surveyed students, 85% said they had a computer at home but almost 70% said they would still like to sign out a computer if given the opportunity.
To supplement the 175,000 devices schools have already given out, the DOE said it’s working with Apple and T-Mobile to provide LTE-enabled iPads to 300,000 public school students without access to devices for their school work. The agency said on its website it’s receiving about 50,000 iPads a week from Apple. Its partners at IBM then set them to get them connected to the internet and activate appropriate content filters."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/how-nyc-public-schools-are-shifting-online-during-the-coronavirus.html

Good on Apple! Well deserved kudos and doubly cool that most will be running Google Classroom on them according to the article, effectively techs in partnership.
(Edit: Is Apple donating those iPads? Not at all clear)

Wonderful to see the big techs step up with donation of hardware and services, Google donating Chromebooks and hotspots in California for instance and a $200M fund for assistance to small businesses and hospitals, Avidnade in Washington State donating Microsoft computers and software to families with school children.

On top of that there have been major financial donations for mitigating Covid-19 impacts from the likes of Michael and Susan Dell (Dell computers) to the tune of $100Million and Jack Dorsey (Twitter and Square) donating a massive $1Billion (yeah a $B), almost a third of his total net worth. Then there's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation investing $Billions in funding factories tasked with developing a vaccine against the disease and that's on top of the $100M he already personally donated earlier.

We're all in this together, forget about the business competition and petty, disruptive, distracting, and totally unhelpful politicizing for now. Big tech is stepping up to the plate, say thank you.

GeorgeBMac 11421 comments · 8 Years

About 4 years ago

gatorguy said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Perhaps more significantly, Apple is helping strapped New York switch to online learning. As reported by CNBC on April 5th:

"The first challenge for many schools has been making sure each student has access to an internet-connected device. At Harvest Collegiate High School near Manhattan’s Union Square, math teacher Julia Shube said about 50 of 450 students initially said they’d need a computer, but once it became clear the school would move to remote learning, that number doubled.
“Even if you have a computer at home, you might have three siblings and you’re going to end up vying for that computer at some point,” Willie said. When his school surveyed students, 85% said they had a computer at home but almost 70% said they would still like to sign out a computer if given the opportunity.
To supplement the 175,000 devices schools have already given out, the DOE said it’s working with Apple and T-Mobile to provide LTE-enabled iPads to 300,000 public school students without access to devices for their school work. The agency said on its website it’s receiving about 50,000 iPads a week from Apple. Its partners at IBM then set them to get them connected to the internet and activate appropriate content filters."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/how-nyc-public-schools-are-shifting-online-during-the-coronavirus.html

Good on Apple! Well deserved kudos and doubly cool that most will be running Google Classroom on them according to the article, effectively techs in partnership.
(Edit: Is Apple donating those iPads? Not at all clear)

Wonderful to see the big techs step up with donation of hardware and services, Google donating Chromebooks and hotspots in California for instance and a $200M fund for assistance to small businesses and hospitals, Avidnade in Washington State donating Microsoft computers and software to families with school children.

On top of that there have been major financial donations for mitigating Covid-19 impacts from the likes of Michael and Susan Dell (Dell computers) to the tune of $100Million and Jack Dorsey (Twitter and Square) donating a massive $1Billion (yeah a $B), almost a third of his total net worth. Then there's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation investing $Billions in funding factories tasked with developing a vaccine against the disease and that's on top of the $100M he already personally donated earlier.

We're all in this together, forget about the business competition and petty, disruptive, distracting, and totally unhelpful politicizing for now. Big tech is stepping up to the plate, say thank you.

Further, Google and Apple are teaming up to provide contact tracing (unfortunately not until May). That is the route of every country I know of who has successfully managed the virus: widespread testing combined with effective contact tracing to limit the number of infectious people roaming the streets, stores, businesses and factories:
Apple and Google team up to track spread of coronavirus using iPhone and Android apps
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/apple-google-team-up-to-track-coronavirus-spread-using-iphone-android.html

gatorguy 24608 comments · 13 Years

About 4 years ago

GeorgeBMac said:

gatorguy said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Perhaps more significantly, Apple is helping strapped New York switch to online learning. As reported by CNBC on April 5th:

"The first challenge for many schools has been making sure each student has access to an internet-connected device. At Harvest Collegiate High School near Manhattan’s Union Square, math teacher Julia Shube said about 50 of 450 students initially said they’d need a computer, but once it became clear the school would move to remote learning, that number doubled.
“Even if you have a computer at home, you might have three siblings and you’re going to end up vying for that computer at some point,” Willie said. When his school surveyed students, 85% said they had a computer at home but almost 70% said they would still like to sign out a computer if given the opportunity.
To supplement the 175,000 devices schools have already given out, the DOE said it’s working with Apple and T-Mobile to provide LTE-enabled iPads to 300,000 public school students without access to devices for their school work. The agency said on its website it’s receiving about 50,000 iPads a week from Apple. Its partners at IBM then set them to get them connected to the internet and activate appropriate content filters."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/how-nyc-public-schools-are-shifting-online-during-the-coronavirus.html

Good on Apple! Well deserved kudos and doubly cool that most will be running Google Classroom on them according to the article, effectively techs in partnership.
(Edit: Is Apple donating those iPads? Not at all clear)

Wonderful to see the big techs step up with donation of hardware and services, Google donating Chromebooks and hotspots in California for instance and a $200M fund for assistance to small businesses and hospitals, Avidnade in Washington State donating Microsoft computers and software to families with school children.

On top of that there have been major financial donations for mitigating Covid-19 impacts from the likes of Michael and Susan Dell (Dell computers) to the tune of $100Million and Jack Dorsey (Twitter and Square) donating a massive $1Billion (yeah a $B), almost a third of his total net worth. Then there's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation investing $Billions in funding factories tasked with developing a vaccine against the disease and that's on top of the $100M he already personally donated earlier.

We're all in this together, forget about the business competition and petty, disruptive, distracting, and totally unhelpful politicizing for now. Big tech is stepping up to the plate, say thank you.

Further, Google and Apple are teaming up to provide contact tracing (unfortunately not until May). That is the route of every country I know of who has successfully managed the virus: widespread testing combined with effective contact tracing to limit the number of infectious people roaming the streets, stores, businesses and factories:
Apple and Google team up to track spread of coronavirus using iPhone and Android apps
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/apple-google-team-up-to-track-coronavirus-spread-using-iphone-android.html

Thanks for the link, which AI now has an article up about.

So why are two leading Democratic Senators complaining? Silliness on display, politics invading every good initiative, and putting themselves in the way. Can't they at least take a breather until Covid-19 has been dealt with, which is far more important than petty political differences.