California university providing iPad Air bundle for 35,000 students

We have been told by critics and analysts that Apple has lost its mojo in the educational market. Chromebooks are the go-to choice for schools now. So what’s up with this story? There’s another story mentioned here about a school district switching from Chromebooks to iPads. 

I remember the good old days when parents would demand their school district buy Windows computers so their kids would learn how to use a REAL computer, one they would use in real life work. When my oldest son entered the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana the engineering lab was exclusively Macs running Mathematica. That must have been a shock to those parents and their kids.

If by "equity" they meant a mediocre experience for all, I'd say they nailed it. And device aside, I don't understand how education has sunk so low as to teach things which are tactile, real-world skills, using a digital device. Why not go out into the garden, get your hands dirty, and teach by example? This means the teacher has to actually know something, rather than being a stooge pointing to a device. The idea that they "...teach eighth-graders how to tend to the school's community garden" using an iPad...just sounds sad. Maybe I'm wrong.

Wow, what a sweet deal. I would have loved to have had this type of tool available to me for undergrad electrical engineering. The iPadOS 15 Quick Note feature along with the Pencil and Smart Keyboard should be very popular. Being able to take snapshots of whiteboards/chalkboards and have the lecture notes, reference material, and textbooks available in electronic format rather than trying to write stuff down during lectures would be totally awesome. Having access to all manner of calculators, scientific, business, graphing and conversion tools, drawing tools, Microsoft Excel, Word, Pages, etc., ... definitely a huge improvement over what we had back in the olden days.

amar99 said:

If by "equity" they meant a mediocre experience for all, I'd say they nailed it. And device aside, I don't understand how education has sunk so low as to teach things which are tactile, real-world skills, using a digital device. Why not go out into the garden, get your hands dirty, and teach by example? This means the teacher has to actually know something, rather than being a stooge pointing to a device. The idea that they "...teach eighth-graders how to tend to the school's community garden" using an iPad...just sounds sad. Maybe I'm wrong.

We're talking about college, not grade school. The assumption, which is usually wrong, is that most of your actual education has already occurred in K-12 with college being where you focus on "higher education." For me, this was true. College wasn't much more than regurgitating what I already learned in HS, including suing the same physics textbook. I did learn new things in my major but the rest was worthless. I went to college in the early 70's but at least back then there were technical classes beyond science ones. Now, I believe almost everything is non-technical, focusing on MBAs, legal degrees and things that really only need access to existing information, which can be found on-line. This doesn't include most science programs although many of those also have on-line resources that don't require local computing power. Even AutoCAD has web-based access and every single business program has web access to every database you want to learn about.

Your comment about "teaching by example" started to go away when I attended college. I learned how to set type using an old Linotype machine along with hand-setting type. My computer class required a card-punching typewriter. Neither of these are in use or even available anything in high schools much less colleges. I felt I was born either 20 years early or 20 years late because I went through the hell of staring with old technology and having to learn on the job all the new publishing technologies. Forty years of constant change blew my mind and nothing I did in K-12 and college really helped me get through those forty years, except reading, writing, and of course the other "R" arithmetic (stupid person who came up with the three R's who couldn't spell). 

Fast forward to 2021 and it doesn't really matter what tablet or fake computer you have, almost everything can be taught using on-line resources. This also means students don't have to purchase over-priced, professor-written, worthless textbooks you can't resell. For those people who want to be artists (open your mind to what an artist actually is), college isn't always the place to go. In fact, it was a waste of money for me, my parents, and the scholarships I received because the year I got out, I started working on electronic publication systems (this was prior to Macs and PCs), fixing the hardware, then managing a large scale in-house system that nobody in high school or college even dreamed about. What really makes me mad is kids are still pushed to waste money on college when the piece of paper they get doesn't get them a job that will pay off their college expenses. I actually think more current high school students are better prepared for the job market now without going to college and just learning on-the-job or taking specific on-line courses for the job they're working at. As for all the college graduates who end up working at food service and similar jobs, college really was a waste. 

Time to think differently about so-called higher education.

disclaimer: Of course scientific jobs benefit from higher education as long as the college has lots of money to support their labs.