West Virginia school system gears up to switch from Chromebooks to iPads

A West Virginia Board of educators has unanimously voted to switch from Chromebooks to iPad for its staff as part of a pilot program to bring Apple products to the secondary level over the next few years.

The proposal was brought before the Berkeley County Board of Education on July 5 and included 180 iPads, Apple Pencils, iPad cases, and Apple TVs for teachers at pilot schools. The purchase was quoted at $110,000 and will come from grant funding.

The pilot schools included Martinsburg High School, South Middle School, and Musselman Middle School.

Previously, the school district had been using Chromebooks, but several staff members had approached the school board asking for alternatives.

Eventually, the goal is to bring iPads and Apple devices to students, though the process will likely take a few years.

"Instead of jumping all in, we want to make this a slow process," Assistant Director of instructional technology Maranda Ralph said. "At the end of the day, it's really not about a device; it's about improving instruction."

In April, Scotland pledged to give every student in Edinburg an iPad as part of the "Edinburgh Learns for Life" initiative. Currently, that program seeks to purchase 39,000 iPads for students and staff.

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9 Comments

Anilu_777 577 comments · 8 Years

About 3 years ago

Good. Students need to learn on something that isn’t going to spy on them. As an example, my workplace banned YouTube as a threat. Not a workplace diversion but the IT pop up said it was a threat and would be disabled.

cashxx 114 comments · 12 Years

Both Chromebook's and iPads are garbage and too locked down and not as intuitive as macOS or Windows. Get MacBook Air's or something.

iOS_Guy80 899 comments · 5 Years

At the end of the day it better be about the device.

GeorgeBMac 11421 comments · 8 Years

cashxx said:

Both Chromebook's and iPads are garbage and too locked down and not as intuitive as macOS or Windows. Get MacBook Air's or something.

For education, my experience is that neither a MacBook nor an iPad will cut it.   You need both.
I assisted my 8th grade grandson through 8th grade cyberschool and we needed both:   a tablet & pencil for solving algebra problems, drawing diagrams and graphs as well as a laptop for typing essay questions and doing research papers. In theory a tablet could do it all -- but in practice, even with a keyboard and trackpad, the iPad was too limited. It could physically do it (say if somebody else was using his MacBook), but it was a pain the ass and made school work even more obnoxious than it inherently is.

But, in this case, the iPads are initially being rolled out to teachers and they say that they'll go slow. And, Apple is constantly (but slowly) enhancing the iPad.   So, maybe it will be up to the task by the time they roll it out to students.   That would be good.

neilm 1000 comments · 16 Years

cashxx said:

Both Chromebook's and iPads are garbage and too locked down and not as intuitive as macOS or Windows. Get MacBook Air's or something.

Says the guy who can't correctly spell the names of two out of the three products he mentions.
No education for you!