US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands(finance.yahoo.com) |
US Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks for MacBooks by the Thousands(finance.yahoo.com) |
Chromebooks can be had for cheaper, but if a school district was on the fence before about moving to Macs, then Apple made the decision much easier for them.
There isn't a guarantee, if you'd give a child a nice looking thing, that a child would care. But given a piece of junk, they'd surely would not, that is guaranteed.
The price is also close enough that its probably worth the migration.
I think Google completely failed to capitalize on its lead, and is probably making things worse by replacing the platform with Android and rebranding things.
Plus I don't think schools are ready to have to deal with managing glorified Android laptops now that Google signaled their wholesale abandonment of the Chromebook platform.
When?
It's not just Chromebooks but Windows machines. Schools really should be providing OS-agnostic computer education, and for that they really should support any machine, especially Windows machines which more easily support changing their OS.
This just changes from having them teach "click this Windows-specific icon to do this" to "click this Mac-specific icon to do this".
Schools are still being used as a tool of OS companies to lock-in users for life.
If they want to game, they’ll eventually get a Windows PC. Even if the school district doesn’t deploy Macs, they’ll likely end up with a Mac by the time of college anyway. And tomorrow won’t the Year of Desktop Linux either, unless Microsoft really really botches Windows.
Which should make things easier to educate OS-neutrally.
> and the primary software kids will be using regardless of hardware is likely either G Suite or Microsoft Office depending on what the school district prefers.
That's what I object to.
Look, I've seen university entrance exams with computer literacy exams that asked "which button does X?" and then present Excel-specific icons for multiple choice answers.
I've seen accountants throw their hands up in defeat when presented with a spreadsheet program that wasn't Excel because they needed a particular button with a particular little drawing on it and it wasn't there. Their IT would often use the analogy, it's like they're put in a car of a different brand than what they're used to and lost all ability to operate the vehicle because the dashboard looks different.
They don't feel confident in trying anything that remotely differs from the particular products they were taught to use in school.
This isn't so much a problem of there being no common ground, but rather how narrowly are schools presenting these things?
It was already difficult with a class attempting to follow instructions in a single OS; if a teacher had to be giving three sets (at least three!) of instructions to a bunch of kids, they realistically wouldn't get anything done in the 50 minutes they have each week.
I could see a proposal to using one trimester for Windows, one trimester for Mac and one for Linux - because it genuinely is kind of hard to switch from one to the other, and it would be useful if kids had a basic familiarity with all three. (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?)
You take the same approach with programs (web browsers as opposed to simply Chrome, spreadsheets as opposed to simply Excel, etc.).
Once they have the common ground, you can expand on differences, but always OS- and program-neutral, because schools shouldn't be a marketing tool.
The idea is that students should be able to use any computer in a very basic extent. It doesn't take much.
> (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?)
You pick the one that has the most common ground with the other OSes.
> Which should make things easier to educate OS-neutrally.
It also makes it unnecessary to teach minute differences. If a student needs to make a switch later for educational, vocational or interest-based reasons, they can figure out the minute differences or seek help.
>> and the primary software kids will be using regardless of hardware is likely either G Suite or Microsoft Office depending on what the school district prefers.
> That's what I object to.
I figured you would, but again: anybody will learn any system they need to because of either work, education or personal reasons. People don’t switch off Excel & don’t want to switch off of Excel because they don’t have to. If you’re only ever going to learn exactly one spreadsheet app in your life, Excel is the one you probably want to learn, unless you don’t strictly need Excel for your vocation, then you can make the choice yourself. Options exist, but it’s fine to treat Excel like the default, because it is.