Will Apple continue to lose ground in education to the Chromebook?

[Ken Magel]

Apple had a special event yesterday to announce a new Ipad, a lot of educational software. Was this enough to restore Apple's formerly leading role in K-12 education, or did Apple fail to make Ipad's inexpensive enough and easy enough for school districts (not just individual teachers in individual classrooms) to manage? Will Apple continue to lose ground in education to the Chromebook?

 

[Ken Magel]

Educational prices:
New IPad 9.7: $299
Apple Pencil: $89
Apple Keyboard: $150 (???)
Cover for IPad: $50 plus

versus
Chromebook for $200

 

[Just_Me_D]

That depend on the location, in my opinion. In my neck of the woods, iPads appear to be the device of choice for schools.

 

[iN8ter]

That's more an exception than the rule. It depends on education budget, and most districts would rather save money than spend it on iPads. ChromeOS is killing it right now.

 

[Pete Tete]

That's more an exception than the rule. It depends on education budget, and most districts would rather save money than spend it on iPads. ChromeOS is killing it right now.

It is not even a question of what they would rather, it's dwindling education budgets everywhere. Apple has to undercut ChromeOS if they want to be a player in this field, and they are not. Each educational iPad is considerably more expensive than a Chromebook, which makes this a no-brainer for most schools. I have 4 kids in 3 different schools, all 4 of them use Chromebooks in classrooms and Google Classroom / Docs for homework.

 

[Just_Me_D]

That's more an exception than the rule. It depends on education budget, and most districts would rather save money than spend it on iPads. ChromeOS is killing it right now.

You may very well be right, but I can only go by what I'm witnessing.

 

[Golfdriver97]

It is not even a question of what they would rather, it's dwindling education budgets everywhere. Apple has to undercut ChromeOS if they want to be a player in this field, and they are not.

I am inclined to agree with both points. Chrome OS is very budget friendly, and Apple would have to do major cuts to the price tag in order to compete.

 

[Ken Magel]

In the education market, it appears Apple intends to compete on the basis of what teachers and students can do with its products, especially software, rather than on price. The Anyone Can Create curriculum outlined at the Apple event has a lot of flash and maybe quite a bit of important functionality. Will it be enough? Will Apple continue to expand it quickly enough?

 

[Lee_Bo]

It really depends on the market. I my line of work (pro a/v) I deal with K12's that are all Google or all Apple, and universities that are mostly Apple.

Google seems to be the most widely used basically for price and Google Apps for Education.

However, these same K12 districts are now wanting to do more than the Chromebook will do. For example, with Apple and Windows, you can extend your display onto an interactive (touch screen) display and use software to mark up maps, drawings, etc., anything the teacher can display on their computers. Unfortunately these same functions cannot be done with Chromebook because the apps needed to do it don't exist and may never exist.

 

[Speedygi]

In my opinion, it depends on the institution itself and its budget. I have seen some schools use Macbooks as their main computer of choice.