Hemphill: Apple’s new idea could revolutionize education
By Allen Polk Hemphill
One of the new hand grenades tossed last week into the education reform movement was the Apple announcement regarding education textbooks: They will henceforth be available on the iPad2 cheaply, they will be interactive, updated, and a student will be able to mark them up and keep them for life.
Allen Hemphill
This is a revolution in education, and although it is not without problems it holds great potential.
Years ago I founded an Apple computer store that was involved in the initial movement to get Apples into schools; a movement that created the base for the company over the years. Apple owns the K-12 market, but Steve Jobs envisioned every child with free electronic textbooks and he died just a few years too soon.
Jobs had been planning this combination of ultra-portable devices, now called an iPad2, on every K-12 desk, filled with free textbooks. The Apple announcement last week was just the initial shot, but it was a powerful one for education’s future.
I have been waiting for this since 1979, and when I downloaded the first two interactive books for my personal iPad2 (Richard Dawkins’ “The Magic of Reality,” and “World War II, Interactive)” in 2011, the path was clear, although as yet undefined with specifics.
It is apparent that education in the United States is failing, and in his product introduction last week, Apple’s Phil Schiller enunciated it in stark terms: U.S. students rank 17th in reading, 21st in math and 23rd in science, and more alarmingly to me, California students rank 47th among the states of this already educationally failing nation.
Initially, this technology simply solves two existing problems: The 30 to 40 pounds of books that some students must lug about because many schools have removed student lockers for security reasons, and the huge cost of textbooks. While these are problems begging for a solution, their solution is not a game changer.
What is a game changer is that this opens the opportunity for a confluence of technologies. Think of what happens when millions of teachers — we have five million in just K-12 — have an easy method to write their own textbooks and compete in the marketplace, and not just textbooks as we know them but textbooks with animation, audio and video. Think of Pixar involved in education (or edu-tainment). Think of the existing Siri on the iPhone 4S, allowing students to ask technical and scientific question to Wolfram|Alpha, at their desks. Think of the computer game industry developing educational simulation that can challenge the brains of students capable of greater things, but held back by a one-size-fits-all system.
Already, more than 1,000 classrooms nationally have put an iPad on each desk, and that was before this announcement — an announcement that provides free apps for textbook development for teachers and other interested people.
This announcement can actually revolutionize the classroom — and yes, there are obstacles. The iPads are somewhat fragile in the hands of children. Luddite teachers will see themselves being eventually supplemented if not replaced, and while universities select textbooks and give wide latitude to teachers, K-12 select textbooks at the state level, a cumbersome, slow system prone to corruption.
Still…
Reach Hemphill at ahemphill@cox.net.
Short URL: http://www.pomeradonews.com/?p=20830
Posted by Staff
on Jan 25 2012. Filed under Columnists.
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Hopefully, text book makers won't zap the school for $100+ per digital book like the hard covers cost. Replacing text books with digital form that runs on electricity might not improve a persons' education. If I were a teacher, I would ensure hard copies as backups (when screens are broken/stolen) and quality is there. It's a good thought.
Imagine if when we were in school, we could have talked back to your text book!! The things we would have said to it!? LOL! Given that intelligence is 49 percent genetic and 51 percent stimulation digitalized and interactive text books can only be a good thing. But remember, Steve Jobs didn't advocate children sitting in front of computers all day, thought standardized tests given in public elementary schools only measured how much of the state-mandated subject matter taught up to that point had been learned, and was a college dropout. As a nation, we have to redefine what it is we consider teaching worthy both for the sake of the individual and the labor force. My 18-year old who is headed off to college next year to study industrial design and engineering only became engaged with school when he got a job as a bike mechanic and understood the real life applications of physics and math. They don't teach mechanics on standardized tests.
As the chair of the educational foundation at Chaparral for several years we furnished the computer lab (with Macs) and provided teacher tech training (and free laptops) for those who wanted it. Very few did. Fortunately, the teaching colleges require more competency in this area now. We should hopefully begin to see a greater adoption of technology in the classroom, by will or by whip.
One last note, speaking as the parent of a child with neck and back issues, I'm relieved (as I'm sure he is) that the future is now. My older son goes to Reed College and they are one of the Beta schools for the iPad2. He loves it, and he loves not having a back ache at the end of each day.
I am not sanguine with classrooms with no teachers, nor with computerized learning for all — I want as many mixes as we can get, and a method designed to try to slot those students into whichever track serves them best, with the ability for them to change tracks to something better when their drive/maturity/interest changes. (It does.)
Not all teachers know beans about their subject matter (some have generalized "Education" degrees), some have great knowledge and no ability to teach, some have it all together. Each of those teachers need to be slotted where they can reach the students best aligned to their teaching (or coaching) ability.
Right now, we put students into one side of a hopper, and feed a teacher in for every x number of students regardless of student (or the teacher) ability — and we expect that system to work.
It doesn't.
(It won't.)