iPad: the answer to school being "uncool"

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FINALLY, I GET TO BLOG ABOUT APPLE!!! The reason I'm so excited about blogging about this company is because there's just this certain atmosphere of exclusivity when it comes to mind. The reason I say this is drawn from a personal experience of my own. It was my 21st birthday and I'd asked my mother for a laptop, now the previous week my friend had bought himself an Apple Macbook PRO and my word was it a machine!!! The clarity alone was the first I'd seen of it's kind, switching between windows and different browsers was on a whole new level. To cut a long story short, that laptop cost an arm and a few legs so I ended up getting an HP Pavilion dv6 and ít's no Macbook PRO but it's definitely a tech monster in it's own right. Since then I've gathered a very huge respect for Apple and the innovation behind its products.

Now when a company of this magnitude goes about changing something as rigid and formal as school environments one has to pay attention. Apple have gone about trying to commercialise the usage of iPads in the classroom and exposing them to students of all ages. An interesting statistic which rose in America is that "while 97 percent of the participating teachers in Manhattan Beach reported in November that the iPad makes class more engaging, that proportion had dropped to 86 percent by the end of January. The proportion of students who said so also dropped, though less steeply, from 81 to 77 percent. This kind of drop in interest and excitement makes sense to me. Anyone who has experienced a new gadget will experience a similar type of drop in enthusiasm. That puts a tremendous onus on teachers to change the way they think about teaching and learning. I hope this kind of feedback spurs innovation and creativity in teachers to try new things." So this shows that Apple is not simply releasing a product to the students and merely sitting back but also incouraging teachers to think more creatively and change traditional teaching with the use of the iPad.

When we look at the usage of the iPad in classrooms on a more nation level, namely South Africa. One is able to see it could not have come at a better time with the MD of Think Ahead (an institution which provides educational solutions) Michelle Lissoos said "it is a challenge to keep the classroom environment exciting but, with the introduction of the iPad, school children are now excited about going to school and learning." She also said that "there are currently 20 000 educational applications and 1.5-million iPads at educational institutions globally, which prove the popularity of the device in an education setting." Now Í'm sure a question which comes to mind for alot of people is that how do disadvantaged schools afford the device? Lissoos states that "affordability is a challenge for disadvantaged schools but corporate South Africa is coming on board to sponsor schools in townships and rural areas. There are also different models for the use of the device, in private schools parents and schools can afford one device per learner but, in disadvantaged schools, a group of five kids can share one device."

From a communication aspect Apple really played it's cards right by focusing on bettering the lives of students and how they interact with information in class, they've taken a rather played out innitiative of focusing on schools and adding their own twist to it by making school more fun for students. They have some how been able to manipulate the product to suit all countries and play to each of their characteristics. This shows the level of detail they were willing to go to in terms of researching and finding out exactly how to play to the comunities needs and solve their individual problems.