My partner worked at a school that handed out iPads to the middle school students for use in class.

Hearing what they use them for just makes me think that Apple needed someone to dump last year's leftover iPads on. It's really dumb stuff. They don't get access to the internet. They get a handful of stupid "learning" apps to use and a social network type thing that can be summed up as "instagram where mommy and teacher watch and control everything".

The devices are so locked up that inquisitive kids ignore them, dumb kids never figure them out, and everyone in between just kinda lugs them around because they have to.

I am beginning to think that tech capitalists have milked the general market and are now turning to the next juicy targets of education and healthcare.

Totally agree here. I'm in the UK and my daughter's primary school has bought dozens of iPads (which are not exactly the most economical tablet), and they are used for things that could otherwise be done (and likely with better results too) in the real world, such as moving objects around for basic maths. Crazy waste of funds.

Yes! Thank you! Kids are sensory learners! They need to be able to hold, touch, taste, smell, and feel things to learn! But instead, we get a fucking screen that you poke at? Come the fuck on.

I disagree. A school without basic technology like computers and tablets? Blimey, you want us to go back to slates and chalk?

Most schools have 3D printers, VR headsets, iPads. We need to teach kids about technology they will be using in 10 - 15 years time when they hit the job market.

We can't send kids out into a career without having used an iPad. Some kids don't have access to tech or the internet at home, now you want to take it away at school? Shame on you.

> We can't send kids out into a career without having used an iPad

Other than 'app developer', what actual careers involve using specifically an iPad, let alone a generic tablet?

> Most schools have 3D printers, VR headsets, iPads Tablets sure, not necessarily iPads. 3D printers and VR headsets?! I'm talking about primary school, kids aged 5-11 - it would be rare for even secondary schools in the UK to have 3D printers or VR headsets. You used the word 'blimey', so I assume you are either English or taking the piss?!

Most kids get enough of tablets at home nowadays. Christ, all too many parents plonk their kid in front of a tablet and leave them to it for hours at a time.

I'm not saying tech doesn't have a place, it absolutely does, but sometimes the real, tactile world is the best place to learn - like for 5 year-olds learning basic maths, reading and writing.

I've seen many non-technical professionals using iPad's. In many cases they are replacing laptops in meetings. They are used in manufacturing environments. They are used in hospitals, airports etc etc. That said, my 80 year old grandmother learned to be pretty proficient on an iPad in a matter of a few hours, so I'm not really that concerned about people being able to pick up general tablet usage outside of school.

This is exactly the point - no one needs to be taught how to use an iPad. It's some MBA trying to push "educational strategy". No one who invented any part of an iPad grew up with one.

The further into my tech career I go, the more I like a bog standard whiteboard and a notebook and pen. They let me focus on thinking about hard stuff, instead of thinking about how to use some oversold software.

When I was in high school (late 90's/early 00's) I needed to buy a fancy Texas Instruments graphical calculator for my advanced math class. Back then it probably cost about what a low end tablet would set you back today ($200/300 Australian).

The whole thing must have been a huge rort. I can only think of a handful of times I ever used the damn thing for anything beyond what I could have used a significantly cheaper scientific calculator for. The return on investment was terrible I can't help but think the same thing with Ipads in schools nowadays. What does an ipad buy you over significantly cheaper noname brand android device?

Amusingly enough I was not allowed to use the graphical calculator at university because programmable calculators were banned from examinations due to concerns about cheating. I used a cheap $10 casio calculator all through my engineering degree at uni...

I visited a local trade school last week and was shocked to see Pentium // motherboards, discrete sound cards, etc. in the technology classroom.

I'll echo as well. My wife's classrooms use chromebooks. Due to 'security issues', the computers can only run a hand-full of java applications for the few labs where they do in fact need the computers. These are, if I'm generous, a decade out of date and 'clunky'. Additionally, they are required to login to the central district server before they can use the chromebook (student ID #, etc). Trouble is, there are 35+ students in the classroom, and the wireless routers only can support ~15 chromebooks. The kids end up in a cycle of booting each other off the wireless routers. That is only for one classroom, typically there are ~7 classrooms in the range of that single router which kids can try to log into with their cellphone, further increasing the issues. Also, for the entire school, there is only a single 4GB line out to the central district server for ~2000 kids and associated staff, and that central server has been under DDoS attack from the IoT take-overs from October. State mandated testing of only the freshmen (~700 students), via these chromebooks, is scheduled to take 6 weeks due to these issues and they are not expecting the student to be able to submit these computerized tests even still. Effectively, their school is still in ~1992 with some dilapidated chomebooks and 'smart-boards' stuck in closets like neo-Luddites. Oh, and the voters decided to cut a further 30% from the budget, so now its looking like ~52 kids per classroom next year. We are, obviously, changing districts.

We have iPads in school and they can be really useful. You just need to use them -- which comes down to teacher training.

Tell your partner to look up QR codes, we put different ones up around the room. QR code takes them to a web page with info on it. We use different codes (or URLs) for differentiation - smart kids get wikipedia or something hard, stupid kids get a simpler page or a video.

Does she use kahoot quizzes on them? Or socrative? Both work well.

I've been in classrooms that use iPad effectively, much in the same way they would use a Chromebook. Many attached third-party keyboards to assist in typing.

I would still strongly prefer a proper laptop, but it wasn't as much of a hinderance as I initially expected.

The classic, cliché-for-a-reason recommendation here is Mindstorms by Seymour Papert. It discusses a very tangible, very realizable, ground-up system of education built on the foundation of the computer as a universal, interactive tool that can meet the needs of any learner. It's a very good read, and a very good starting place if you're curious about this sort of stuff, alongside parallel work from people like Alan Kay and his Dynabook. However, there is a lot of inertia behind the education institution, so even something actionable like the path described in Mindstorms still has a massive uphill battle of winning hearts and minds; just because it's a good idea in principle doesn't mean it's going to be a good idea in practice, or that it's worth the cost of investment when the current system is, under some definition, 'working'.

Still, like a lot of stuff coming out of Computer Science in the 60s, Papert et al. are a good place to go for raw inspiration channeled into consumable, actionable ideas.

This. I feel like the biggest problems in EdTech are Bret Victoresque. The problem with fetch isn't that the software and technology isn't user friendly enough. The problem is that most EdTech is fundamentally X-but on a computer. Write an essay, but on the computer. Create a presentation, but on the computer.

Technology needs to facilitate student learning in new, better ways, not just be paper version 1.1.

Even this low bar often trips up EdTech companies. Why is my lesson planning webapp still broken on mobile after 5 years? Why does my digital grade book require some many clicks to do anything? Why does Google classroom still not have a student view for teachers?

School is to learning as hospital is to health.

The piece isn't supposed to get to any point, really, because it's long-copy marketing. The whole idea is to keep you expecting a point for as long as possible, without delivering, then stop, hoping you decide to give the writer('s company) money.

Why is that supposed to increase the odds that I'll give the writer's company money? At least to me, it's more likely to give me a distaste of them as windbags who have nothing to offer.

Do companies actually think marketing like this works? (Worse: Is it possible that they're right?)

I think the idea is that it keeps you engaged much longer than an ordinary ad would. Now, that just pisses me off when I figure out what's going on because you're deliberately wasting my time, but the claim is that it's measurably more effective than shorter, less-rambling copy. Used to be lots of posts about it on HN, few years back.

I work in a UK school (part time technician not teacher) and we have hardly any budget assigned to hardware, it's make do and mend constantly.

The move now seems to be to teach coding via apps with friendly graphical interfaces, 10 years ago it was based around learning MS Office apps.

I've worked in tech for nearly 20 years and the most important skill I learnt was to touch type. Then HTML, which lead me to simple scripting, and onwards.

I'm not sure of the logic of teaching 11 year olds to code when some of them don't know how to copy and paste.

I'm in my forties and hence learned to code as a kid (in BASIC) before I learned to copy and paste :-)

Totally agree. I think there's is a huge need to teach children logic, but not code.

The other reply is correct about the piece being marketing, but your question is still good.

I've worked at 2 edtech startups and have a few teachers in my family, and my personal observation has been that technology is best when it removes friction in the areas of classroom control, assessment, communicating with parents, and organizing presentation materials. For the part where teachers figure out how to engage students and get them over conceptual humps, it seems like teachers are way ahead of any technology.

The canonical technology fail in edtech is to dump computers or robot kits into the classroom with no training. I have been in a number of classrooms where stuff like that winds up piled in a very expensive corner.

Also useful and sort of technological: https://donorschoose.com

This makes perfect sense: digitise (as we say now) admin and busywork, to let teachers shine at teaching.

One of the more interesting ideas I've come across was for teaching reading. Basically you present the text in editable form and let the student rearrange and rewrite and add their own thoughts "between the lines".

It really doesn't require any new software or particular teacher training, only that the text be made editable, which is very much not the default now.

I don't have a non-university link, but the article I remember is Bill Bernhardt, "Reading and writing between the lines: an interactive approach using computers", Journal of Reading March 1994. (on jstor as a pdf composed of noneditable bitmaps)