Sowing the Seeds of a Digital Education

-->

An Apple for Teacher: Sowing the Seeds of Learning.

Imagine a world where you can earn an advanced physics degree without ever opening a textbook. The rise of tablet computers and e-books is making this a growing possibility. The technology innovator Apple is at the cusp of this change, poised to take the education market by storm by entering the world of digital textbooks.

On Thursday, January 19, Apple held an event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York to discuss its goals in the educational sector. Executive Phillip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, used this event to showcase the company’s new textbook experience for the iPad, an app called iBooks 2, as reported by the Washington Post.

This new app makes textbooks interactive. Students can capture notes and send them to the iCloud, highlight text with just a touch of the finger, and quickly switch to glossary sections for words they do not understand.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, other tablet computer manufacturers are adding college texts to their e-book databases, but Apple is taking this one step further by working to get high school and even elementary texts digitized. The company is currently working with Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to make their textbooks available on the iPad.

Long Road for Integrating iPads Into Classrooms

While this announcement and the sale of the new app does stand to change the way Americans approach education, it is not without its difficulties. The truth is that the average student in the public school setting is not going to own an iPad. In order to make this a viable solution for schools, schools need to have the tablets in the classroom.

Apple has a solution for this as well, and it is one they have used in the past. Three decades ago, Steve Jobs himself ran a lobbying campaign to get funding for Apple computers in public school classrooms around the country, and he was successful. Today, the Washington Post reports that the technology giant is striving to get similar tax breaks and public funding to put iPads in classrooms, so students can have access to their digital textbooks regardless of income levels. The benefit for Apple is the branding this creates, as students work daily on tablets sporting the company’s logo.

Testing Already in the Works

Currently, Apple has launched an iPad pilot project in a few districts around the country. In these districts, teachers report greater excitement and engagement on the part of the students after the iPads and digital texts came to the classroom. No testing has been done as of yet to determine if the tablets encourage greater performance from the students, but that assessment is in the works for the fall.

Could these changes bring permanent change to the face of education? Perhaps, but do not expect your local public school to look like something out of a science fiction movie any time soon. There are still many educators and parents who believe the traditional ways of educating are best, and some doubt that technological gadgets actually improve outcomes for students.

Teachers will need training to embrace this technology, and that training costs money. However, Apple sees a market for their products in the classroom, and they plan to continue lobbying to reach this goal. Consequently, the next generation of students to come through America’s public schools and universities may well use tablet technology for at least a portion of their education.

By Guest Contributor: Joe Barker
You can reach Joe at josephbker@gmail.com

Posted By:
Admin

Posted on:
12:40 PM

Filed Under:
good grades, high school, High school life, Ipads in schools

0

Our Society of Grades

What Have We Come To?

I absolutely hate to say it, but our society right now is focused on grades and grades alone. Grades on report cards, grades on essays, grades on attitude, grades on standardized tests, just grades. If something does not have a point value or grade assigned to it, then we do not care. Learning for the sake of learning does not matter if we do not have the grade to show for it. What caused this revelation on my part? I was sitting in class and my teacher told my half of the room to "grow a pair" because no one was saying anything. That was when I immediately thought to myself that unless there is a point value assigned to something, people (especially teens) just don't care. We were talking about the immigration bill in Arizona if anyone cares to know the specifics.

Report Cards are the most important thing for teens in high school. Not just report cards, but getting A's on report cards. Everyone wants to get an A; everyone needs to get an A.

B's are not even acceptable anymore. Our society thinks that if you are going to get a B you may as well just get a C or a D. No one even thinks along the grade scale anymore. A grade of C was, still is, and will always be AVERAGE. There is nothing wrong with a C, it means that you are average. A grade of B is ABOVE average. An A is a display of excellence in the subject. Not everyone can get an A, if everyone did, then what would it be worth? If everyone got an A, they why would anyone try to learn anymore or challenge themselves? Report cards reflect current society's attitude towards grades. For a student who gets all A's and a single B, he feels like a failure because he was not able to earn straight A's. That one B tarnishes the look of the report to the student because society demands straight A's from the smart.

Then there are the SAT's that every high school student has to take. The average score is around 1500 on the new 2400 point scale, but society demands scoring above 1800 to go anywhere “decent” and above 2100 to go to a “good” college. Granted, there are exceptions, but overall, this single number decides the future of students. Even more so than report cards, society required a high standardized test number to succeed. Students start to focus not on education, but on learning the specific things that are on the SAT. They learn how to take the test rather than learning something new and enriching. Integrity, personality, and other abilities are not measured by these standardized tests, just a few limited subjects in a short amount of time. Although these tests do not mean anything about students or represent them in any way, shape, or form, society demands them as a comparison to others. Society states that the grade/number is necessary to succeed in life.

While tests and reports do have their place in life, they are stifling out regular education. Tests are now the preferred method to make sure that students are learning, so teachers teach specifically to the tests. A perfect example of this is an AP class. There is a huge comprehensive test in May for all AP classes, so teachers need to teach the standard, nationwide curriculum to their students by test day so that they can compete with all of the other students. The teachers teach specifically to the test, nothing more and nothing less. In reality, there is no time to teach anything else outside of the curriculum in AP classes because the class follows a rigorous enough pace as it is. There is more material to cover and less time than in regular classes, so there is only enough class time to prepare for the test itself. Any additional learning must be done during the student's free time. 

Society demands many thing of teens today, but grades should not be one of them. Not everyone is a genius and not everyone deserves an A. Unfortunately, our society states that only those who get A's will succeed in life. This is the cold, hard truth. Directly above is a picture of one of the contributing factors to our society of grades: CollegeBoard. This company has made standardized tests the norm for high school students. It is sad how much CollegeBoard has ruined their lives. What is even more sad is that 50, even 30 years ago, this society of grades did not exist; education actually meant something more than tests and grades. Education should teach students valuable life lessons; it should not be the memorization of monotonous facts to pass a test. Grades have their place, but right now, ambitious teens live for them. This is wrong. It is sad that we have truly become a society of grades.

Similar Articles
The AP Student
The Importance of Standardized Tests
The Real Reason Why School is so Competitive

Posted By:
Admin

Posted on:
7:39 PM

Filed Under:
College, good grades, high school, importance of grades, report cards, SAT collegeboard, SAT scores for college, Standardized tests, tests in our society

0