Posts tagged with "education"

Where’s the iCloud Storage Bump for the Rest of Us?→

Dan Moren, writing for Six Colors on today’s announcement of 200 GB of free iCloud storage for schools:

Look, it’s lovely that Apple has decided to give 200GB of free iCloud storage to any Apple ID associated with a teacher or student. It’s a nice gesture, and one that probably makes things a lot easier for those in school environments.

But, come on, Apple—you’re really going to leave the rest of us at 5GB?

The standard 5GB of free iCloud storage has been in place for years now, and, frankly, it’s starting to wear thin. When most iOS devices come in 32GB configurations at the smallest, and many start at 64GB, 5GB feels pretty paltry. Especially when the next step in the upgrade tier is to pay $0.99 for 50GB of storage space. I realize Services has become a moneymaker for Apple, but it just feels cheap.

I hope that increasing free storage for education is the first step towards more free iCloud for everyone this year. I wouldn’t expect non-education customers to get 200 GB for free, but the measly 5 GB of free storage have become just as user-hostile as 16 GB iPhones used to be. There has to be a better solution in between.

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Pages Is No iBooks Author Replacement→

Stephen Hackett took the updated Pages for a spin and compared its digital book creation features to the existing iBooks Author app for Mac. As it turns out, the new functionality isn’t a replacement for what iBooks Author can do:

It cannot open my iBooks Author file for my book on the iMac G3 and history of Mac OS X. I’m not super surprised by that, but as the future of iBooks Author is unknown, I’d like a way to know I can edit this file using Pages in the future.

The options when creating a book in Pages are currently more limited than what is available in iBooks Author. There are fewer templates available, and the hierarchy of chapters and sections are nowhere to be found. iBooks Author includes tools for a Table of Contents and Glossary, and these are missing from Pages as well.

Pages also lacks iBooks Author’s widgets. These can be used to add Keynote files, pop overs, review questions, videos and even HTML content to books. This is a pretty big oversight, as these tools can add real interactivity to a book.

iMore’s Serenity Caldwell has also clarified with Apple that the eBook creation feature in Pages is not a replacement for iBooks Author, which is still “continuing development” – whatever that means, given its erratic update schedule and lack of an iPad version.

I was hoping to be able to create rich, interactive iBooks using Pages for iPad, but unfortunately this isn’t possible with today’s update. Still, I’m going to experiment with the feature to generate EPUBs for my longform reviews directly from iOS.

See also: AppleScript support for eBook creation in Pages for Mac.

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Apple Extends the Everyone Can Code Curriculum and Adds Everyone Can Create

Everyone Can Code is a curriculum that Apple created to teach students the Swift programming language. Much of the information shared about the curriculum by Apple at its education event in Chicago today wasn’t new. However, the company did announce a new ARKit module that will be available inside Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app.

Apple also introduced a new curriculum called Everyone Can Create:

Everyone Can Create is a new, free curriculum that makes it fun and easy for teachers to integrate drawing, music, filmmaking or photography into their existing lesson plans for any subject. The new curriculum joins Apple’s successful Everyone Can Code initiative as one-of-a-kind programs for teachers that keep students excited and engaged.

Available now as a preview, new materials will continue to be added throughout the summer so teachers can use them beginning this fall. In addition, Apple Stores will provide training as part of their Today at Apple programs beginning later this spring.

The curriculum focuses on four creative areas: music, video, photography, and drawing. Everyone Can Create includes a teacher guide, student guide, lessons, ideas, and examples to assist teachers who want to incorporate the new curriculum into existing subjects like math and history.

Although the new curriculum shares a similar name with Everyone Can Code, Everyone Can Create’s approach is quite different. It’s designed to fit with existing subjects taught in schools, supplementing teachers’ lessons in new and interesting ways that leverage the power of the iPad.

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

The New 9.7” iPad: Our Complete Overview

At their education event held in Chicago earlier today, Apple announced an update for the 9.7” iPad model that, while not adopting all the features from the more powerful iPad Pro line, brings support for the Apple Pencil and includes the A10 Fusion chip.

“iPad is our vision for the future of computing and hundreds of millions of people around the world use it every day at work, in school and for play. This new 9.7-inch iPad takes everything people love about our most popular iPad and makes it even better for inspiring creativity and learning,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of Product Marketing. “Our most popular and affordable iPad now includes support for Apple Pencil, bringing the advanced capabilities of one of our most creative tools to even more users. This iPad also has the power of the A10 Fusion chip, combined with the big, beautiful Retina display, advanced cameras and sensors that enable incredible AR experiences simply not possible on other devices.”

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Chicago Education Event Video Now Available

Apple has posted the video of its education event keynote held earlier today at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago. The video can be streamed here, as discovered by Guilherme Rambo, and a higher quality version should be made available soon through iTunes (on the Apple Keynotes podcast).

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

Apple Introduces New Schoolwork iPad App, Classroom for Mac, and ClassKit Framework for Developers

Education was the sole focus of today’s Apple event in Chicago, and a big part of that story was software: Apple introduced a brand new iPad app for teachers and students called Schoolwork, an upcoming Mac version of its existing iPad Classroom app, and it also launched a new ClassKit framework that enables third-party developers to integrate their educational apps with Apple’s own broader education system on iOS.

The new Schoolwork app, arriving in June, is meant to serve as a collaborative data-sharing environment for teachers and students. It enables teachers to make assignments in educational apps and track students’ progress on those assignments. In apps with collaboration features, teachers and students can work together on an assignment in real-time. Teachers can also use Schoolwork to send handouts to students. Because of its capabilities, Schoolwork is able to serve as a central schedule hub to keep students organized and on track.

The Mac version of Apple’s Classroom app will also launch in June, as a beta. It will serve the same functions as its existing iPad equivalent. Classroom differs from the new Schoolwork app in that it’s meant for instructors only, not students, and is used for general classroom management. The Classroom iPad app launched two years ago as a tool for school instructors to manage student devices and share files in bulk with the class, among other administrative functions, and it continues serving those purposes today.

With Schoolwork and Classroom, Apple now has a stronger student-teacher app ecosystem than before – but first-party apps weren’t the whole story Apple had to tell. To help further broaden the possibilities of Schoolwork and Classroom, third-party developers now have access to a new ClassKit framework, which will enable third-party educational apps to read and write information into the Schoolwork app, similar to how third-party health apps can use HealthKit to read and write data to Apple’s Health app. Apps can populate assignable content in the app, which teachers can then track the progress of. ClassKit is launching for developers as part of the forthcoming betas for Xcode 9.4 and iOS 11.4.

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

Apple’s Chicago Education Event Will Not Be Live-Streamed According to the Apple TV Special Events App

Apple has updated the Apple TV Special Events app with the artwork used in the invitation for its March 27th education event in Chicago. The update to the app encourages users to:

Watch the special event — held at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, Illinois — after it concludes.

While it’s a shame that the event will not be available for viewing in real-time, it’s not unprecedented. The last event held outside of Cupertino by Apple was another education event that was held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2012, which likewise was not available for steaming or downloading until after the event had concluded.

In separate news, MSNBC announced that Kara Swisher of recode and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes will interview Apple CEO Tim Cook on April 6, 2018 at 8:00 PM Eastern.

Without more information it is unclear what the interview will cover, but given the proximity in time to the education event, it’s likely that education will be a topic of discussion.

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

Apple’s Chicago Event Will Mark a Milestone in the Evolution of Its Education Strategy

Next Tuesday, Apple will take the stage at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago to announce ‘creative new ideas for teachers and students.’ As any Apple event approaches, it’s natural to speculate about what products might be announced. After all, that’s what usually happens at an Apple event.

However, there’s a forest getting lost for the trees in all the talk about new hardware and apps. Sure, those will be part of the reveal, but Apple has already signaled that this event is different by telling the world it’s about education and holding it in Chicago. It’s part of a broader narrative that’s seen a shift in Apple’s education strategy that can be traced back to WWDC 2016. Consequently, to understand where Apple may be headed in the education market, it’s necessary to look to the past.

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