iPads vs. Chromebooks in Elementary School Classrooms
This past week Apple introduced electronic textbooks through their iBook store and available in the iTunes University (iTunes U). iTunes U had previously been available only to higher education institutions. It is now available for K-12.. Also a part of the announcement was the introduction of a new iBook / Textbook authoring tool called iBook Author. With textbook publishers like Pearson “signed up” to populate the offerings, Apple is getting serious about getting electronic textbooks in the classroom.
Over the last day or so I’ve been using the iBook Author application to convert an ebook I wrote on church websites. I am fairly impressed with the tool and will blog a review of it in the near future. There is great potential for paper textbooks to be replaced with these very interactive and engaging products. Almost makes me want to go back to school.
Those of you that follow this blog know that I recently finished a series on Google Chromebooks in the classroom. So if an elementary school administrator is looking to “go digital” do you go with Chromebooks or iPads? By the way, iBook textbooks can only be used on iPads. Right now I’d have to lean toward Chromebooks for the following five reasons:
1. Chromebooks can be shared, while iPads are meant to be owned and operated by one student. I suppose you could share an iPad but the students couldn’t take their own notes, do anything customized for themselves or store documents/homework locally. One of the Chromebooks greatest strength is any student could pick up any Chromebook, login and start working. Since Google Apps is cloud based all documents, etc. are not stored on the local device…making the device just a vehicle to get at cloud based content.
2. iPads have limited storage. If you put five 2Gb textbooks on one (depending on the version of the iPad), you’ve used over half the available space. Chromebooks aren’t meant to have onboard storage, thus everything needs to be in the cloud. I think a smarter model for textbooks rather than chained to a device.
3. IPads are expensive. The lowest price model currently costs $499. To ask each child to own one at the elementary or even high school level is a tough sell. Chromebooks come with a monthly fee ($20/month) a school or parent can pay over time, and then if desired “own” the device after three years. Schools could do the same with iPads and cover the initial cost, but that is a large capital cost for most schools.
4. Google Apps have an excellent management console which allows very granular control over each device. iPads aren’t set up that way. Each has to be individually managed and don’t provide a lot of tools that allow them to be locked down.
5. Google Apps provides an ecosystem of Docs, Email, Groups, Sites, etc. that a classroom can use to provide needed services for homework submission, collaboration, and communications. The iPad environment can offer some services like that, but not nearly as cohesive or seamless.
Having said all that I do have to say that the interactive textbook experience offered by iBooks has great possibilities. What is available on Chromebooks right now isn’t as advanced. However, since the Chromebook relies on the web, any publisher or person who would want to create one could.
It should be interesting to watch how all this shakes out.
Had a conversation with another podcast group (ER Mobile) and touched everyone of those five points in our discussion of devices. Fact is, many schools will turn to multiple devices. When I think about chromebooks for next year at our school, I think about consumption over innovation and creation. Some schools are doing the BYOD – bring your own device, too, already, which I see as a huge headache. Thanks for posting on this topic. (Lion only? Come on.)
Talking with our eighth grade teacher today, and we are poised to jump into the 1:1 experience in our middle school. I am excited about chromebooks and how google might continue to improve the product and experience. Thanks for your thoughts, Martin!
I was talking with my wife, who currently attends Grand Rapids Community College, and she stated that majority of the students polled would prefer to have the text book in hand versus on a computer or online. I think that may be because the students like to mark up the book as well as if they want to keep it they can. Not sure how this works with electronic books.