Apple is bringing some significant updates to several of its education apps, led by a new Schoolwork 2.0 for iPad and Mac, reports CNET.
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Schoolwork is Apple's app that allows teachers to distribute class materials known as Handouts to students, assign activities within compatible apps, collaborate with students, and view student progress. CNET says Schoolwork 2.0 will bring new feature like Files integration, speed improvements, and more.
Apple designed Schoolwork 2.0 to include features found in other iPad OS apps, like Files, and to speed up navigation around the software. There's a new Handout library with a source list on the left side that makes it easier to navigate to different classes or the student's library with drafts and favorites. On the right are cards with things like reminders for a field trip or a math assignment.
Other new features include a redesigned Handout detail view and new communication integration to let teachers FaceTime or message students at a tap.
In addition to Schoolwork, Apple is also updating its Classroom app for iPad that functions as a teaching assistant within a classroom to launch apps and websites across all devices in a classroom, share a student's screen to the teacher's iPad or a classroom Apple TV, share documents, and more.
The updated Classroom app includes pinch-to-zoom functionality, automatic syncing of Apple School Manager classes to the teacher's Apple ID, and new temporary sessions for shared iPads.
The updated versions of Schoolwork and Classroom are coming "soon," according to CNET, with no specific launch dates given.
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I don't know that it was just expense—I live in, and send my daughter to, a school district that is lucky to be very well funded, and generously supported by organizations like the PTO. Yet despite this surplus, iPads are few and far between, and are slowly being phased out in favor of the dominant Chromebooks using technologies like Google Classroom and Schoology.It is a shame they have lost the education market. ... They had the market and then really lost the plot.
Apple has an enormous amount of hubris about how they want education to work, versus how it actually works, and that's why their solutions are largely being cast aside regardless of financial resources. Apple wants to sell hardware—for Apple, it's about moving iPads as an end goal in itself; education wants a service, less-so the hardware, so they can be more self-deterministic on how to physically provide that service. Their competitors have no such preconceptions and focus on creating solutions that are self-sustaining and relatively easy for educators to administer. Until that idea sinks in at the executive level in Cupertino, Education is a lost cause for Apple.
You are correct. Apple's approach is "how do we sell more iPads," not, "what is education asking for, and how do we supply that using our approach to hardware and software in a way that is compelling?"Apple does not prioritize education as they seemed to have done back in the 90s.