Apple's Education Event: On the Road to Vendor Lock-in
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 19th Jan 2012 17:41 UTC
Apple Apple's education event just ended, and just as Ars Technica said, Apple announced better support for textbooks, as well as a textbook authoring tool. The textbook authoring tool is heavily inspired by Keynote and Pages, and hence, I already know it's going to be top-notch and very pleasant to use. In addition, the company also repositioned iTunes U as a Blackboard competitor. As great as all these new tools are, several large red flags went up in my mind: I remember what it was like being the only student who didn't use Windows. Update: "Any e-textbook author that wants access to the iPad-toting masses must make his or her work an exclusive to iBooks 2."
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RE[4]: I sympathise but..
by ilovebeer on Fri 20th Jan 2012 08:23 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: I sympathise but.."
ilovebeer
Member since:
2011-08-08

No we dont live in a utopian society and we are far from mostly because of people with your thinking.

Are you truly that moronic? I hope not for your own sake but by making such idiotic comments, it's come into serious question.

Most of our educational system, K-12 is state sponsored. Its not a business. To allow Apple, who bans and censors things in their store at whim, exclusive rights to supply the educational materials to our schools is crazy.

First of all, Apple does not and will not ever have "exclusive rights" to educational materials. No single company ever has. If you would have done your homework, you would already know that.

Secondly, the fact that you don't understand why education is a business means you're too uninformed & unknowledgeable to make good judgment. You clearly don't understand that our education system in its present iteration can't even exist without corporate involvement -- like it or not. It, by design, relies on those relationships. Try having a discussion about this with any experienced educator or education administrator. It shouldn't take you long to figure out there's a big huge list of things you haven't even though of or considered. Given, most of the politics and inner workings of education are conducted behind closed doors and hidden from the public. But the information is out there.

I'm going to repeat this again... There are two sides to this issue, both very debatable. This is most certainly not black & white. At least not in terms of the real world. And you are not going to fix the problem by breaking things further. Jumping to conclusions without understanding the BUSINESS of education is absolutely horrible. It's people who think like that you would compound the problem while being clueless to the fact.

Reply Parent Score: -2