In my local school district, gDocs is the key for our switch away from iOS devices. We don't even need the chromebooks, Docs will run on older PCs as well.
I don't believe any newer/cheaper hardware from
Apple will help here.
Shouldn't computers in schools be used for more than just teaching students how to use office tools?
Teaching only boring stuff has great potential to suck the fun out of computer use for them and does not encourage them to explore what it is they might want to do with a computer.
From my personal experience watching my own children use gDocs, they're extremely comfortable working with computers in general and the operation of the tool itself is nearly transparent.
They open a document and start typing. They open a slide presentation and start moving pictures and words around. Collaborative work is automatic and they kids don't even think about it. I can remember a time when simultaneous editing of a document was something only CS PhD students dreamed about in their theses. Now my 7 year-old is doing it. And she finds it kind of fun, actually.
It doesn't need to be an indoctrination into corporate life and I haven't seen one iota of that in the classroom. They're just tools like everything else in their school.
Is writing on a whiteboard training for the business world, or just an easier/cleaner way to write so the whole room can see it? How about using a video projector overlaid on the whiteboard? Sitting on an exercise ball to minimize fidgeting? Standing desks? RFID cards in the lunchroom? Maybe they're all just applications of technology that have positive uses with the kids.
> gDocs is the key for our switch away from iOS devices.
This is what I've been seeing as well. And I think that it's scary - Google Docs/etc is helping to lure in a lot of users. The district is on Google email, Google Drive, etc. What's scary to me is that the younger children do not recognize that there is such a thing as "email" that is not "Gmail." They expect everything to function just as their Google apps do.
Hook 'em young is working for Google. Offer the school districts the massive Google backend for a cheap price, and they're hooked. Then sell them Chromebooks "for compatibility" and they're really hooked.
I don't believe any newer/cheaper hardware from Apple will help here.