Apple announced education-friendly 9.7” iPad yesterday for $329 (and a $30 discount for educators), aimed at giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “leave an Apple on your teacher’s desk.”
In the new iPad rollout, Apple featured Schoolwork, its cloud-based homework portal for teachers, and touted its 200k education apps, including Swift Playgrounds, which teaches students how to code in Apple’s programming language.
Takin’ a page out of Google’s textbook
Back in 2006, Google found itself a G Suite treasure trove slingin’ its free Gmail and Docs package to college administrators who could save a fortune by switching platforms.
Google gradually applied this adoption model to public school districts, leveraging edtech conferences to convert teachers into product evangelists.
Now, Google positions the ChromeBook for educators and prices them at $149, which means that schools save at least $150 by purchasing the laptop over the iPad.
It’s definitely an uphill climb for Apple
Chromebooks now account for more than half of the mobile devices shipped to schools (Chicago Public Schools has spent $33.5m on Chromebooks to date)
Not to mention, 15m students are on Google’s Classroom app learning how to use Sheets, Docs, and Gmail with the best of ‘em.
