After a recent survey was conducted the Maine Department of Education and Apple were seen swapping iPads in place of MacBook for older students, teachers and students had favored the same. As per the Lewiston Auburn Sun Journal, the reports state the schools will face no additional cost during the time the devices are being exchanged. Peter Robinson, the Technology Director of the Auburn School Department stated considering the success they had seen of iPads in the primary grades seemed that it was the right choice that was made at that time, however for the older students, it turned out that it was not ideal.
As per what was written in the survey by one of the teachers, it was stated that the iPads were used more as toys by students and in the classrooms; it did not provide any kind of function in the educational front. It was also next to impossible to use the Word Processing feature and that he changes was applaud. Another teacher had written that largely the students used the iPads more as gaming devices and were a disaster.
In all, the overall breakup of the percentage of teachers and students who stated that the MacBook were a better choice was 88.5% and 74% respectively. Per year, around $254 is funded by the state on a yearly basis per student for each device. The deal that has been made by Apple matched up to $217 per device for each student on a yearly basis for 2016‐17, and would be raised thereafter to around $248. One of the reasons why laptops were a preferred choice in comparison to tablets was due to the fact that in the classrooms, the Apple devices have been beaten out by the Chromebooks. However the fact that all iPads were toys was not agreed upon by all schools and in fact it was recently accredited by one of the school district that it helped the graduation rates lift to 82% from 65%.
