Education and Computing

Last week Bradley Chambers wrote an interesting article at 9to5 Mac about how Covid-19 demonstrated how much better Google products are for the classroom than Apple’s iTunes U. For years now, it seems like Apple has throttled back its efforts on education, which seems to me a shame. I know when I was in school, the near exclusive presence of Apple II computers (I know I’m dating myself) resulted in a lot of us getting our first computer experiences while looking at that cute rainbow icon.

I’m sure Apple has thought about this and they’ve probably got a bunch of research that explains how kids are now experiencing computers from home way before school, but there is a part of me sad to them give up this ground.

Google’s big education move, however, doesn’t just aim at Apple. As kids grow up using Google collaboration tools, I expect they are going to question the need for the Microsoft Office Suite when they enter the workforce. I’ll be curious to see what tools people are using for traditional office computing (word processing/spreadsheets/presentations) in ten years.