Anticipating the Apple Education Event
There is a lot of speculation about what will be unveiled at the Apple event this coming Thursday, specially since it’s all about education. Apple has been a very active participant in education ever since the early days of the company, although they have perhaps not done so much publicly in the last few years. That is not to say that Apple has forgotten about education all together, given that there are still a lot of student and educational institution only discounts and even specific machines. The no longer available MacBook, the polycarbonate kind, is still alive in the world of education where it can indeed still be ordered. And let’s not forget about the annual back-to-school deals that pop up every August or so.
But I digress. This is not about what Apple does otherwise, but rather what might occur on Thursday at the Guggenheim museum.
First off, I think we need to set our expectations accordingly, regarding this whole thing. There is absolutely no indication that this will be an event where Apple is going to show off anything that might be in the interest of the general public. All we know right now is that it’s education and that Apple will be making some sort of an announcement with that angle on it.
Some think this will be the time when Apple shows off a education only iPad, perhaps something even cheaper than the currently available offerings. What such a theoretical iPad might contain to make it cheaper I don’t even dare to make a guess on, but I don’t even think there will be any new iPad at all. Apple is a company that likes to have a brutally high amount of focus on the things at hand and doing any kind of iPad related stuff at an event that is not specifically about the iPad doesn’t seem like something they would do. Educational software for the iPad, sure. More eTextbooks that happen to work just beautifully on an iPad, definitely. But no new hardware.
I do, on the other hand, think that there will be a whole lot of software shown and introduced. Maybe there will be some really easy to use tools for creating eTextbooks that actually look and work great. If we are truly to make the school paperless, then we first need to put some great tools in the hands of the teachers, to replace the old methods that today exist in paper practices.
eTextbooks could be one thing that Apple has chosen to target specifically. While many might scoff at this, consider that this is a huge market, or at the very least a potential huge market. Add the fine bonus of getting the brand into young people when they still are young and more impressionable, and it’s an even tastier cake that any company would like to have a piece of, Apple very much included. Perhaps they have managed to score some very good deals and aim to make a ton of educational literature available in the iBook store or perhaps even a separate book store, only for educational institutions.
As I talked earlier about in my piece on ebooks and reading, schools would both appreciate and make good use of digital textbooks, not to mention the likely cost saving of not having to have a bunch of paper books around. Assuming that there is the possibility of really using the available resources, like color screen, internet connectivity and enough processing power under the hood of whatever device it is being read on, it could theoretically be a new era in education starting. Yes, we have had interactive educational software and such in schools for some time, but not in a way that nearly seamlessly flows together like this potentially could.
Given that it’s all about education, it would stand to reason that iTunes U might be getting an update and perhaps even more courses or even expanded into a whole new service. One that schools can tie into and get everything they need in the shape of videos, courses, eTextbooks and so on. The hub to the education strategy Apple might have been working on for some time.
I don’t doubt that there will be a lot of positive numbers by Apple shown off during the event, this is pretty much their M.O. by now. We will probably find out just how many Apple computers are in use in US universities, how many iPads are in use in educational institutions and how much Apple does with and for the educational community as a whole.
Apart from these things I think it is very hard to make any kind of a prediction about what might come at the event. The details are few and I don’t expect to see any of the higher executives besides Eddy Cue at the event, although anyone might pop up besides Mr. Cue. The venue is interesting and the angle is just as interesting in itself, but I don’t think we should expect anything earth-shattering from a consumer electronics standpoint. From an educational standpoint, I think we might be in for one heck of an interesting ride!
So, in summary I think this might happen at the event:
New software that is for education only: Possible
New software that has an educational angle: Likely
New hardware: Unlikely
Update to iTunes U: Possible
News about eTextbooks or related to: Very likely
