For those of you have have been reading my blog for the past year hopefully you have noticed my thirst for knowledge about the 21 Century Skills. I have spent many hours on the web researching and then purchasing apps to use with my class including 5 new apps that I was going to purchase for this coming year. Thinking about the phrase " the glass is always half full or half empty"-now I am writing about the half empty.
At the end of last school year, I got an email from our district technology coordinator telling me that Apple has changed their policy about how many apps you can install on iPods. Last school year, because of the teacher/student agreement if I bought one app I was allowed to load the apps on all 25 iPods for free. This supported my learning as well as the students and honestly I was very careful about the apps I purchased.
However, Apple has now changed their policy for this school year. You no longer can purchase one app and add it to the 25 iPods. I now have to purchase the app for every iPod. Which means a .99 app now will cost me $24.75. A $2.99 app will cost me $74.75. For my classroom specifically last year I purchased 14 apps and spent about $20.00 this year to get the same apps I will need to spend $764.46. In these times of budget crunches, I know that I will have to choose very few apps and will not have the flexibility that I had last year to try and find an app for each subject. Pardon me while I rant for one sentence: I thought Apple's philosophy was to support teachers as well as students in education how does this change support 21 Century learning?
Excellent post Maria. I use my personal iPad in my classroom and don't mind spending a few dollars for apps that the kids will benefit from for education, and for fun. We are not a 1:1 school, or a school that has them available even in limited quantities. I can't imagine multiplying for 25, especially when some of the quality and worthwhile apps are more than few dollars. At the least, I sure hope Apple will recognize amazing teachers like you who are using their devices and applications to educate our kids (some who may turn out to be future Apple employees some day) and reconsider
ReplyDeleteYou are a great teacher Maria and always thinking about what is best for the students! Wouldn't it be nice if Apple could at least give a discount for educators?
ReplyDeleteVery well written post. You should consider forwarding this to the people at Apple. Maybe they just need a teacher's perspective?
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