[drewmate]

I think the walled garden is the whole point here, and you are not the target for this app. It’s no coincidence that the sample they show on their devices is for a student (high school?) newspaper. This is like the blue texts in iMessage. Get them while they’re young, and they’ll be hooked for life. Imagine the shame of being excluded from a high school group project because, “we’re all doing it in Freeform, sorry.” Better ask mom for an iPhone just to be safe.

- Drew ( sent from my iPad)

[rchaud]

Aren't US schools blanketed with Chromebooks? That's really the only market where iMessage monopoly is a thing. The rest of the world uses cross-platform options.

[kyawzazaw]

Public schools are.

[mensetmanusman]

No one is serious about iPad in education anymore. Way too expensive and easy to break.

[alex_suzuki]

I haven‘t checked recently, are there any good alternative tablets, running Android maybe? I personally think iPads are insanely powerful and without (serious) competition.

[smoldesu]

Having used an iPad for my last couple years in high school, the machines were a total joke. Totally useless for english and history classes, and barely usable for math and science courses. When people weren't using them for classwork, they became instant distractions. The administration tried implementing MDM but ended up finding that the only solution was taking away the iPads during instructional time. Not to mention, ushering in iPads actually forced our computer science classes to shut down, since students no longer had machines with Python interpreters on them.

The iPad is insanely powerful and without serious competition, but completely useless in a classroom setting. Most people would prefer the laptops we had, teachers and students alike.

[HDThoreaun]

I don't see why students need a seriously powerful device. Students are given chromebooks because all the applications they need are on the cloud.

[spogbiper]

the schools I have worked with in the past few years might use ipads for the very youngest kids but by middle school its all chromebooks

[spideymans]

That might be true in K-12, but that’s definitely not the case in higher education, where iPads are very well used.