Map: Back-To-School Drives 100+ Huge iPad & Tablet Deployments
Summary: Apple's right: K-12 schools are embracing the iPad, as this Google Map of tablet rollouts show.
My kids returned to school this week. They attend a suburban elementary school built only one year ago. Everything there is beautiful and state-of-the-art - with the glaring exception of its computing technology.
Not only does the school still use computer labs, but they run an outdated platform, as I discovered after quizzing my son:
Me: "Do you know what operating system the PCs in the computer lab run?"
Him: "Umm, I think it says XP when I turn them on?"
Me: "What?!? That OS was introduced two years before you were born!"
Him: "Wowwwww, that is old."
My mind reeling, I quickly decicided I needed to: a) get involved in the PTA RIGHT AWAY; b) find out what schools are moving forward, not backward, towards tablets and e-textbooks.
Through the magic of Google, I found more than 120 130 schools, school districts, and colleges and universities that are deploying tablets to students for the first time this fall.
Credit: ShutterStock.com
My list is no doubt an undercount. 1.5 million American students and 1,000 colleges worldwide use iPads (see this infographic by MDG Advertising). Meanwhile, I can only find deployments that make the news - a difficult ask since rollouts of Android tablets tend to attract much less attention from the press.
Still, I've done my best, and have created a map in Google for you to browse. You can zoom in and out and click on the blue points to find out more about each deployment (including iPads as well as Samsung and Amazon Kindle Fire tablets), including the original news reference or web link.
If you cannot view the embedded map below, please click on this link.
I've added the larger deployments - San Diego Unified, Rochester Minnesota, Mansfield County (Texas) and others - to another blog/chart listing the 100 Largest iPad Deployments Worldwide today.
I also plan to take a closer look at some of the trends in the new school deployments in a coming blog.
If I've missed any deployments, please e-mail me at ericyolai@gmail.com or tweet me at @ericylai.
View School iPad & Tablet Deployments, Fall 2012 in a larger map
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Talkback
None of these sales count
Huh!?!
Pagan jim
I'm sure...
Why on earth should it not count? There are tons of tech companies aside from Apple whose sales numbers and marketshare benefit from "captive audiences" but apparently it's only a problem when Apple benefits from it?
I'm just going by what we've been told
"apparently it's only a problem when Apple benefits from it?"
It's the reverse. Apparently it's only a problem when MS benefits from it.
Stupid is as stupid does;)
Pagan jim
iPad a productive school tool; not at our school. What's your experience?
They rolled out iPads last year. They talked about cutting edge, digital natives, blah, blah, blah. But their digital collaboration thinking was so old school (for my son's in high school). When they mentioned email and phone calls, I knew I was in trouble. My son last sent an email three years ago and last month he burned a whopping 120 seconds in cell time.
Anyway, no text books, no apps, no home work, no digital assignments happened on the iPad all year. The thing that did happen was distracting internet surfing and game playing. The iPad experiment was never a discussion topic when I went to parent teacher conferences. I asked about it and was always answered with a grin and a shoulder shrug.
Does anyone know of any case studies that produced some tangible or repeatable results?
Funny that you have a bunch of teachers who likely know little or nothing about electronic collaboration, cloud applications and the like trying to teach these kids a digital lifestyle. Received a letter from my son's school just this week touting the introduction of the iPad last year, but no mention of any academic gains. (Maybe just having one makes you brilliant). I just grinned and shrugged.
I think it will be the next genration that will drag the digital age into the classroom and make it more than just an add-on or sideshow for school board members to brag about at meetings.
Everything is relative. Or it's a poor musician who
Pagan jim
Excellent post
iPads in India