The big draw
Apple is embracing creativity in the classroom with its new iPad, but you don’t have to be in education to benefit
APPLE ventured forth from its California base to launch its latest hardware offering last week – an all-new iPad. And the big news was that it supports the Apple Pencil. The sophisticated drawing device has, up to now, only been compatible with Apple’s high-end iPad Pro.
These start at £619 and go up to prices well beyond the £1,000-mark for the biggest and best.
The new iPad starts at £319 – so today you can buy a tablet you can draw on with an Apple Pencil for £300 less than you could yesterday.
And there’s a very good reason for that – education.
Apple’s always been big in the education market, and offers some tools already to make life easier for teachers.
But last week, with the launch of the new iPad at the heart of it all, Apple decamped from Cupertino to a school in Chicago to reveal a next-level push in the education market.
iPads are great education devices, and when teamed with an Apple Pencil, offer a complete creating and learning environment that is unrivalled elsewhere.
But that isn’t all Apple had to offer – it added to its software suite with a new app called Schoolwork, which allows teachers to create assignments, see student progress, and bring other apps into play in the learning environment.
That app was added to one already in use called Classroom, which allows the easy management of iPads in schools.
And there was even more – a curriculum called Everyone Can Create, which helps teachers guide students through the various apps that bring drawing, painting, film-making and photography, and music into the classroom – all using an iPad, of course.
“Creativity sparks a deeper level of engagement in students, and we’re excited to help teachers bring out that creativity in the classroom,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. “When you combine the power of iPad, the creativity of Apple Pencil, over a million iPad apps in the App Store, the rich curriculum in Everyone Can Code and Everyone Can Create, and unique Classroom and Schoolwork apps that support students and help schools manage technology in the classroom, we believe we can amplify learning and creativity in a way that only Apple can.”
When you add all that to the already class-leading Augmented Reality capabilities of Apple’s tablet, you have a pretty useful and incredibly powerful education tool.
Of course, Apple isn’t doing this for charity, and clearly hopes to sell a lot more iPads to schools (although they’ll be able to get them for a discounted price).
But there is a handy side-effect for the non-eduction punters like you and me – a better iPad, a cheaper way to get into drawing with the Apple Pencil, and a suite of updated apps to take advantage of that.
Apple has also revamped its iWork suite of productivity apps – Pages, Numbers and Keynote – with new features that make it easy to add more creativity to documents, spreadsheets and presentations on iPad.
Users will be able to draw, sketch or write with Apple Pencil directly in the Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps.
The new iPad comes in silver, space grey and a new gold finish and starts at £319 for the 32GB with Wi-Fi model and £449 for the 32GB Wi-Fi + cellular model at apple.com and Apple Stores.
Apple Pencil is available for purchase separately for £89.