Saturday
01Nov2008
Apple Retail Store Field Trip
Saturday, November 1, 2008 at 08:00AM
John Gruber recently condemned Apple's new Retail Store Field Trip program in brief but strong terms:
I don't presume to know what the American experience of mixing commercial organisations and education is like, but I can offer some experience from a British perspective.
The involvement of business and education has become well-established in the UK over the last decade. The supermarket Tesco has had a long running "Computers for Schools" program in which checkout tokens could be collected by parents in exchange for various electronic knick-nacks. The school where I teach has acquired such items as label printers, lowercase keyboards and miniature mice from this system, but nothing particularly valuable.
Nestlé have, through their cereal brands, been running a "Books for Schools" program for a while as well, the idea being much the same as the Tesco arrangements. The supermarket chain Morrison's is cashing in on the current environmental fashions to run a "Let's Grow" program giving schools gardening equipment. Morrisons have gone a step further than Tesco or Nestlé and are providing schools with vinyl banners to hang on the gates proclaiming their participation in Let's Grow.
Apple's Trip
So what happens at an Apple Store Field Trip? We sent one of our classes to the Apple Store last week, and it was generally considered a good trip. There were six machines in the store set aside for the trip and the focus was podcasting. The kids were taken through a start-to-finish recording of their own 'podcast' in GarageBand including using Photo Booth to add chapter artwork and burning the CD in iTunes.
Typically with Apple, the whole thing was well-produced. We were sent pre-printed invitations with the school information and the date and time of the visit. I think we were supposed to send these home to parents but unfortunately these were DHL'ed from Cupertino and arrived on the day of the trip! At the end of the trip each child took home a CD of their finished podcast and a t-shirt with the Field Trip design (the ones you see the kids wearing on the Field Trip page).
The teacher in charge considered that the lesson had been very well designed from an educational perspective and was very appropriate for the age and stage the children were at. I might add that this is in stark contrast to many trips we take where the educational content is poorly designed and presented.
Pernicious? I disagree.
I look at the Apple Store program from several points of view:
Firstly, we're desperate for places to go. In our school the younger children do a trip every Tuesday and, frankly, we start to run out of places to go. I would completely share John's concern if a school were to spend one of possibly only two or three trips a year on a run to the Apple Store.
Is Apple's program any more pernicious than these Tesco and Nestlé programs that we already participate in? I suspect it will have a lot less impact than the Tesco/Nestlé/Morrisons promotions, which run throughout the school year.
A large proportion of the advertised-as-educational trips we go on are honestly terrible (this includes many publicly-funded museums with dedicated educational staff). A total waste of time and money. Apple, at least, have made a decent attempt at doing a good job of the trip.
In the end, is it any different from visiting any privately-held facility in school time? We take trips to the zoo, to the concert halls, farm parks and outdoor activity centres. All of these organisations provide discounted entry to schools, which could be seen as a loss-leader promotion for their respective families to come back again. Of course the Field Trips have a benefit to Apple - Apple isn't a charity - but it provided us with a high quality and low cost afternoon trip that the children thoroughly enjoyed and learned from. I'm OK with that.
[Update: I put this in a comment, but I thought I should pull it up to the main post. Someone asked where the educational aspects were. With reference to the 'first stage' of the Draft Outcomes for Technologies in the new Curriculum for Excellence that's coming in here in Scotland:
I think it’s downright sickening that any school would consider a trip to a retail store as a legitimate field trip. Consumer advertising has no place in education. The fact that the U.S. public education system is in such a sorry state that this is even possible doesn’t mean Apple should encourage it. It’s appalling.
I don't presume to know what the American experience of mixing commercial organisations and education is like, but I can offer some experience from a British perspective.
The involvement of business and education has become well-established in the UK over the last decade. The supermarket Tesco has had a long running "Computers for Schools" program in which checkout tokens could be collected by parents in exchange for various electronic knick-nacks. The school where I teach has acquired such items as label printers, lowercase keyboards and miniature mice from this system, but nothing particularly valuable.
Nestlé have, through their cereal brands, been running a "Books for Schools" program for a while as well, the idea being much the same as the Tesco arrangements. The supermarket chain Morrison's is cashing in on the current environmental fashions to run a "Let's Grow" program giving schools gardening equipment. Morrisons have gone a step further than Tesco or Nestlé and are providing schools with vinyl banners to hang on the gates proclaiming their participation in Let's Grow.
Apple's Trip
So what happens at an Apple Store Field Trip? We sent one of our classes to the Apple Store last week, and it was generally considered a good trip. There were six machines in the store set aside for the trip and the focus was podcasting. The kids were taken through a start-to-finish recording of their own 'podcast' in GarageBand including using Photo Booth to add chapter artwork and burning the CD in iTunes.
Typically with Apple, the whole thing was well-produced. We were sent pre-printed invitations with the school information and the date and time of the visit. I think we were supposed to send these home to parents but unfortunately these were DHL'ed from Cupertino and arrived on the day of the trip! At the end of the trip each child took home a CD of their finished podcast and a t-shirt with the Field Trip design (the ones you see the kids wearing on the Field Trip page).
The teacher in charge considered that the lesson had been very well designed from an educational perspective and was very appropriate for the age and stage the children were at. I might add that this is in stark contrast to many trips we take where the educational content is poorly designed and presented.
Pernicious? I disagree.
I look at the Apple Store program from several points of view:
Firstly, we're desperate for places to go. In our school the younger children do a trip every Tuesday and, frankly, we start to run out of places to go. I would completely share John's concern if a school were to spend one of possibly only two or three trips a year on a run to the Apple Store.
Is Apple's program any more pernicious than these Tesco and Nestlé programs that we already participate in? I suspect it will have a lot less impact than the Tesco/Nestlé/Morrisons promotions, which run throughout the school year.
A large proportion of the advertised-as-educational trips we go on are honestly terrible (this includes many publicly-funded museums with dedicated educational staff). A total waste of time and money. Apple, at least, have made a decent attempt at doing a good job of the trip.
In the end, is it any different from visiting any privately-held facility in school time? We take trips to the zoo, to the concert halls, farm parks and outdoor activity centres. All of these organisations provide discounted entry to schools, which could be seen as a loss-leader promotion for their respective families to come back again. Of course the Field Trips have a benefit to Apple - Apple isn't a charity - but it provided us with a high quality and low cost afternoon trip that the children thoroughly enjoyed and learned from. I'm OK with that.
[Update: I put this in a comment, but I thought I should pull it up to the main post. Someone asked where the educational aspects were. With reference to the 'first stage' of the Draft Outcomes for Technologies in the new Curriculum for Excellence that's coming in here in Scotland:
TCH 110F: "I use different technologies to interact and share experiences, ideas and information with others, and am developing my knowledge and use of safe and acceptable conduct."]
TCH 111G / TCH 212G: "I can create, capture and manipulate sounds, text and images to communicate experiences, ideas and information in creative and engaging ways."
TCH 115K / TCH 216K: "I explore and experiment with the features and functions of computer technology and I can use what I learn to support and enhance my learning in different contexts."
Reader Comments (10)
Perhaps I'm just cynical, but seems like Apple is clearly trying to sell their product(s) to young, impressionable minds and that's neither responsible or appropriate for any business to do. Kids won't just remember that they made a recording, they will remember they did it on an Apple computer. That's kind of insidious, don't you think? When I was a child (cough) we went to farms and learned how to milk cows or visited an assembly plant to learn how cars are made. Mostly we went to museums, aquariums, zoos, plays, etc. Things that expand the mind through art, math and science. I can see how the process of making a playlist, editing it in Garageband, then burning it to CD can encourage creativity and might even spark the mind of the next John Peel, so...
It's obvious that companies don't have to push themselves into the education system.
But this is open and transparent, and very constructive in contrast to the invisible, aggressive backstage lobbying of some other company.
I live in Belgium where even today, official pedagogic experts and education policy makers are getting direct orders from their superiors "not to consider Apple systems" when it comes to educational applications or even personal use, in order to be "compatible" with the future general education platform. Guess where that comes from.
Apple is simply using the (Open Source advocates) "build it and they will come" strategy to make its point.
But still, iMacs and iPods are not going to help the education problems.
I think there's a fairly important difference between Tesco's program and Apple's. Tesco may be exploiting an underfunded school-system for marketing purposes, but their primary target is the parents.
Apple is targeting kids.
@Simon I completely disagree that Tesco is not targeting children. They are targeting the entire school community: children, parents, grandparents, teachers and friends. They are also doing it over a sustained year-long collection drive.
The "Tesco tokens" process sucks up a lot of staff time to administer, finds its way into school newsletters. Their token collection boxes become part of the school furniture and emptying them is a privileged job for a rewarded child.
Morrisons' "Let's Grow" program is literally co-opting the school gates as a free billboard.
@Dan Kletter, I don't see the problem with that. I remember that I used to play Reader Rabbit, Carmen Sandiego and Fun School 4 on an Apple Mavintosh LC when I was 7. It hasn't destroyed my technological abilities. Apple are proud of their computers. So what? It would be just the same if they'd used a PC, except they'd remember that they used Windows (and they probably wouldn't have been able to do it...)
My Dad took my sister and her friend to the Bullring Center Apple Store where they did an iMovie workshop over the summer, and both of them thought it was fantastic. My sister came back really enthusiastic about making videos. I think it's a great program, personally, I'm glad you think so too, Fraser.
So if schools had the budgets for multimedia capable computers software and computer staff, IT people to keep them running, and the talented and capable staff of educators who could put together a lesson plan and teach it to the kids in an engaging way they would do it. But if Apple offers their retail space for just such an event, its evil? Inspiring a young person to see that there are so very many career opportunities that involve the use of a computer for things other than chat and email is in my opinion essential. It is certainly worth the risk that after such an engaging lesson heaven forbid some of them might go out and actually buy one.
It's great to see comments from so many people who haven't participated in the "Field Trip". I was present for one of the sessions at a local Apple Store, and I can honestly say that other than the location and equipment used, there was no real emphasis or pressure on Apple branding. The focus was placed on the content that the kids were creating. Interestingly, many of the students (and teachers) were already Mac users - they even brought in their machines to use on their little projects.
Writing off a corporate sponsored workshop as "tainted" by only reading the webpage is just bad journalism.
I agree with dvsjr - there is great pressure in most education systems to ensure that children learn how to do things using computers. If Apple can offer an environment that is generally superior to all of the schools that I have attended (both as a student and as an IT support professional) and provide a lesson that the teaching staff recognise as worthwhile (Fraser, I would say, is well qualified to make that judgement), then why wouldn't we all encourage such a thing?
Taking kids to any business where they are simply marketed to is clearly wrong. Taking kids to a well-presented location where they get hands-on experience with activities that are widely accepted and promoted in general society qualifies as part of a well-rounded education.
Make sure the teachers are able to spot the difference, able to explain to the students what the difference is, and I think we will all be happier with the education systems in our respective states and countries.
My wife's school has a rather large computer lab that is all Mac. As with your podcasting experience, the students here use it for podcasting, video production (including some award-winning anti-racism stuff), and various other things. I can see this being *very* valuable for a school that doesn't have the same level of computer resources—and perhaps more importantly, computer-literate teaching resources—as my wife's school.
It might perhaps be more valuable if Apple were to set up a roving classroom that does the same thing, but can travel from region to region to help disadvantaged kids.
Eeee, when I were a lad a field trip would be to a place like Slapton Ley where we would do surveys and biological transects. No retail involvement, just facts.