On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and former CEO, passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. At age 56, Jobs leaves this world truly changed for the better. Today, we mourn for his family, friends, community and the rest of the world.
We’d like to share Steve’s accomplishments as they have not only changed the world for designers, musicians, artists, and technologists, but also for students, teachers, and educators.
“Your time on this earth is limited; don’t live someone else’s life, live by your vision.” -Steve Jobs
In the 1980s Jobs and his team envisioned education for the future. During the decade of Ronald Reagan, Halley’s Comet, and the growth of the American auto industry; Apple Seed announced a computer literacy program for elementary and high schools. Approximately 10,000 California schools were given computers and computer training scholarship programs were created for educators. Teachers were also offered special rebates on computers for their personal use through “An Apple for the Teacher” program. In turn, this led to the Apple Unified School System where Apple donated $2 million in computers to 23 schools to help at-risk students. But Apple and Steve Jobs’ education impact didn’t stop there…
(Mac Mothership Timeline)
–
“If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.” – Henry Ford
With the creation of the iPad (2010) and iPad 2 (2011), Apple and Jobs reinvented the possibilities technology could hold for both in-classroom and out-of-classroom learning. Interactive lessons, study tools, and productivity help are only a few of the features. We have only just begun to realize just how much the iPad will change classroom experiences for students and teachers. In a recent article posted by Yahoo! News, Apple cited knowing at least 600 schools nationwide where at least one classroom-full of students is using iPads. Think of the possibilities as schools pilot swapping out textbooks in favor of iPads and other tablets.
The iPad’s lower cost (compared to computers), child-friendly design and ability to offer a huge variety of education apps has led the iPad to outperform Mac, PC and laptop products in K-12 education according to MacNN – truly revolutionary.
–
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever” – Steve Jobs
Some dots we’d like to connect:
- In 2007 Apple unveiled iTunes U, a channel created specifically for housing educational resources from colleges and universities, as well as other institutions. From this, both California and Texas created iTunes U channels for K-12 content three years later.
- Apple has continued to produce programs with education in mind offering education discounts for students, faculty members, teachers, and administration at both the college and K-12 level.
- Karen Cator, director of the office of education technology at the U.S. Department of Education grounds her routes as a director of Apple’s leadership and advocacy efforts in technology and education from 1997 until she left Apple for the Department of Education in 2009.
- iBooks will allow children to tap on a word, prompting an associated picture or video to describe the word. Apple has also created a way for this to prompt a student’s native language helping students to learn foreign languages easier (For Apple K-12 Growth is the Future)
- Fortune Magazine named Apple as the most admired company in the United States in 2008 and in the world in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
- Apple has produced an entire section on their site devoted to education resources.
–
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
In many ways, Steve Jobs was a teacher to us all. He pushed us to see the world in a different way, and gave us the tools to do so. As educators and administrators, we have the opportunity to live out his legacy – to lead purposeful lives by enabling others to “think different”.
