Steve Jobs’ passing has caused a lot of soul-searching for Apple devotees, but perhaps most particularly amongst the educators who were the earliest adopters and fought the hardest to use Apple’s hardware and software in schools, often against the will of IT professionals and school administrators who only knew the world of PC.
Jobs made this battle easier. Under his leadership, Apple created hardware (the MacBook, the iPod and the iPad) and software (iMovie, iTunes and GarageBand) that made creating podcasts and videos simple and easy for novices and experienced users alike. For the first time, IT in the classroom could actually reach its potential instead of being an ongoing struggle to compel hardware and software to work as advertised. All because Jobs insisted that IT must be user-friendly so that users could focus on creation, not trouble-shooting.
The late Apple visionary Steve Jobs, pictured at the 2008 Macworld conference in San Francisco, introduced life-changing technology like the iPhone, iPad and MacBook. PHOTO BY DAVID PAUL MORRIS
First Legacy: Creative Destruction or Creative Reinvigoration?
It’s hard to overstate how amazing an achievement this was—and is. We are still only beginning to understand how to use IT in the classroom. What skills are needed? How do we teach those skills? Are the skills needed to create podcasts and videos completely different from the writing skills we have taught in the past? Does IT allow us to reinvigorate old skills rather than abandon them completely?
It will take time to answer those questions, and different students and teachers will answer them in their own way. But Jobs put us in a position to use the tools he and his company created to ask those questions—and answer them.
Second Legacy: Does Learning Begin Earlier?
It’s already been observed, barely two years after the release of the iPod, that children can use them at a very early age—often under two years old.
What does this mean for early childhood education? Can children learn at ever-earlier ages? What should they learn? Is this good for children—and for society as a whole? Once more, Apple’s tools have opened doors we must push through to see what is on the other side—for we cannot close them again.
(Read articles on the kindergarteners and grade school students using iPads in class.)
Third Legacy: Do We Need Schools and Universities as They Exist Today?
If students can access resources that were unavailable before, and can work with them in ways to teach themselves and to create projects that could not be created before, this raises another fundamental question: Can an educational system developed in the 19th century and refined in the 20th century still serve its students’ needs in the 21st century? In what ways must educators adapt to the new technologies?
(Read Dialogue magazine’s issue on new literacies and 21st-century learning.)
Fourth Legacy: Relearning Persistence and Perfectionism
By most accounts, working with Jobs was challenging, invigorating and terrifying all at once—and was an experience that practically everyone who worked with Jobs would not have missed for the world. Jobs’ insistence on doing things properly, and compelling his staff to keep working and working and working until they got it right was a major factor in Apple’s success.
Creation is difficult. It’s persistence and perseverance as much as genius. That’s a lesson that students and teachers need to understand and apply—especially in a world made new and often perilous by the changes Jobs and others helped to bring about.
Jobs’ Overall Legacy
Steve Jobs is one of the few people who can rightfully be said to have created a new world. In many ways, he pushed ahead without always knowing what would come of his creations—and without knowing the full impact that they might have.
In education, Jobs and Apple have changed the means of teaching forever. How we use those means is still emerging, still subject to bitter debate, and still an immense challenge to a system, which, like many others in today’s world, is struggling to adapt to a new and ever-changing reality.
But Jobs not only challenged educators; he left us with the tools to meet those challenges using our own courage, wisdom, knowledge and creativity. Just as he did.
That was Steve Jobs’ educational legacy. That’s the legacy we have to live up to.
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How did Steve Jobs influence your teaching and work? What do you think is Steve Jobs’ greatest legacy for students and educators? In what ways must schools adapt to the new technologies?
Related articles:
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Video and Q&A: Technology in Schools
For First Graders, There’s an App for Enjoying Learning
About Paul Keery
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