Apple Launches Cutting-Edge Schoolwork iPad App for Teachers, Students

Apple on Tuesday announced the availability of its all-new Schoolwork app for iPad, which in conjunction with the company’s previously announced Classroom app, is designed to help teachers simplify and streamline the process of creating and assigning new homework tasks, tracking student progress and much more via Apple’s iPad in the classroom.

Announced during the company’s March, 2018 Education event alongside ClassKit, the sixth-generation education-focused iPad, and a bevy of new classroom tools including the Logitech Crayon, Apple’s new Schoolwork app “provides teachers around the world with powerful tools to enhance the learning experience and help both educators and students get more out of the technology they use in the classroom everyday,” the company said in its official press release.

What Does the Schoolwork App Do?

While the app is primarily designed for educators, allowing them to easily create and assign new homework tasks for students to complete, issue announcements and easily share data like web links, PDFs and more, students also benefit from Schoolwork’s powerful tools designed to help them stay organized and to ensure their assignments are completed on time.

Schoolwork is meant to interface with a wide range of powerful education apps already available on the iOS app store, including popular titles like Explain Everything, Tynker, GeoGebra and Kahoot. This allows teachers to assign specific activities and tasks harnessing the unique power and potential of each app available in the App Store’s robust catalog of education-focused titles.

Schoolwork, in conjunction with the myriad of education apps supporting it, is also designed to provide teachers with insight into their students’ progress and performance on a given task — allowing them the ability to tailor their lesson plans in accordance with the needs and potential of each student. As such, teachers are able to access a snapshot of their classroom’s performance and progress on assigned tasks, as well as each student’s progress on an individual basis.

Apple notes in its press release that, like all of the company’s products, Schoolwork also places a major emphasis on privacy and security by giving teachers and school administrators total control over their lesson plans, allowing them to create, own and control student accounts, and to decide when individualized progress reports should be distributed.

Schoolwork effectively transforms iPad into a “versatile teaching assistant,” giving educators full charge of the technology used in their classroom while helping them keep students focused on a specific assignment, app or website. It also allows them to view each student’s assignment progress during class time, as well as share documents, assign shared iPads for collaborative assignments and even reset a student’s password in the event it’s forgotten.

Apple’s Schoolwork app and ClassKit framework arrive at a time when nearly 60 percent of in-class technology is being driven by Google and its low-cost Chromebook devices. And though Apple’s iPad for education is more expensive, even at a specially discounted $299, than many of the sub-$100-$200 Chromebooks on the market today, it’s worth noting that Apple’s ecosystem provides a far more robust suite of apps and tools which may bolster Apple’s position in the education market moving forward.

To learn more about the powerful tools and potential of Apple’s new Schoolwork app, be sure to visit the company’s official Education landing page here.