5 New Apple Educational Tools That Will Revolutionize Classrooms

Apple announced a wide range of education-focused products and initiatives at its March 27 “field trip” keynote, held at Lane Tech College Prep in Chicago. The event features "creative new ideas" for both educators and students, and is just part of a wider initiative by Apple to increasingly move into the education sector.

In addition to a 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support, classroom-focused accessories, and other educational systems and perks, the company also unveiled several other digital platforms that could help both teachers and students across the country. Continue reading to learn more.

5 Apple Teacher Program

Along with the Apple School Manager platform for IT professionals in the education field, Apple unveiled a teacher-focused online hub called the Apple Teacher program. The company is marketing it as a free source for teachers to get inspired and continue their own education.

The Apple Teacher professional learning hub will feature self-paced programs that let teachers learn and experiment with new educational options. Basically, it’s a way for educators to get new ideas, apply creative techniques, and learn new skills that they can use in the classroom.

4 Classroom on Mac

Apple announced that its Classroom app, currently only available for iOS, is coming to the Mac platform. Classroom is a teaching assistant that allows educators to manage their students’ iPads to guide them through lessons, share important classwork, and help keep them on track in real-time.

Using Classroom, teachers can launch an app, book or website on all of their students’ tablets at once. The app also lets a teacher easily send documents like homework assignments and additional material to an entire classroom. The macOS version should arrive in beta around June.

3 Everyone Can Create

It’s not just educators that Apple is hoping to teach and inspire. The Cupertino tech giant also debuted a new and free curriculum called Everyone Can Create specifically designed to leverage the abilities of the new 9.7-inch iPad and the Apple Pencil.

Similar to the company’s previous Everyone Can Code initiative, Everyone Can Create is a program of free resources and teaching guides. Basically, it’ll allow teachers to easily integrate creative projects and programs on photography, filmmaking drawing or music into their own lesson plans. While it’s in preview mode, more content is coming this summer.

2 Schoolwork

Apple also announced Schoolwork, a new custom platform meant to show off the power of apps in a classroom setting. Basically, it’ll let teachers easily create and send assignments to students via its Handouts feature, as well as view each student’s individual progress on that assignment.

The app also integrates with popular educational platforms already on the App Store, such as Nearpod, Tynker, and Kahoot. Teachers will be able to assign specific activities in those apps or direct their students to specific points or lessons. Schoolwork will be available in June, and there’s a lot of room to grow for the platform (thanks to the feature in the next slide).

1 ClassKit

While Apple says there’s already a “rich ecosystem” of apps aimed at the education sector, the company will let developers create new apps and platforms that can easily integrate with Schoolwork. To do so, the company also announced a new developer API called ClassKit. First spotted in iOS 11.3 code, we now know what the toolset does.

ClassKit, basically, is a development framework and toolset for creating educational apps that can easily integrate with Schoolwork. Developers will be able to easily add Schoolwork support with an app update — or create entirely new apps that sync with Apple’s education platform. In other words, the possibilities are pretty wide-ranging. Apple says that ClassKit will launch with iOS 11.4.