By Todd Bernhard on Mon, 08/31/2015
Maybe Angela Ahrendts had good intentions and was focused on students sharing love letters, but Apple's head of retail may have angered some teachers with her comments about Apple Watches and students in her Back to School training video.
Ahrendts called the Apple Watch “the greatest back-to-school item this year” but went on to suggest the watch could be used without a teacher seeing. “I don’t think the teachers have caught on to the Watch yet,” Ahrendts said, adding that students should “jump on it before the teachers do.”
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My wife is a teacher and one of the biggest distractions to her and other students is texting. Students think they are being sly, but it's more obvious than they think. Since none of her students are brain surgeons, it's likely that the text can wait 45 minutes until class is over. Perhaps Ahrendts thinks the Apple Watch is a more subtle way of reading and even responding to texts, and maybe that's harmless. But there are concerns that her statements encourage cheating.
In addition to sharing questions and answers, students could store formulas on their Apple Watches along with other info they should have memorized. They can retrieve such info at a glance, literally, using the Apple Watch Glances feature, not to mention using assorted apps that could really help them cheat. Hopefully, this isn't the message Ahrendts intended, and a clarification may be in order.
Top image credit: Giuseppe Costantino / Shutterstock.com
