MATTHEW  ISOM

          The other day as I was walking through Washington Square Mall in Beaverton, Oregon, I passed the Apple Store and was compelled to stop to look at the lifesize ad hanging in the window.  Even though it was only the beginning of July, the ad showed a graduating high school senior heading off to college with everything she needed for the upcoming year: a laundry basket filled with cute new clothes, a decorative plant for the dorm, notebooks, and of course, a MacBook Pro.  The caption simply read: “College Prerequisites.” The ad is aimed at not only  students, but their parents, most of whom longed for a MacIntosh when they were heading off to college in the early 1980’s,  whether they could afford one or not. The implied message is that students must buy a Mac before they can go to college, just as they must pass four units of English before they graduate from high school.  Parents buy into this questionable reasoning, apparently.  Nobody stops to ask the question, “Why Apple products? Why do students need MacBook Pro’s and iPads?”  And as a high school teacher, I’ve asked myself that question as well.  Maybe they don’t really need to have these computers, but Apple sure does want to sell them, and they’ve figured out new ways to do it.  

          What I find interesting about this ad at Washington Square Mall is that the girl heading off to college is an African-American girl.  This comes as a surprise to most people, which supports what I’ve been saying.  Apple customers are predominantly White.  In fact, as I think back over the last few years, I realize that I have had around 50-100 students who have owned iPhones and Apple computers, and how many of them do you think have been minorities?  One. (And she comes from a very wealthy family.)  It seems to me that with this current Apple ad, the company is trying to break into a new demographic group.  28 percent of the U.S. population is comprised of minorities.  If Apple can appeal to the minorities, maybe they can become the computer of the common man, and thereby open up another 28% of the U.S. market (not to mention the mind-boggling numbers of non-Caucasians overseas).  But the thing that has been puzzling me is that Apple isn’t currently the computer for the common man.  The question is, through the power of the media, will that ad change the buying habits of minorities?  Will African-Americans who send their kids off to college be more likely to buy MacBook Pro’s for their little student?

          Most likely, they will, and they might do so in surprisingly high numbers.  Media messages take hold in the mind because they appeal to our emotions, and the emotions are what motivate us to action.  Logic has very little to do with success in advertizing.  It’s all about hooking the viewer emotionally.  And Apple has a brilliant marketing campaign that creates some of the best ads out there.  This ad motivates because its image is of a cute girl in crisp lighting, looking straight into the camera with confidence, and we think, “Wow, she’s heading for success” with no data to lead us logically to that conclusion.  And when these minority students, Apple’s apparent new demographic, head off to college, a greater percentage of the American public, minorities as well as middle and upper middle-class whites, will be using Apple’s technology.

          Perhaps the real reason that Apple will be able to sell these parents on the idea of buying more expensive Apple products is that Apple has already sold their kids on their products.  According to BusinessWire, 45% of all 13-17 year-olds own iPods. 45%.  That’s a huge percentage considering that other MP3 players are cheaper.  Why would kids pay more for Apple?  Because it works better? Perhaps, but probably the greatest reason is that its cool.  And where do these kids learn that it’s cool to have products with a little stylized apple on them?  From the media.  And for kids, that’s largely from movies and television.  

           A few months ago my kids (8-13, by the way) had me watch their favorite TV show, iCarly.  The pilot episode shows a group of brilliant teenagers, including one very tech-savvy boy, who are frustrated with public school in general because it is boring and unchallenging (sound familiar, fellow teachers?)  And in this episode, what they are frustrated with is that the school is not allowing their friends, a band of misfits and rebels with little respect for the status quo, to perform in the school talent show.  So Carly and her two friends decide to hold their own talent show and video-cast it to the world.  From this episode a media message (but my kids sure wouldn’t see it a such), has communicated two messages to my kids and everyone else who watches the show and will soon be heading off to college:  One, technology has given them  the power to create things that my generation could not have created without at least $5,000 (which means that most of us did not create these kinds of things).  And two, my kids learn that they must have the same computer that Carly has--a MacBook Pro!  Such is the logic of advertising.  Actually the Apple icon on the back of the computer has been changed into a pear, but the computer is clearly an Apple and the joke even further calls attention to the fact that Macs are the thing to have.  

          This kind of advertising is ubiquitous.  Nearly every teenager in every movie has white wires plugged into his head, sending the message to the rising generation that Apple is their brand if they can afford it.  And because it’s cool to have this stuff, the kids do find ways to afford it, even kids who might not really appear to have the money to do so.  That 45% of 13-17 year-olds figure compares to only 23% of 18-24 year-olds, showing that very recently Apple figured out that the key to increasing market share is to get the kids hooked--kind of like marketing Camel cigarettes to kids during the 60’s and then relishing the fact that you’ve got a customer base that will last a lifetime.  The 45% of teens ownig iPods figure becomes even more significant when we realize that the top 20% of Americans hold 85% of the wealth and the top 40% holds 95% of America’s wealth.  In other words, it might be hard to bump that 45% figure much higher since most of the people with significant disposable income have already been tapped (see these fascinating statistics on the 1% vs. the 99% (Domhoff).

I think that it’s important to note that trends in technology in the classroom are also driven by the younger generation as it starts to grow up.  From personal experience as a teacher for the last 22 years, I’ve seen that new technology comes into schools when young teachers write grants for technology.  They have to write these grants because local, state, and national leaders in education don’t see the potential of new technologies until they see it in action. Being of an empirical bent, they go with things that have been proven to work.  They need to see the data.  It’s the young teachers who are the visionaries.   They are the ones Steve Jobs targets in his television ad that portrayed icons of originality-- Gandhi, Einstein, Edison, Martha Graham, and Bob Dylan--the “Crazy Ones,” those who think differently than most do and, as Jobs says, change the world.  Here are the words that Jobs used as he narrated the ad himself, an ad that is incredibly moving to listen to now that Jobs is gone:

          Here's to the crazy ones.

          The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

          The round pegs in the square holes.

          The ones who see things differently.

          They're not fond of rules.

          And they have no respect for the status quo.

          You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,

          disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

          About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

          Because they change things.

          They invent. They imagine.

          They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire.

          They push the human race forward.

          Maybe they have to be crazy.

          How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?

          Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?

          Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

          While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

          Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,

          are the ones who do.

 

       When Jobs reads the text of the television ad, he doesn’t have to say a word about Apple computers to motivate people to change their view and start buying more Apple products.  All Apple had to do was have the words “Think Different” appear on the screen with the multi-colored Apple icon, and idealistic people said to themselves, “Yeah, I’m going to go out and change the world, too!”  And in the back of their minds was that Apple icon reminding them that they’d need an Apple computer to effect change, because Apple computers are the ones that allow creative people to make a difference, at least according to the reasoning of the ad.  

     It seems clear to me that Apple has successfully used the media to alter the perception of this rising generation that brings technology into the classroom, but perhaps we should first ask if the media has, in general, influenced society to bring technology into the educational arena. It’s important to realize that what constitutes the media is quite a bit larger than those four sources typically identified: television, radio, newspaper, and magazines. Perhaps even more effective than these big three is advertising, and Apple has discovered a brilliant new way to advertise, so brilliant that we don’t even think of it as advertising.  As an example (or an intro to an example, actually), take a line from the cover story of a recent Field and Stream magazine.  We read: “Has Technology Made Hunting Too Easy?”(Love, Chad).  We see here that technology has completely permeated society, even parts of society that some might call anti-progressive and anti-technology--the hunters.  Even though this title appears to frown upon technology,  a secondary message comes through loud and clear: “technology works.”  But how does this relate to our schools? My son (a second grader) told me something the other day that made me stop in my tracks and helped me realize just why it is that every student (barely an overstatement) wants to use Apple products at school.  He said, “Hey Dad, have you ever seen one of those plastic guns at the store that use an iPhone?”  Then when I asked him to describe these toys, he responded,  Yeah, they have a thing on the barrel of the gun where you put the phone and then look on the phone screen and you can see animals and stuff that look like they’re in front of you!”     

       And so my son, a mere seven year-old, wants an iPhone so that he can play a game with a plastic gun.  Even though people don’t typically consider things like a toy that uses an iPhone to be advertising, they really are. It occurs to me that Apple’s coup de grace in the marketing world could be Apps.  They’re everywhere, and loads of them are for educational purposes.  You buy a $20 plastic gun at the store that comes with an App that turns a kid’s toy into an elaborate video game (why use your Wii anymore?  Why go to an arcade to play a game they paid $3,000 for? (think “Buy Apple stock, sell Nintendo”).  And so it is that the App, accessible on those ubiquitous iPods, iPads, and iPhones that the rising generation is using, becomes not only a tool, but also a means of selling Apple products through the media.  Kids see iCarly using a MacBook Pro and an iPod on TV and then want Apple themselves; they see themselves in the life-sized ads in the mall; in their magazines they see pictures of these products, and when their parents see these ads, they fondly remember the powerful TV and magazine articles they saw in their formative years (“The Crazy Ones” aired in 1997). And because iPods are owned by 45% of middle school and high school kids (up 22% in the last six years), in the next six years many more of them will want to buy (or have their parents buy) MacBook Pro’s for college.  

    And so what does all of this have to say to educators?  It means that the Apple/PC debate is over as far as public schools go, but a lot of us just don’t know it yet.  And it’s over regardless of which format is superior.  In short, Apple has won the battle through the subtle use of media.  This battle is over for three primary reasons.  One, students think iPads, iPhones, and iPods are cool, and when students are interested, learning goes up.  Two, the most influential educators are already hooked on Apple.  Apple pretty much won the battle years ago when they supplied computer labs for free and made Apple the preferred computer of schools.  At that same time Apple adopted an advertising campaign that resonates particularly well with idealistic teachers: “Think different.”  “Change the world.”  And even though most public schools couldn’t afford to stock their computer labs with Apple computers once the funding ran out, the seed had still be planted in the minds of educators and most wished they could have Macs.  I think that it’s interesting to note that students in graduate programs at Western Oregon University, where I’m currently studying, the computer labs are filled with Apple computers, This is most likely because the teachers there were influenced by Apple’s brilliant media campaign, especially when they were younger.  And thus, Apple’s predominance becomes self-perpetuating as teachers see the strengths of the Apple format before they head off to their teaching assignments where they, too, will use Apple and spread the word.  

       This self-perpetuating phenomenon continues to snowball through the new, and perhaps most powerful form of the media, the internet.  When I search YouTube and Twitter for ideas about effective teaching, I find that the most creative teachers are using Apple--iPads in particular--to share their ideas about creating dynamic classrooms.  In one video a graduate student tauts the strengths of iPads in a presentation she probably created to show at an inservice meeting so she could convince fellow teachers and the administration to use Apple.  Another video shows news coverage of an exemplary teacher who says that the “iPad allows students to use creative formats to create projects that demonstrate learning” and he points out that these projects also teach to state standards (Goetzman).  Another lists “Top 10 Ways to Effectively Use iPads in the Classroom.” And thus, fellow teachers watch the videos and say to themselves, like I did, “I should give my students this assignment” and, as with “The Crazy Ones” ad by Apple, in the back of my mind I know that I want a classroom set of Apple computers to do this.

       I predict that In the next five years or so schools are going to realize that iPads and other Apple computers (including the iPod Touch) engage students more and help them reach state standards better than other computers have.  The media will have convinced them, in some ways directly, but perhaps more importantly through a trickle down effect when the majority of progressive, young teachers sell them on iPads and the like.   But will financial constraints prevent them from doing this?  I don’t think they will.  Apple is now no longer all that more expensive than PC computers, at least in terms of the value (consider that textbooks are now available through Apple).  The 45% of teenagers who buy more costly iPod MP3 players have realized this already, and they will help put pressure on schools to adopt Apple more and more.  The price of iPhones will drop, and perhaps the powers that be in education will finally say to themselves, “Hmmm.  Well, after all these Smartphones are actually computers with a phone built into them.  Hmmmm. And it just so happens that we don’t have enough money to buy all of the hardware we really need.  Maybe we should just go ahead and use our students’ phones.  They’re free, after all.”  And the Steve Jobs legacy will live on--no, thrive--due to the power of the media.

 

Sources:

Landsberger, J. (n.d.). Citing Websites. In Study Guides and Strategies. Retrieved May 13, 2005, from http://www.studygs.net/citation.htm.

 

Back to School. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from http://www.apple.com/

 

Baker, Chris.  In Demographics Data for iPhone and iPod Touch Users. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from http://usabilitynotes.typepad.com/usabilitynotes/2009/10/demographics-age-data-for-iphone-and-iphone-touch-users.html

 

Domhoff, C. William.  In Who Rules America?  Retrieved July 27, 2012, from

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

 

Love, Chad.  Field and Stream.  Has Technology Made Hunting Too Easy? Retrieved July 27, 2012, from

http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/field-notes/2011/05/has-technology-made-hunting-too-easy

 

Goetzman, Kristin. In Inside Horry County Schools. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from  

 

Jobs, Steve. In Here's to the Crazy Ones. Retrieved Jul1i6IXC9kRwA)  July 10, 2013 from (http://www.youtube.com