As I followed along with Apple’s education event yesterday, I was looking at it from the perspective of a former student. I would have loved to have the tools that Apple demoed back when I was in school.

However, it is not the students that determine if a product is going to be successful in the education market. To get a perspective of how the schools are going to look at their announcement, it is hard to find someone more knowledgeable than Bradley Chambers.

He was at the event and wrote about it for his new weekly column about Apple in Education at 9to5 Mac:

Education didn’t need a faster iPad. Education didn’t need Apple Pencil support. Those are great features for a consumer-friendly iPad, but education needed a clearer signal from Apple that they understand how school districts actually operate around the country and around the globe.

At the end of the day, students still have to pass standardized tests. They still have to meet all of their mandated requirements. I’m not sure an iPad with Apple Pencil support and some new GarageBand sound packs are really going to make that big of a difference as fun as they may be.