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Maine buys 38,600 ibooks for Public Schools
Anderson Silva writes "I just found this piece of news on MacSlash, and since I live in Maine, and I own an ibook, I thought I would pass the word along: The Maine Learning Technology Endowment has announced today that Apple has won the bid to provide Maine 6th, 7th and 8th graders with Apple iBooks and Airport wireless connection points."
I hear Microsoft was runner-up to provide the school district with iBooks.
you have to admit, these ibooks make pretty nice unix boxes. The nice graphics of OS X(not ugly graphics of Xfree) with the power of unix. I just bought an ibook a few months ago as my entry into macs to try out the BSD derived OS X, and so far its been a grear ride. I recommend for your next laptop to try out an ibook or powerbook and if you don't like OS X, you can always install OpenBSD or some linux distro
...the place to be, especially if you live near a school, and know how to use AirSnort :-)
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
It would be pretty hard for MS to sell them IBooks. I assume other companies were competing with different products.
Apple has always gone out of their way to win school bids. I remember when I was a kid I wanted an Apple ][ just because that's what the school had, and that my friend, is what Apple wants!
Mike
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
were it's own fault. The Wall Street Journal had an article last year about it. It said that in years past Apple used to sell to schools through resellers and other middlemen. But then they got greedy and tried to get it to themselves. Of course the middlemen had the relationships built with their customers and started selling them PC's with Windows. And now Apple is playing catch up.
Whilst I'm aware this is obviously good news for Apple, is this newsworthy ?
:-)
Don't get me wrong, I've got an iBook too, and I love it, but I'm just wondering what "better" news is out there.
Or, are we going to encounter such a bad recession that soon the sale of bic biro gets into the news ?
M.
It's good to see schools diving into this technology rather than figuring out pressing educational problems or sticking to the "core functionality" of a classroom. Our children will be well-equipped to serve as marketing drones and politicians. Their quality of life will be greater than their parents', according to the trade magazines.
with airports.... the laptop's will be the ultimate note-passing machines
Why spend money on hardware that is harder to replace and more expensive than desktops? Aside from the very limited ammount of field research that schools do, desktops should be fine. The only reason they buy laptops is to seem more in tune with the 21st century, or whatever bullshit the school administrators believe in. My school just bought a bunch of laptops, and they're not very usefull considering their lame hardware. The money could have been better spent on desktop PCs which would take longer togo out of date (you can buy more powerfull desktop PCs for the same money as a less powerfull desktop)
Photos.
I work in the It department for my school and all the teachers have laptops. They break the screen, break the dongles, drop them, one actually ran over his with his car, and these are all PhD's, imagine what these kids are going to do with these things!
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
An iBook for every 6th, 7th and 8th grader is a great undertaking.
Including AirPort wireless is an even larger logistical headache.
May God have mercy on the souls (and minds) of the people responsible for it once it's unleashed. Let's also hope these children aren't warped from real kiddies to 5cr1p7 k1dd135!
I got to a smallish private school which is quite expensive and we have these crappy p2 233 desktops which are always giving us fits.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Uh, microsoft office.... a huge range of educational and science related software.... No they won't be able to play half-life, this is probably a good thing.
Every machine I ever saw in grade school was an Apple II or a Mac. I remember playing Oregon Trail, and Odell Lake, and using a program that I think was called "FreeType" (or was it "Fred"?) for word processing, though I'm not sure.
And, of course, there was Terrapin Logo and the UCSD P-System.
Alas, though, while I grew up on Apples, I have moved to the Intel world where machines are cheaper, don't come in flavors, and I standard C compiles without hassle or quirks. (Thought this is true of MacOS X now.)
I DO still own a couple Macs... one '040, one PowerPC, but they are less used (The 040 will get Linux someday, the PPC is for games.)
Finally, I have to be honest... I know someone who's got an iBook, and it's the UGLIEST laptop I've ever seen, and he had two of them prior that had their backlights burn out. I know they won't fix the ugly-factor, but I hope the backlights are more reliabled now.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Besides using macs, which IMHO is totally cool, The Maine Learning Technology Endowement itself is actually quite a progressive idea.
This is nothing new, Henrico County Public Schools (Richmond, Va.) started this year by issueing every 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grader with an iBook. According to various students, it has been a massive disaster, students using Instant Messanger all the time, hardware failures running rampant, the latches on those things just can't take the abuse of a teenager. That coupled with the low bandwidth estimates have constantly crashed the Airport systems. It's a great Idea in theory and I'm sure after a year or two it will do a great deal of good, but for now, we are just giving out Laptops to teenages for games and the like.
...State of Maine wastes $38,600,000 of taxpayers' money.
But seriously, does anyone really, REALLY think that $38.6M couldn't POSSIBLY have found better uses than buying laptops? Like, some textbooks maybe? Or hiring teachers that made better than a C average in college?
Though I suppose Maine may not have these problems to the extent Colorado does. In that case, I suppose the money is better spent buying iBooks than building prisons or installing street surveillance cameras... (though I contend the best use of any "government money" is to refund it to its rightful owners)
(Not a troll.)
Most people don't have wireless network connections and laptops. Why is it imperative that the government pay to buy luxury items for the schools?
I'm all in favor of spending money on education, but that means *education*, not laptops for stupid powerpoint presentations on Abraham Lincoln. (Bitter high school experience.) Why can't we buy the children better textbooks or pay the teachers more money. A laptop for every teacher and assuming ~20 kids per teacher is tens of thousands of dollars that could pay for more and better-qualified teachers and facilities.
*Sigh* Maybe I just miss the good ol' days of playing Doom in the high school computer lab -- the old fashioned way, with wires.
I believe Apple is selling the iBooks for $300 a piece (wish I could grab one for that price) so they are taking a loss on this one. Apple probably is betting that this will help them make a comeback in the school. It will be very interesting to see if they can pull it off (the other solutions that lost served up terminal apps and web pages over WAN connections) on a tablet type device. Unlike the other solutions however, I think Apple is doing the whole thing at a loss. As Mainers here know (myself included), this entire plan has not been without controversy. I for one think its a neat idea.
..this is but a fantasy..
how good is airsnort if registering your MAC address is the only way to become part of a WiFi network. airsnort then seems useless to me.
"This award is a conditional award, subject to successful negotiation of an agreement and State Purchases Review Committee approval. The Department will now enter into negotiations with Apple Computer, Inc. in order to finalize the terms and conditions of the agreement for the State?s Wireless Classroom Solution. If negotiations are unsuccessful, the Department may enter into negotiations with the next highest scoring bidder."
And who is the next highest scoring bidder? Dell? Are they/he still aggressively going after school contracts?
I know that Apple is going to be making the switch from MacOS 9 to MacOS X in the near future (as their "default" OS), will these have OSX?
Um, 'kay so I know you're really trying to be funny and all but keep in mind that "a real company..." doesn't make any sense in terms of hardware -manufacture-. Nobody, not even apples main competitor M$ has hardware (see the XBox article in this months wired) made by -a- company, they usually farm out to several "manufacturing services" companies to do it. So, while it was really funny that you were teasing Apple, they license the manufacture of the hardware manufacturing just like Dell, Gateway and now M$. BK425
Why are schools focusing on this? Learning how to use MS Word and Internet Explorer is not something schools should waste effort or money on teaching. Schools also should not be the ones teaching these things. Kids can learn them on their own. I did. They do not, in any way, aid teaching. It is also pointless to teach these things. Giving each kid one of these won't give them a better education. This is a growing problem in our schools: replacing time that could be well spent on learning with playing with the latest gadgets. We use calculators now instead of teaching kids multiplication. Sure, using a calculator is convenient, but do kids even understand that multiplication is anything more than pushing a few buttons on a tool? In addition, I expect a good part of school time will be wasted on fixing problems with the computers that arise. Exactly what is so important about macs that nessitates buying 40000 of them? What will be replaced in the school budget to pay for these items?
Granted, computer science classes may be beneficial, but I hardly think that is what the 40000 computers will be used for, especially in 7th grade. Besides, if they're going to learn programming, networking or system administration, why Macs? Use a UNIX or at least (I can't believe I'm endorsing this) Windows.
- learn
the subject matter is the appropriate system. The purpose is not to teach them how to use an OS, it's to teach them math, science, english, etc.Once you know how to use one OS, switching to another is really no big deal. If the Maine schools thought a Dell laptop would be the better tool, they would have bought them. Deal with it.
Last URL messed up...
a gi cLanternScandal.pdf
I got it from here
like i said.Damn that's gonna bother some people
http://www.geocities.com/anonymouscowheard/FBIM
truth. Maine is like, 96+% white, and just over 1 million in poulation, not "millions."
look up some basic census stats BEFORE that knee-jerk reaction!
How was this post not branded a troll?? As someone who has been through the Maine public education system I would have to disagree with your statement. As someone who also has performed work on many Maine school networks I think alot of them are doing okay. In fact I know of one who just installed a Linux terminal server and is quite happy with it.
..this is but a fantasy..
If you have a desktop you have just wasted an entire desk. With the laptop you don't need a special desk just for the machine, plus you can put it away. And they can be much more easily locked away when not in use.
And as far as computing power... I think our software makers have a long way to go before they are limited by todays hardware. (You don't require 125 frames per second in geology class...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Apple has led the educational market for many years, and 38K laptops is certainly a big win for them....
However, with M$ and the ***Billion Dollar*** Settlement offer still floating around (looking however less politically viable everday)
What can Apple do to keep their educational position?
they need to be putting Apple products into the big city K-12 school systems....
New York, Chi Town, El Lay, Don't forget the Motor City...these school systems have orders of magnitude more students in them than the entire state of Maine..many future developers and other technologists will come from the Big City school districts...
One of the edges that MS has being a software centric company, is that "giving away" products like WinOS and Office and Visual Studio involves only trivial duplication costs...MS could burn "collections" of educationally aimed software on to DVD's and have "per byte" costs that are microscopic
Apple has to cough up genuine hardware that represents real (and very non-trivial) capital and production costs, which in its current market position is not an attractive proposition...
What will Maine (or any other state) do if MS comes along and offers them 50,000 low-cost XP laptops (bullied out of Compaq or Gateway or some other Wintel mfgr with big inventory excess problems) with Office, FlightSim, and Visual Studio pre-loaded for net net cost????
Maine would probably dump their Apple order in a second......
This is what happens when you have a monopoly position....
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Bill Clintons "A computer in every classroom" was brilliant. It sounded great to the public and it allowed him to pay back the millions the tech industry had invested in his campaign.
Two of my three daughters in Maine have speech problems. Do you think there is money to hire a speech therapist! No way, got to spend it on laptops that will get abuse used to "chat" in math class. I am by no means against technology in school but lets get our priorities straight. I need my kids to be able to speak clearly first and use a computer second. This whole laptop thing here in Maine (the highest taxed state in the country) is a farce. This is a cool sounding news item but the real issue should be getting teachers who are qualified and curriculum that actually prepares our kids for real life situations like making change. (Don't laugh, I recently had a teller at an Arby's ask the supervior how to make 28 cents in change. The manager had to tell her, "a quarter and three pennies". My 14 year old daughter, now in private school, busted up laughing.)
Well if you can afford a "quite expensive" private school, you can probably afford to buy your own freakin laptop.
On the bright side, used iBooks should soon be plentiful and cheap at your neighborhood pawn shop.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's stupid to have a 12-year old carry $1000 worth of hardware to school every day? Seems to me I trashed a lot of hard-cover text books at that age. What happens after the first pre-teen discovers what a good sled an iBook makes when you open it up?
Maine is truly a disgusting state where the sun shines but 2 weeks out of 52. The rest of the year is either rain, snow, or fog. A horrible place based on the weather alone, yet when one takes into account the mutant natives, tis in actuality a hell on earth. It will take more than an iBook to help these people, perhaps something along the lines of a brain transplant, plastic surgery, and a lifetime membership in Jenny Craig.
In the New York Times today, there was a short article about how Steve Jobs of Apple is publicly opposed to a proposal by Microsoft to the DOJ. In short, MS wants the DOJ to drop anti-trust precedings in exchange for MS's donation of $1 billion worth of "software, hardware and expertise" to some low-budget schools. Basically, Jobs alleges that this is an attempt by MS to gain further market share in the education market, where currently, Apple is a key player.
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
The area where I live (Lewiston) has a high school that is tech heavy and accomodates other high schools in the region. We've found that computers help out education a lot. (Yes, I did say I'm a student. But I like playing with tech and get my hands all over everything). The laptops should be a further boost.
The idea is NOT to replace desktops, but to give people decent usable computers that they can carry. Nighmares will happen - they'll get dropped, stolen, broken, maimed, abused, and dead. What we want to see is if we can keep that to a minimum. And if it works, the wireless networks that are being planned should prove interesting. And if it doesn't work, then other states can save themselves the cash. I really believe it will work. And we're ready for it.
SIG: HUP
My high school has chosen to give all the teachers ibooks and airports. I think they have helped out a lot, now all grades and attendence is done via powerschool.
Anyone know if this is a consideration in wireless networks for schools in the USA???
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I can speak from experience on this one, sort of. I am a 2nd year student at Northern Michigan University, and every student here gets a thinkpad every 2 years. i have a 500mhz one, 64mb ram, 6gig hd, the new ones have a cd burner, 700mhz, 124mb ram and 10gig hd's.... it seesm like a good idea, but really, the only thing anyone ever uses these things for is chat and downloading music on the hella fast connection. well, i write papers on it as well, but that doesn't really warrant having it i guess. oh, and 365 comes out every semester of tuition and you don't get to keep it at the end. kind of a ripoff. that's my 2 cents anyway
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, not just chemistry, reality!
"We should have kick-ass laptops, but no one else needs them." - seems to be the tone here.
;-)
Plenty of schools have plenty of laptop programs. They work. They have roughly 5% overstock for the repair stream. Remarkably few ever get run over by cars. iBooks don't need no stinking dongles 99% of the time.
The kids do a higher level of work. Remember when your only vehicles for expression were book reports and clay-filled shoeboxes? Wanna go back to that? This is the direction the world is going. Once again, some want the kids to be last in line.
There is no best way to teach, there is no best way to outfit a school. This you learn only by experience in a school. There are plenty of good ways, and this is one of them.
I've been in education for 20 years. I've been running Mac & Win labs fo the past ten. Never had to unload a teacher machine because it was full. Kids, on the other hand, overdrive any machine you give them, and that's without games contributing to the fray.
The guns or butter arguments don't wash either. If you weren't harping about spending school money before, don't do it now.
Plenty of schools don't have laptops and still have lots of problems that - surprise - aren't being solved by anyone of their critics.
Only thing that worries me - they'll lose these shiny white boxes in all that snow... tsk.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
that's why you put em in computer labs. desk space becomes a non issue, and you simply have lab days. Now if they're letting the kids take these things home it makes sense, but if not, it doesn't make any. My school still has pentium 100s which were real hotrods when they bought em but they aren't anymore. If they had bought some 486 laptops then we would have been even more out of date.
Photos.
check out the name of the contact on the PR
"Contact: Yellow Light Breen,"
what a name!
No half-life, but Mac Diablo2 is just the sort of clickfest those kids would eat up. Hope iBooks have sturdy pads and buttons.
Actually the school has to pay for those ibooks. I don't see how a Mac can be cheaper than a Linux powered laptop.
My father was a teacher in Maine for for four years before he moved to New Hampshire. At a starting pay of $18,000 a year, one of the school's biggest problems was attacting good teachers. Every year all kinds of people would leave, and we'd get the bottom of the barrel for teachers. Only the ones who couldn't get jobs anywhere else. When we did get a good teacher they would eventually leave for better jobs.
As far as computer technology in the classroom, the computers were rarely used for important schoolwork, mostly the boys play networked games and the girls go online and chat. If they were all given their own laptops, I'd guess that about half of them would be broken or stolen within a year. Besides, there is no need for laptop computers, as the schools are already filled with computers everywhere.
In a well-run school, things would be a lot different. But realistically, there are very few well run schools in Maine, and most of them are in rich communities that don't need state funding for technology anyway. Governer King has done a lot of good things as governer and I give him credit for trying to promote technology, but I think he has Maine's priorities wrong on this one.
Apple has won the bid to provide Maine 6th, 7th and 8th graders with Apple iBooks
Wow. color ME impressed.
Next you'll say that Microsoft has won a bid to provide Windows at the lowest price. Exactly who would they be competing against?
In recent news, $EXCLUSIVE_MANUFACTURER has won the bid to provide $EXCLUSIVE_MANUFACTURER'S_PRODUCT to $ENTITY.
So what if a kid shows up with a x86 based portable, like a Dell Inspiron 8100 or something :P, is that against the rules? What if the kid wipes the disk and loads Yellowdog on the apple :P.
What is wrong with you, computer science is not about operating someone else's design but rather understanding computing and programming. Mac OSX and wireless networking are perfect examples of new innovative technology. Apple gives out its Dev Tools free and is somewhat friendlier than UNIX for children not familiar with it. Macs also have a lower TCO and offer distinct advantages to students and administrators. Such as reliability, no virii, and student lack of knowledge in bypassing security. As for computers not being important in education, they are important. Students can use these machines to express themselves and learn in ways more effective than classical education.
These laptops are totally unnecessary. What a waste of money. The vast majority of teachers don't know what to do with the computers in the computer lab down the hall. How is that going to be improved by putting them in every backpack?
Sure, computer literacy is important in the modern world, but so is writing and math. In fact, computer literacy without both of those to back it up gives you nothing but slashdot trolls. This is just as bad of an idea as letting kids use calculators in pre-algebra, and for the same reasons. How are kids ever going to learn the basics of anything if we keep handing them machines to take care of the basics for them?
Computers in schools are great. I remember the first computer I ever got to use, a Commodore PET with a cassette drive that lived in the corner of my 4th grade classroom. You had to reserve it ahead of time to play games on it during recess. Unfortunately that's all we ever did with it. A few years later we had a lab with some Apple]['s that we could use to type up our essays, and by the time I got to high school those were replaced with PCs. Were they useful? Did I learn from using them? Sure, but not enough to justify giving every kid their own. 10:1 is a perfectly acceptable ratio, probably even less in more upscale neighborhoods where everyone has a computer at home.
There was recently that linked the rise of the modern word processor with the decline of writing skills in college students. My fear is that these programs are just going to produce more of the same. Kids need to learn how to do stuff themselves before we hand them tools that do stuff for them.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Wow.. that'd make an interesting.. beowulf cluster? (/dr evil)
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I just installed OSX on a used iBook that I picked up, and is it ever sweet! I've been a Linux die-hard since 1993, but I gotta say Apple has done what Gnome and KDE barely hint at -- OSX is a beauty. I have jotted down a few notes about it at www.genema.org/osx.html in case anyone is curious.
I am happy to see someone makes choices based on the merits of the technology, and not just follows the Redmond lemmings. It does kinda make me wish I was still going to school...
The is absolutely no reason that you need a computer for education. I mean, I passed the AP Computer Science AB exam with flying colors, and the only time I touched my computer to learn that stuff was to find out that the College Board web site sucks. (The AP Computer Science AB exam has nothing to do with programming -- it's all logic and computer science, the way it should be.) Why couldn't these schools buy another computer lab? I doubt that everyone needs to be on the internet at all times.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Microsoft's just printing their own money for their settlement. The only real cost to them is the loss of potential sales, and they don't even lose anything on that end, since the schools that get the stuff would either not buy any of the software in the first place or end up buying later versions once they need to upgrade their donated stuff
Kids need computer skills no doubt, but guess what, you can cover that in a class or two when they get to high school if they haven't already been exposed to it.
Kids in school need to be learning history, math, sciences and english.
There is a time and place for everything, and jr high is not the place to be playing with computers.
not the one Maine or Apple expected.. If when I was in the 8th grade (the internet barely existed) what would have been the first thing I would do? PORN! Whats going to happen when it starts popping up on these kids computers? You can smell the lawsuits now...
You know, when it was Microsoft giving computers to schools, they were evil monopolists. Now Apple is doing essentially the same thing, but I hear no vehement protest. And as other people have written, the Apple presence in schools did have a considerable effect one what computers they wanted at home. Of course, Microsoft was using the offer to get out of the anti-trust suit, but the impact on the future consumers (formerly known as kids) is still there...
Another testament to the bias of Slashdot, I suppose.
________
"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
Why are you all calling it a scooter? I'd say that's a bit of an understatement.
I think all the people who are saying "electric scooter, big whoop. $3,000, yeah right" are slightly missing the point. Yeah, it's kind of wimpy for the price tag. Yeah, it's kind of expensive, and it's questionable who would want to use it.
But this is just the first model. It's more sort of a proof of concept--a demonstration that the scooter can work, and looks as neat as all get-out in motion. As time goes on, the performance will improve and the price will fall.
Look at the Palm (Pilot). The first model was, what, 128K? With no backlight, no infra-red, or anything? And how high was the price tag? And now the Visor Deluxe, which was at one time the wet dream of anybody who even looked at a Palm, is only $130 brand new.
Look at the DVD player. The original models were expensive enough, the first bunch of discs were glitchy enough, that a lot of people scoffed and made snide remarks. But the DVD went on to become the fastest-adopted new consumer technology ever.
So here we have a relatively slow, electric-powered self-stabilizing scooter, for $3,000. Are very many of us going to buy it? Do very many of us have the money to sink into that sort of gee-gaw? No and no. I know I'm not going to be spending three grand on something like that myself, either. Nor would I be likely to spend two grand, or even one grand for that matter.
Microsoft is a monopoly that is supposed to be receiving a punishment.
iBooks are much more expensive, and lack basic features that PCs for much less have standard. Sort of a bargain-basement machine at a penthouse price.
Disagree. Apple has always been easier to use, especially at this age. I don't see the practicality of distributing laptops to be hastily stored between classes in someones fuzzy teddy-bear bag. No. iBooks has found a market here, even if I did take a lashing for FP. heh.
My only concerns are eye-strain on children, and the implications for major publishing houses delivering electronic textbooks. (no money lost there, eh?)
In the greatest school expediture disastor of all time, 36,000 pre teens where beaten up on their way home from school and had there iBooks stolen.
laptops, please. not neaded, easily breakable.
how about we spend the money to teach children how to think?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They only come in one color, white. Do your fucking homework.
there's more than one way to do me.
"Apple has won the bid to provide Maine 6th, 7th and 8th graders with Apple iBooks"
So Dell, IBM and Compaq were all in the running to supply them with Apple iBooks, but somehow Apple won this one ?
Either:
Maine is run by artistes who value being trendily colorful over useful education.
Or:
"Slashdot Editor" is an oxymoron ( sorry, CmrdToecac you'll need a dictionary for this one ).
Then again, maybe both are, sadly, true.
and its obviously not helping either. I guess you should move to maine.
I don't care how much you spend on computers or what kind they are. If the teachers in the schools cant teach then the kids wont learn. So this is just great, we are going to have a bunch of uneducated kids with expensive laptops. Not that I am cynical or anything...
Now where did that unbiased journalistic integerity go?
- The Amazina Llama
You sir are correct, They could save MILLIONS. Just give each kid a stick and a sandbox...
But really.. 1000 bux per computer is a good buy, and they do include aircards, so the schools can save money on network wireing costs. The macs are also low maintence, so its easier for the teachers.
I posted regarding this story back when it was first announced. I still stand by my assertion that this money could be better spent to pay teachers/repair schools (but that might just be because I'm majoring in English with plans to teach).
But, if Maine wanted to go with a laptop solution, I'd have to say that the iBook was a wise choice. I own an iBook, and I can say that this thing would be my primary choice for a situation like this (except for maybe Panasonic's Toughbook, but those cost far too much). Take note school districts:
1) Durability - While I haven't actually dropped my iBook, it does live in my backpack when it isn't in use. I have dropped the whole backpack (no damage), and it has flown off the passenger seat when idiots pull out in front of my car (still no damage). I have walked with it under my arm in a hard rain (no damage).
2) Heavily integrated - yeah, this isn't a good idea most of the time, but broken dongles will no longer be an issue. Neither will stolen NICs/Wireless NICs.
3) Lightweight - As far as I know, the iBook has the lowest weight for a laptop in its price range. $1,299 retail for a 4.9 lbs. laptop is a helluva deal.
4) Sort of bastardized security through obscurity - 95% of these 1337 7th and 8th graders don't know enough about Mac OS/mac hardware to cause serious damage. I can just see some jerk setting BIOS passwords or messing with clock frequencies or IDE device settings on little Suzy's PC laptop when she got up to go to the bathroom.
5) Useable UNIX - escape the MS tax AND teach the kiddies some UNIX all at the same time (that was my requisite karma whoring). I could actually see this being fairly useful, though. Only give the kids user privileges in OS X, and make them find someone with root access in order to install programs. "Okay little Billy, tell me again why you need Starcraft for school use...". This also solves any problems that might stem from some jerk trying to erase important parts of the system.
Overall, I think buying laptops is a waste of money, but I'd say that iBooks are probably the way to go.
Now I'll back that up with what I think is a better argument against the purchase of these systems: Wouldn't the money be better spent on things like teachers' salaries, improvements to the classrooms, programs that promote the learning of basic subjects like math, science, reading, etc.? While I'll be the first to line up with those who say that throwing money at education isn't necessarily the best solution (take a look at California's test scores), if the money is going to be spent, I think that it ought to be spent where it will make the most difference.
Let's also consider the issue of support for these computers. Who's going to take care of them when they get dropped, when the screen cracks, when software gets deleted, when the network connection isn't working...I could go on and on. Is the teacher going to fix the computer? The student? Does the school system have to hire network administrators? A whole new IT department?
While I think that knowing how to use a computer has become an important part of American life, somehow I think that too many people have decided that computers are some sort of panacea for the classroom. I disagree. I think that an extra $38 million spent on education in a state the size of Maine could provide a significantly greater return by creating new and exciting programs designed to captivate and encourage children to learn. And establishing ongoing programs like these provides a benefit to more than just four years' worth of students...the kids who follow will benefit, too.
Put simply, I'd say that while this program sure has a great gee-whiz factor, in the end, I suspect that it won't amount to anything.
-h-
I love laptops and new technology generally as much as the next man but news releases like this are embarrassing.
I remember an interview with an Intel engineer where he was asked what his ideal machine would look like and he replied a pen and a pad of paper - and thats what these students should be using. The idea that using laptops has any real educational benefit is just rubbish.
I haven't looked at an iBook for a few years; since hardly anyone has one, they are hard to find. Are they still selling something that looks like a toilet seat???
who else could've sold anyone 35,000+ iBooks?
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
I can't believe no one's said it yet..
But can you imagine the implications for sex ed? I mean they could cut the whole program out, and use it for other stuff. It could be a one day class.... Teacher: "Now students, open up your laptop and connect to "
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Let's put this in perspective--This is a GREAT thing for Maine. Maine is, and has always been, one of the poorest states in the union; their major industries are logging and fishing (which are by no means big money-makers, at least for the laborers), and tourism, which is seasonal. Maine's proposal is not, as some have conjectured, to fill schools with laptops that would be "checked out" to the students -- no, Maine is GIVING every middle schooler in the state a computer, in a state where most families can't afford to buy their own. When the idea was initially proposed, some state legislators jeered that the money would be better spent putting a chainsaw in the hands of every schoolchild. But, despite the cynicism of those who believe their children have no hope of being anything but low-wage laborers, the state is equipping its students with one of the greatest tools they can have for success in a modern business environment. We should be celebrating!
\
As long as they equip the machines with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, and Number Munchers, everything should be golden.
Ahhh, memories...
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
>You may have been branded as a troll for that >comment, but only because Slashdot hates the >bitter truth. I would be pissed as hell if I was >a tax payer in that region and they wasted money >on those shitty little ibooks.
I really have to agree. If the computers are there to teach people computer skills, than they should be the same platform that they will most likely be using in the job market. I could understand if the macs were for the art department or something similar, or maybe if they had Linux boxen for the CompSci department, but considering that most of the students will go on to use windows computers (like it or not), they should be taught on them to prevent having to go through another learning curve. I know too many people (self included) who got macs at home because thats what there was at school, only to have to switch to an alterative platform because the mac wasnt compatable with the defacto standard.
However, if they are just there to do word processing or something similar, than it doesnt really matter.
...someone would donate computers with operating systems and hardware, which are relevant beyond some artistic niche market, to students then there wouldn't be any need to reteach students how to use Windows or Linux. Otherwise there'll be a generation of kids frustrated that their mac knowledge can only go so far in a wintel dominated marketplace.
just have to say, New Hampshire is barely on the coast. If there is a single lobsterman in NH I would be shocked
really? you think switching to different OS's is easy? Then how come linux gui coders try so hard to copy windows' interface? Because people don't like to relearn things to do the same tasks!
who is liable when the kids all develop cancer 50 years from now due to the 802.11b emissions?
;)
i am writing this using an 802.11b card.
Remember when people learned howto use a computer by first reading documentation ouf of a book? The same goes with every form of science. I went to a Private School whos computers were approximately 4KHz 80x286 with 640KBytes RAM all running MSDOS 4.x. We learned howto use spreadsheet software on all those green-chreens and I have some of the best memmories from my school. Even though I learned howto use Microsoft-type software, we learned enought to progress to other software and learn more concept. I'm the only person I know from back in those days, that weilded my keyboard as an artist his pallete. Look at Rob for example, he attended a Private School and look at how intellegent, courteous, and kind he is. I can sense in your words your kindness too, but you seem to be disappointed that your school couldn't afford computers... Truthfully, common, everyday usage of computers in schools is a big financial risc that is realy determined by the schools' students' level of maturity. You hear about Public Schools buying expensive computer equipment and the like in Mathematics class with graphing caclulators, and all you hear about is something getting broken and waiting for some kind of replacement or fund. In Private School, it's the other way around where people first learn to appreciate what they have and treat school property with respect...it's the only way to do it in Private School because they have so much overhead cost with bankrupty looming closely overhead; whereas Public schools don't have to worry about a single thing and they get more spoiled with by every new politician that is elected into office. Be proud. You're on slashdot with some of the most intelligent people on Planet Earth, your preference of Slashdot.org proves it, and guess what, you are a member of this fine user forum. :o) Hurrahh!
without prejudice
Bullshit.
The iBook is the best value notebook you'll find.
I was going to order an iBook in the new few days. But, before I do, can ANYONE show me an x86 notebook that is better value, and has comparable battery life?
I very much doubt it.
If you think these are wrong, get involved and make it better. Volunteer for netday 2002 and help them get setup. Don't hang around and bad rap someone for trying....schools need all the help they can get.
When MS is finally ousted, because they like avarice could be called the root of all evil. I do not know who will do it, maybe open source, maybe apple, maybe someone new. MS just manipulates the system and cheats to get their position. Just remember who had the GUI first, apple, who had the first real OS UNIX. MS is only an imitator not the innovator, why do we want them.
38,600 Apple notebooks place a great fire in your future.
...in bed.
http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/ibook/index.html
Of course Apple won the bid to provide iBooks and Airport wireless connection points. Its not like Dell or HP can compete with the manufacturer, even if the committee thought that Apple's "level of expertise" in supporting their own products did not exceed those of independent vendors regardless of price.
What I'm saying is, this wasn't an open bid -- for the best hardware or price. A backroom deal was awarded based on a political decision.
You can bet if you see something on every TV show, without fail, it'll be in taught in school before long.
I cannot imagine what kind of nightmare this will be when it comes to issues like non-technical hardware failure and theft. Does the state buy a big equipment insurance policy? Do you suddenly demand that every kid's parents become liable for a $1200 laptop, even if they haven't requested the item? I think this is going to cost Maine big-time when it comes to replacement of broken and missing equipment. And if you think libraries are under fire to protect internet-using kids from everything not-so-sanitary... hoo boy. You know those lame "perfect attendance" awards and whatnot they give out at the end of the year? Maine middle schools will have to add a few more:
- First kid to destroy his laptop while beating up another kid and get a free replacement.
- First kid to lose his laptop and get a free replacement.
- First kid to realize he/she can fence his/her laptop and get a free replacement.
- First kid to organize the use of 38,600 state-owned laptops to launch a DoS attack.
- Kid who maintains the most heavily-trafficked node on the private gnutella network (can you imagine the sheeite 7th-graders would send around?).
- First kid who gets the FBI coming to a school because he/she lent his/her laptop to a l33t older sibling.
Any other suggestions?
one actually ran over his with his car,
Same thing happened to a coworker at John Deere HQ in Moline, IL. What is it about laptops that makes them automobile fodder?
The coolest voice ever.
What about the Linux users who cannot stop their money from being needlessly spent on "software"?
Another example that good ideas would get funding from those who believe in them, that taxation is just theft.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
At the high school I go to, the school has a few (around 20-30) Dell C500s. (thats the kind with integrated wireless networking.) They also install 802.11b WAPs all around the school. However, as I have been bringing a laptop to school for several years, I can see quite a few problems with this plan:
1. Rough Treatment
Laptops have LCD screens, hard drives, plastic cases, and other delicate items, and kids who are familiar with stuff they can just throw into a backpack (i.e. books) will likely treat these the same way. Since backpacks get throw around, kicked, banged into stuff, etc... these will get probably get broken fast.
2. Dead Zones
My high school campus, except for a few areas, is a cell phone dead zone. I'm not certain whether the contruction/locstion of the buildings will have the same effect on wireless networking, but I doubt it will work to full potential on a school with concrete/brick/steel construction.
3. Interference
My school has over 1,000 kids, and even the elementery schools have over 200 each. If even a quarter of the kids have wireless equipped laptops, you're going to see major interference between the signals. (not to mention the kids as they fight for laptops.)
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
around 90% of the computing world runs M$ software, what service is this school providing by giving these children something that will do them little good in the "real world"
again its just Apple trying to muscle into the market by going through the school system...
heres a hint apple, open up your hardware and reduce your price, THEN you can compete...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
At least the kids will be using a UNIX. From then on it's a relatively small step to illuminate them into members of the Holy Order of Penguin.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It only takes a cursory search of past yahoo news stories (which is too much exertion for many, we know!) to find how things can end in a colossal mess. It's like one big upchuck! Terrible....
Now kids are carrying $1500 laptops? Isn't this dangerous for the kids?
... are the parents held liable for the replacement cost like they are for books? I can remember losing a schoolbook or two back in my school days. I've worked with people that have lost notebooks. Ouch!
What about irresponsible kids
This seems like a luxury some families can ill afford. I don't know how I feel about this trend yet.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
People seem to have unreasonably high expectations about the effect of more and newer computers to the educational system.
I don't deny that there's some benefit from efficient text processing, from visualization, and from access to information that goes beyond what the textbooks can offer or presents dissenting views. But for those interested in improving their kids' education, there are more important things to focus on.
Education should prepare you for life, and because your primary means of survival is your faculty of reason, the goal of education should be to teach you how to use it---how to think. Sounds strange, considering what they do in school today (and we did---I'm not that old)? Do you think a wireless notebook will make much difference?
The questions of how to choose appropriate curricula and teaching methods and how to attract good teachers are difficult ones. It is so much easier to think that getting lots of cute little boxes with apples or something else on them is the way to go.
That was the 5300 - Not the iBook. Old, old Machine. The first PowerPC laptop, not even close to the first clam-shell iBook, let alone a new iBook.
Apple hasn't shipped a 5300 in 5 years.
On that note, Dells have had the same problem with thier batteries.
Redundant, or probably going to be modded as a Troll, but I just don't care--
WHAT IS WITH THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM AND APPLE COMPUTERS?
When I was in high-school, they force-fed this crap into our lives, and it's sad to see a generation later that this attitude persists even to this day. Doesn't anybody in the public school system GET IT? The real world uses PC-based hardware and software, mostly Windows based systems, but I imagine Linux has a bigger share of the market than MacOS does. (It certainly has a lot of mindshare in the public.)
Why public schools don't go out and buy (or assemble!) cheap PC's instead of forking out a fortune for Apple crap is beyond me. Sure, these are laptops, so self-assembly really isn't realistic, but you could buy Celeron-based laptops and make out on the cheap fairly well! (Cruise over to Gateway and check out their low-end Celeron systems, hell, even the mid-range Pentium III systems don't break the $2000 mark if you keep off most of the big spendy features (CD-RW drive, for example).
Very irritating that my tax dollars go to NOT helping kids learn how to use real-world systems and software...
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Are you kidding? q3a, return to wolfenstein, iCab, Omniweb, Maelstrom, etc, and you think there's no way to kill time on a mac? Yar, trolling is lame, sparky, get a job!
itachi
oh, you mean these two colors? White and white? White and !black? White and plain?
there's more than one way to do me.
Why? Because this would have a very strong effect of breaking the operating system stranglehold. Plus, they might even go for it since it has the benficial side effect of increaing their office mind share.
But, please let them be loaded with MacOS X. This way at least the kids have a chance of seeing Unix, and all that extra users sure would help the unix software cause....
Why is that, every time a school cries out for computers or asks about how to better serve the students with what limited resources they have, everyone here rants about how technology should be more prevalent in schools. Now that yet another state has decided to actually get laptops for the kids, you all start bitching about how the money would be better spent? Please...get your opinions straight, people.
First off, I can virtually guarantee that a portion of the money that Maine is spending comes from federal grants and other such sources..and very rarely does the goverment just give money to a state saying "spend it how you want to". It's usually earmarked for a program such as providing computers to students (or at least access to computers), etc. If the state doesn't find a way to spend that money for the designated purpose, they lose it the next time the government comes around looking to hand out more cash. Obviously, very few people who post here have worked for the Federal (or even a state) government, otherwise you would understand this very basic operating principle: spend the money if they give it to you...all of it...and spend it on whatever they tell you to. If you don't, good luck getting anything out of them next year.
Next off, from what I've seen of Maine so far, it's a largely rural state that doesn't have many of the technological perks that the rest of us enjoy (I live in New Hampshire and, despite our proximity to Massachussetts, it's the tech "sticks" out here too, with very few real choices for even decent bandwidth). No offence to Maine folk, but even you have to admit that it's not exactly the richest state out there and many kids growing up there can only hope to afford a good college education (it's also not the most populated state either, but it sure is pretty up there). If they have or received the money to do this, then why not? Someone give me a really good argument against buying the laptops, please! Unlike the many urban folk that seem to live on /., less-populated states need to spend money on things like this just to help the kids in their states compete with the rest of the nation. Yes, teacher salaries are important and, yes, improving classroom materials helps as well, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a college professor today that actually accepts a handwritten term paper (hell, some won't even accept them on physical paper)...how are these kids supposed to learn and get comfortable on computers and word processors if they only get 10 mins a day on a computer and have to share that with 15 of their classmates?
Also, even if Maine put up all of the money from the state's budget, which I seriously doubt, who cares? That kinda cash is a drop in the bucket compared to what most states spend on law enforcement and beurocratic bullshit. It's also a small amount compared to what many COUNTIES spend on their schools. And, unless you live in Maine yourselves, who cares? It's not your state deciding to spend the money.
I know many teachers, both in public and private schools (in fact, my mother-in-law is a middle-school teacher) and every one of them that gives a shit about their students and their education are begging for more computers and programs like this one. Yes, they do realise that it will probably cost them a raise here and there, but they also realise that it'll make their jobs easier in many ways and will also help the kids adjust better in the modern world (not to mention, prepare them for what they will need to do in college, if they choose to go). So, while you all can talk about how much better it would be to buy books and such, try actually listening to what the teachers in your area are saying rather than just assuming that they want more money. Many of them are just as concerned about the quality of education (or lack of) that they're being forced to give to students and how deficient the curriculums and materials are in the face of this tech-centric era. And what's to say that buying electronically published books to put on those laptops may not be cheaper in the long run than buying paper books themselves...
I am a (Canadian) 7-9 science teacher. Computers (and calculators) in classrooms can be the bane of my existence. Some points:
The kids do a higher level of work. Remember when your only vehicles for expression were book reports and clay-filled shoeboxes?
Which is better: a student using a mouse to draw and color, or a student actually cuts-n-pastes and colors with (God forbid) crayons? Schools are lacking more in such hands-on activities.
Plenty of schools don't have laptops and still have lots of problems that - surprise - aren't being solved by anyone of their critics.
I don't think it's been claimed that laptops will solve school problems. They won't. We could complain about every issue in schools -- large class sizes, fewer resources, overworked teachers, insufficient buildings, etc, etc, etc. In this case, technology is the issue, and it can be a problem. It is easy to use it ineffectively, especially since it is believed that it can make people learn.
It doesn't work that way; the laptops are only a tool, and can't teach someone the skills independent of the technology.
They're buying 38,600 laptops at $300 each. That means $11,580,000 is being spent at a time when teacher shortages are happening everywhere. I would rather have a smaller class size with or without the laptops than a crowded class with technology being used ineffectively.
Okay, my mother is a 6th grade teacher in Ohio. And let me say, that because a corrupt state senators daughter was 4 when the law was passed, our schools got computers in the classroom starting with kindergarden, and worked their way up.
Ludicrus as it sounds, not even the 6th grade classes, who now have SOME conmputers, use them for anything. The kids type reports, and play video games..... and surf for pr0n when my mother is not looking.
Now they want all of our kids to have laptops?!?!?!?! What is it about our society and laptops. I own a laptop computer, I am a programmer, and I have poor handwriting, I use it quite often. And as a laptop owner, I feel qualified to state that very few people on this planet have any need to own one. There are many misconceptions about laptops that just drive me nutty. And the truth behind them them all are great reasons why laptops in elemantary and high schools is a really dumb idea.
In our society, laptops are cute, small, handy computers. WRONG! In reality, laptops are small, slow, hard to handle, hard to service, and EXPENSIVE AS HELL. A touchpad is not like a mouse folks, that keyboard takes some getting used to, and they aren't exactly the most rugged pieces of machinary. Add all that togther, plus a complete lack of need in our schools for each student to have the ability to get his daily pr0n fix when he should be learning geomtry, and you have some politicians way of getting relected, at the taxpayers' extreme expense.
I'm sorry, computers in schools right now barely get used, laptops will get misused, and mistreated, and eventually become worthless paperweights..... all at the taxpayers expense.
Call me a complainer, cause I am.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Having a computer does not teach math. It does not teach reading (pretty pictures), it does not teach writing. All it does is teach how to use that computer.
Test scores are dropping. Highschool graduates cannot parse a sentense. They cannot do arithmatic, they cannot write or spell. They cannot read latin, or do 90% of what a highschool graduate did a hundred years ago.
Nothing about having a computer educates, it just distracts.
Millionaires will rescue victims of government schools by Vin Suprynowicz is just one of his excellent diatribes on the complete failure of the American federal and state government educational disaster, what might be the largest single welfare industry on the planet.
Vin's Las Vegas Review-Journal archive has this years output, which will be updated in the next week or two to include another education expose' well worth the wait.
To put it bluntly, this purchase is not a mistake. It is a deliberate action to spend as much money on "education" as possible, and get the least effective return, guranteeing more money next year for more administrative and support staff to "do something" about the failing students.
The Alliance for the Separation of School and State has a lot more on the massive abuse of students and wealth that is going on, and only grows greater every day.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
At my school we have 4 computer labs that get checked out by classrooms for research and things. 1 computer classroom for things like web development, school paper, school tv show, etc. Then we have a mobile lab that uses iBooks and Airport that is a bring the lab to the classroom type of thing. I've never had the lab come to me, but the biggest use I've seen is in the library. They have all sorts of books and no room for computers, so there's only about 16 all-in-one's. So you can check out an iBooks and take it to a regular reading table. Good stuff.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
...where are my pants?
I was the AV geek, who was forced to install that Apple crap. They never got used. We had been building our own machines in the science and mathlab, go sinclair, the apples stunk from day one, the SW was crap and everything about them was twice as expensive. We installed in the library and then put the dust cover back on...
36 thousadn laptops at $300 each is not $12,000,000.
:p
iBooks aren't $300 (unless discounted heavily). They're also not $3,000, unless you buy two for widescreen
It looks like you need to be a bit more Ludditish and stop reading slashdot, and start on your multiplication tables.
Now, I have no beef with apple. But most people do, for usually, no reason at all. iBooks will leave the average school population breakdown looking like this:
90% of students polled hated their iBooks and want to know why the state couldn't give them a laptop running windows, because everyone knows Apples suck.
8% of students polled love their iBooks and routinely surf for pr0n in english class, thanks to the brilliant design of Apple hardware and software.
1.99% of students will actually use their ibooks for some legitimate purpose, and learn something.
1 student, who has an obvious talent for computer use will install PPC Linux on his machine, and proceed to fail computer class, because he can't run MS Word. But only after he has improved bandwidth for the entire school by hacking into the school's router and altering the routing tables for much better performance.
I hate this planet!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Off roading.
Finding out what happens when you throw it into reverse at 60mph.
Seeing how fast you can drive backwards.
Seeing how big of a burnout it does at a redline neutral drop.
What's yours?
Well who the hell other than Apple would have won the bid to provide Apple iBooks and Airports?
Under the plan approved by the Legislature for the Maine Learning Technology Endowment, all seventh grade students and teachers will begin using portable, wireless computers in the Fall of 2002, and all eighth grade students and teachers will be equipped the following year.
Call me crazy, but thats the same students right? (Ok, I know what they meant, but it made me giggle.)
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
Someone in a local school thought it was a brilliant idea to buy a bunch of laptops for a high school class. They started getting "lost" within a week and by the end of the year there were only a couple left.
Bad idea. Laptops sprout legs.
of course that Office on the Mac is likely to be far more pleasant to work with and look at.
Then, what would I know...
AppleWorks 6.2.2 is plenty.
I work for a school system in Ga that will be running several pilot programs in this upcoming year. Both Dell and Apple laptops with wireless capabilities will be bought. Both companies will be providing complete solutions for these "portable labs" that we plan on implementing. We already have 3 Dell portable labs that are in place, and their success is mixed.
Our school system is very experienced in terms of technology, with every classroom consisting of at least 4 desktops and several computer labs placed throught the schools. There are approximately 50 schools in our school system with this setup. Every computer is on the network, every computer is used for educational purposes. Educational software is not compromised of Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and Word 97, as most readers tend to think.
We use over a dozen software suites (most which run on both Windows and Macintosh operating systems) that allow for students to enhance and evaluate their reading, analytical, and mathematical skills. This software allows a child to be interested in reading, and be motivated to learn new mathematical concepts. The software is varied as the grade levels progress, and new skills are picked up by the student.
With over 10,000 workstations in our network to support, adding many more laptops into the mix will allow students to be able to learn new skills while being able to work in a more comfortable environment. The initial testing will be with portable wireless labs that will several teachers to use the laptops. Pending the results of our pilot program, potentially every student will have their own laptop to use. No, the students will not get to keep the laptop, but they will be turned in at the end of the school year.
I do not think that what Maine is doing is a bad idea, but if they cannot control the situation on how laptops are distributed, how the laptops are used, and how they are implemented to enhance the learning process, their program will be deemed a failure.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
Hmm, now big progs like MS Office, Red Faction and Quake III/RTCW are 'nothing'...
not to metion all the x86 software out there that runs via SoftPC...
However, even more importantly Apple is a serious player in the education market, and a lot of educational software in K-12 is made for the Mac and the Mac version is better than the Window's ports --- so this isn't as strange of a decision as it sounds.
It was an open bidding process, so Apple won this bid fair and square based on the merits of their bid (the software, the training, and the hardware).
I'm so sick of hearing: a) its not MS so its a good thing and b) Apple is small so no one should ever use them. Its very important to use the right tools for the right jobs. And, in this case Apple legitimately sounds like its the right tool for the job.
Apple's iBook is a tough little computer with all of the connectors built in so that there are no dongles & with integrated wireless networking, this deal will end up saving all the schools in the State of Maine a ton of money not needing to pull cable to each desk in each classroom in each school across the whole state.
So, Congratulations to Apple. I hope that competition like this causes them to keep making better computers and make better deals.
---
"Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."
But smart people sometimes have to get past their egos and realise they don't know everything.
Worthy advice, that the collected members of slashdot need.
Those goddamn overpriveliged spoiled brats! Curses to Maine.
Aye aye aye aye, I am the Frito bandito.
they could always hook up with charter pipeline.
:)
Low blow, but I can get much worse by saying "even a pentium3 can't make this internet faster".
On a more serious note/question...will they be running os 9 or os X? If they have intel boxen I suppose X would be the choice for cross platform abilities.
Too bad, however, that Star Office/Open Office never came thru with a mac version...you bet you boots Microsoft will want to "give special deals" to those schools as part of their settlement.
(SIGH)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Computer threoy is about the same no matter what plateform you end up using.
The basic skill they pick up using a MAC/Linux-GNOME/KDE combo/WinXP/any point & click interface will carry over to any other.
Adults have to be smarter then the children. My high school tracked your trails on the Internet and had the authority to stop your access. How they figure that with out signing on first is still beyond me how that would know it was a particular student. I think that was a scare tacit so kids would not go to the porn site. The university I am currently attending has a filter and a proxy service. Each university provided computer has its own static IP. (My university bought enough IPs for way down the future.) The network admin has to know different phrases that children will try to view porn. The network admin has to set up the network (wireless or not) to block as many improper sites as possible while on the schools network. Students will still try to view porn sites, especially at home. Students should be forced to sign a legally binding document and also their parent/guarding sign. This document will have to go into extreme detail about different bad things (i.e. porn sites, hate sites) and the consequences of each. To monitor what students view at home with the schools property, a program should be written to sync the Internet cache with the server. Random checks by a school official or network admin for that school and then the consequences will be invoked on the students for the particular encroachment of the rules. Yes you will still have students who know how to clear the Internet history and cache. For students like this, software will be used to bring back the data that the student has "deleted." The iBook or whatever other computer is used will have to be confiscated and examined. This may take a few days that is the price that is paid for being suspicious and trying to get around authority. I don't know if it is worthy having each student have his or her own laptop for school or not. There has to be staff that does nothing but monitor the network usage and checking the cache of each student periodically. If the network is set up correctly and the steps are followed students will be highly discouraged on going to the "anatomy sites" for education. If students do go to these sites a punishment will follow. The best punishment that I can think of is loss of the computer for the rest of his school career in that particular school district. Not every child will try to go to the sites, but because of the few, extreme rules are made.
Bull, for anything science related you shouldn't touch a computer 'till after high school, or else you won't know the basics, you'll just blindly use the programs. For all the "human sciences" courses typing something on a computer doesn't make it any better than writing it on paper.
The number one use of the computers will be either games, porn or trading mp3's. Choose your favorite.
Probably from a native of New Hampshire.
I come from an educational market. I go to NTHS and I contract work out to them maintaining their network of 300 computers for 250 students. We get how technology works in school and how it doesn't. If the technology doesn't then our school doesn't work.
Why do schools get laptops:
You can have them in a traditional classroom setup of tables or small desks. When needed they're available. When not needed they can be closed. They can also be easily checked out and locked away to charge.
Students will steal them:
Yea. They will. We have students steal keyboards and mice a lot too. It's a lot easier to make off with a keyboard or mouse on a desktop machine (that you dont even have to checkout with your name) compared to a laptop which we are required to either checkout with picture ID or car keys. We have far less theft problems with our laptops simply because teachers police them.
Things break:
I dont know how Apple is working this out but each year we lose about 15 floppy drives, 3 hard drives and motherboard or two. All we do is call HP up and give them the serial number and the replacement is there the next day. It doesn't matter how it breaks. They'll replace it for 3 years. That's why you get service plans and that's why you buy in bulk because those deals are possible. I assume Maine worked something like this out.
...that no one who is saying that giving laptops to schools is pointless would be dancing in the aisles is they had been notebooks running Linux. Oh, wait, this is Slashdot. Silly me.
Christ on a cracker, have you and the previous posters nothing better to do than get on the case of some schoolkid?
And, if you are schoolkids yourselves, at least the kid was trying to contribute to the discussion. OTOH, if you guys are adults, try to act it.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
But yeah, the concept of giving every student computer access at their own desks is a no-brainer. I'm not even going to try to imagine what all those kids in Maine are going to do with their new toys. God, I envy them!
as previously stated, NH has nothing to do with lobsters. If they say that there, it is local there (and I have never heard it from any new hampshire people) and not of new england
Perhaps if Maine did not have one of the highest tax burdens in the union, (if not THE highest) these "poor families" could afford to buy their own damned computers.
It is garbage like this that makes me proud to be a Tennessean (and future Floridian.) Imagine what you could do with the thousands of dollars that you would save by NOT having to pay state income taxes (no state income taxes in TN, FL, TX, NH and some others.)
You will have your own money to spend as you see fit for your children, and not as some damned politician does. You might even be able to afford to send your children to a good private school with the savings, where they will be taught by the best teachers, and not by the worst computers.
Just my $0.02... Sig by Ben Franklin:
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
It blows my mind when I see that some school districts have the money to enable each 6/7/8 grader a computer.
The high school I came from currently is falling apart... literally. The secretaries are forced to where hard hats because the is a huge hole in the roof above them. The school is so old that there is a plaque dedicated to students who died in WW1. The roof needs to be replaced... or better yet a new school built... but they can't afford to do either.
The computers were so laughably old and there was only one computer room.... not a computer for each kid. Even in that room kids had to share a computer.
I'm just jealous is all... iBooks look pretty sweet.
Hmm, what's the difference between Maine and Silicon Valley? Maine has more trees and SV has more programmers. Software startups go where there are programmers to hire. In a few years nobody will be saying those laptops were too expensive!
My old profs might take offense that you don't think they'll be useful in mathematics. Don't underestimate the value of seeing abstract concepts animated in realtime in Maple or Mathematica.
That's what tax-funded education is all about -- making government bigger at your expense.
Ok, howabout spending that money on BETTER teachers, instead of providing their adolecent kids with an easy way to stock up on porn and games?
Instead provide the laptops to people who
really need it..... Like us CS students who
are working our asses off to pay for college
and also have to put up with crap teachers that
barely speak english.
Ehh, can anyone tell I've had a bad week and finals are comming up?
We certainly aren't doing our children any favors by teaching them on a mac (which is so easy... whatever) only to send them out into the real world where they have a 4% chance of actually using one anywhere but the graphics industry. An education should prepare them for life, and unfortunately, life in the U.S. involves a heavy dose of windoze. Leaf that out of primary education, and you graduate children who are unprepared for almost any work place. Period.
Which is better: a student using a mouse to draw and color, or a student actually cuts-n-pastes and colors with (God forbid) crayons? Schools are lacking more in such hands-on activities.
Probably because they are lacking in crayons too.
That means $11,580,000 is being spent at a time when teacher shortages are happening everywhere. I would rather have a smaller class size with or without the laptops than a crowded class with technology being used ineffectively.
Agreed. However the teacher shortages have more to do with most potentially good teachers' inability to tolerate the bureaucracy and nonsense that goes on in the "education establishment."
In addition to that fact, roughly 75% of the money spent on education in this state at least is spent outside the classroom, and not on teachers. THAT is the problem.
Those who want to see Maine's future can get a quick fix here. Seems these 8th graders tend to act like 13-year-olds.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Oh, and for anyone who missed earlier references, or simply decided to post their wisdom prior to any research: Maine Learning Technology Endowment
Being a Mainer I am proud to see that we are taking the initative to move forward and to give an equal chance to all of our students. Maine is a very diverse state with many completely and segegrated economic regions. I am glad to see that my tax money is going to go to kids in The County and to kids in Southern Maine. What many of you don't seem to realize is that for a state that has a fraction of the population of New York city. (most of which lives in the southern quarter) Why not look at this from a point of view to see how it works out, what regions handle it best, and give it a couple of years to work out the kinks. Then mabey implement it in school districts that have much larger numbers of students then our junior/high schools with 1000 total kids.(from 4 towns)
Adam
S.A.D. 49 Grad, Maine
Did you just refer to Los Angeles as "El Lay"? Oh my god.
it would be really cool if i were in middle school and they gave me an ibook, but i don' tthink they are getting the point
as many people have said already, many students will look for pr0n and play games. but that might have a reason they chose macs: less, harder-to-find games. that still does not eliminate junior high schoolers talking on IM all day
actually, considering the bulk rate they are buying them at and the fact that ibooks are pretty inexpensive to begin with, they are probably $400 or less per unit.. divide that over the 3 or 4 years they are expected to use the laptop, thats not that much money..
How can you use a computer if you can't read? How can you communicate through a computer if you can't write. Maybe try working on bringing students up to a level of education comparable to countries without computers, and then go ahead, use laptops and attempt to go beyond.
I strongly disagree with that last statement. Jr High is exactly the place to be playing with computers. Jr. High is one of the greatest times for the formation of self concept. Imagine what a different world High School would be if doing cool things with a computer was actually cool with your peers.
Social and psychological aspects aside, Jr. High was when I first learned how to program. Started in 6th grade with Logo, then to Basic (on TRS-80), then to GW-basic, and finally to pascal in 8th grade. By my sophomore year in HS we actually did a project where we wrote a decent LOGO compiler.
School is all about exposure. Should these laptops and techology replace some of the traditional tools, no. Should it replace the arts, no. Should it augment it, definitly! Give the kids a Wacom tablet and Fractal Design Painter (or whatever it is called now) and see what they come up with.
From reading through the posts on this you can get a sense for the age of most of the people posting. Somewhere between 14 and 17 who think they're 1337 for installing Linux (or probably just using Windows and bashing Microsoft). You can tell because their first computer experience wasn't with an Apple IIc they learned to write BASIC on. I also get a kick out of all the "Macs suck" posts. What is it exactly that is wrong with Macs?
Apple won Maine's bid fair and square and I think it will work out pretty well. The iBook is a sturdy little worker that can connect to just about anything you can think of. Not only is it pretty durable but it is really light and easily fits into a backpack or messenger bag. As for the software, there's little MacOS can't do that Windows can do, especially OS10. It will connect to just about any sort of network you want to connect to, shit you can base your whole backend on any Unix system you want and OS10 will talk to it with no problems. The iBooks need not Microsoft because AppleWorks 6.1 and up read and write Office documents and will suit any sort of educational purpose you use it for. If you've ever cared to look which I can tell few of you have, there is a literal ton of educational software available for MacOS. Nearly all computer interfaces are pretty much the same damn thing. Whether the GUI is called Explorer, Finder, or X doesn't mean crap. They all act pretty much the same way. You press buttons and things do different things on your monitor. Web browsers and e-mail clients work the same way, there's little real difference between Lynx and OmniWeb when you get down to it.
There are others who think giving laptops to kids won't help them learn anything. Have you seen Maine? It is a pretty damn rural place. I bet a good portion of the kids getting the iBooks would have never had gotten a computer at home. Giving kids the laptops is pretty cost effective if you sit and think about it. The demands of educational software aren't really changing a whole bunch past the "multimedia" phase. It has a moderate level of interactivity and a pretty small memory footprint. Thus it can be used a really long damn time. The 8th graders getting iBooks this year can probably still use them when they are seniors in high school. Besides longevity it isn't a particular OS you learn it is the computer concepts that are important. For an area not rife with computers in the home laptops for students makes alot of sense. Any assignment involving computers can be continued at home without much hassle. There's alot more to increasing teacher salaries than just diving up a lump of cash. Bitch to the unions about teacher's pay.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Wow, so when you test kids based upon manual dexterity, those who've had training in manual dexterity do better? How astonishing!
You get what you're looking for. If the "intelligence" testing had involved critical thinking or articulation, I'd imagine the results would have been different.
Apple won a bid to provide iBooks? I bet the competition was really fierce.
sulli
RTFJ.
UNIX software cause is already lost.
Mostly thanks to your friendly Unix vendors who managed to create what is arguably of the most cryptic and nonsensical user operating environments around...
At the end of my junior year of highschool i had managed to hack out a little peice of the appletalk network and stuck of a copy of doom and quake there. I could play the games anywhere in the building. It was pretty sweet.
Not saying macs don't suck, but they have better game support then Linux.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Teach them on something superior to indows.
Let's face it: the only reason indows is at the top is because Microsoft lied to the public, who didn't know enough to see through the transparent fraud that Microsoft has committed over the years. Because of this, they believe M$'s lies about performance, compatibility, stnadards-compliance, and such.
So raise a generation to know better, and Microsoft will be relegated to the oblivion it so richly deserves.
The above poster meant that the computers were not facing the blackboard, so they did not block anyone's vision.
Still doesn't solve the desk-space issue though. I'd actually say Laptops with wi-fi could be better then desktops though, especially if you give them to the students individually, rather then handing them out at class time.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That was obviously a typo.
OK, so this is a reply to a lot of comments here. I've just been reading the article and noticing that about half of the people here have something negative to say about this.
This comment mentions that they aren't figuring out "pressing educational problems." I would personally say that they are: having been in schools where they had computers that were avaliable for everyone to use (even if they were just computer labs) they did many things to help the students, thereby alleviating some of the issues that seemed pressing at the time:
Sure, some students don't do their work. Some don't do it because they find it overly difficult, others because they aren't good at it, and some out of pure laziness (such as my brother). Others didn't do it because they found the pencil (or pen) and paper based approaches too difficult. Writing becomes much faster when sitting in front of a computer. Research becomes easier - Google is an excellent research tool (honestly - enter anything you happen to want and it comes up, and the most relevant stuff happens to be sitting right there). Much of everything seems to become easier because you aren't spending so much time dealing with the issues of, for example, copying an entire paper because you need to make 3 or 4 changes to it. Pop it up in your word processor, make the changes, print it out. Voila, done.
Of course they can't - they're human too. Do you expect everyone to know everything?
I'm sure it's expensive. But giving students access to technology provides greater benefits than it really costs - see #1. Sure, the machines aren't PC's. But does that mean that they aren't going to know how to use a PC when one is placed in front of them? Remember that most (all) of these students have been around computers (or at least have known of their existance, and have used a few) all of their life, and could most likely navigate their way through Windows 3.1 just as easily as they could through MacOS, and just as easily as they could through KDE. The fact that they're not PC's is a non-issue. And the fact that they happen to be running MacOS is also a non-issue. See here for someone else's comments on the topic. And as for support, it's been done before.
As for comments that claim that this whole thing is pointless, they aren't pointless. See #1 in the previous section for some reasons why they aren't pointless. Beyond that, some other reasons:
- "... vast majority of teachers don't know what to do with the computers in the computer lab down the hall. How is that going to be improved by putting them in every backpack?"
- "...computer literacy is important in the modern world, but so is writing and math..."
- Children who are intrinistically inclined to writing or other creative activities which can involve a computer will do more of it. All of a sudden, your hand doesn't get sore from holding a pencil for too long. The keyboard and mouse becomes your digital paintbrush and you can do whatever you want with it. And you didn't like what you just did? Oh well, that's what the undo button is for.
- Children who are intrinistically inclined towards mathematics can do everything that they would want to do with a computer (besides for things like chemistry and other things which still have physical reactions and the like, where, at least I personally prefer holding the instruments and doing everything else rather than having it simulated on the display), and will likely start writing their own programs because they can do it (and, since writing code requires some mathematical knowledge, as a result they will still get their math skills).
- "... recently that linked the rise of the modern word processor with the decline of writing skills in college students
..."
You aren't the only one. MacOS has always been a good operating system of choice for school desktops and laptops:Well, now the teachers, at the very least, no longer have to compete for lab time: I know that while I was in high school, and we had access to many computer labs, the teachers would generally find some use for them. English classes: we would go type our reports. It was easier for the teachers to read and grade (because they didn't have to deal with illegible handwriting, which computers didn't help, but it's still no worse than it was originally to begin with), and easier for us to type as opposed to write because we didn't have to go through the repetitive steps of write, copy, copy, copy, (wash-rinse-repeat, you get the idea).
Well, given that you really don't have computer literacy without either of the above in the first place...
And furthermore:
Maybe true. So go back to text editors. Or use older word processors that don't try doing everything for you.
Everything you would want to configure is right there. Open up the Control Panel, and you get access to everything that would need to be configured for the machine. That's not enough? Every school that I've ever been at that uses Apple systems (post-Mac of course) has plenty of software to safeguard the system from the students so that they don't do things to the system to make it unusable for everyone else.
Everything has a standard interface. Going from one program to another is easy, because they all follow the same UI guidelines. There isn't anything difficult to use about a Mac. They're designed for people who aren't necessarily the best with computers, but can be used by even the most knowledgeable people with little hassle and do the job well.
Keeping in mind that plenty of schools have them, there happens to be all kinds of educational software for the Mac. Nowhere near as much as for Windows or Linux. Sure, one could use Windows for it, but now you've got machines that are suitable for word processing (and if they're trying to use ancient hardware with the latest software, barely suitable for that even) and little more. Same goes for Linux.
And, sure, there is no need for computers in education, but not only are they helpful to the teachers (every teacher of mine from 9th grade on up used a computer for everything from preparing lesson plans to keeping students grades to doing presentations for the class), but they're also helpful to the students (see #1 in the first section of this comment).
Anyway, that whole long-winded comment is my 2c for this.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
Official press release is at:. ht ml
http://www.state.me.us/mlte/MLTEcontractawardPR
Nowhere does it state that Maine _is_ buying the laptops, but that a conditional award of contract has been approved, which means that if Maine keeps their finances together and doesn't cut the hell out of the project, little kiddies will have their laptops.
However, with a Governor on his way out due to term limits, they can afford to piss off Angus. It just doesn't matter if he doesn't like it, cause he won't be back after the next election.
What's even funnier however is that the link at the bottom of the page is supposed to go to the Maine Learning Technology Endowment, but due to stupidity on the webmasters part, it has a bad \ and goes NOWHERE!
http://www.state.me.us\mlte
Certainly indicates the need for better webmaster training of people in state government though, doesn't it? How about iBooks for all State webmasters.... (there are some really really sad web sites in the state of Maine official web pages - each department is responsible for their own - makes for some bad bad bad sites).
Good luck to us getting those laptops in a downturned economy with budget surplus all gone and deficits looming.
j
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
I might be stupid but did they actually get them cheaper, than buying intel compatible laptops would be?
If yes, I am fine with that. Otherwise... well... do kids really nead shabby shick rather than more laptops available for them?
Hyperom.com
How many old-fashioned dead-tree school books cost $400? Can you see a ghetto kid coming back home after breaking his laptop?
I don't see how this can work for everybody. Seems like another gimmick-perk for the suburbs.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
...will be IM'ing each other during classes, ..., and looking up sports scores. That's the usages I put my TI-83 to...
I didn't know that the '83 had wireless networking!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But wait, there's more! This posting is "off topic", so the ignorant and falicious knee-jerk rant will be the only one anyone sees.
Moderation is a double edged sword.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I graduated from a middle-sized district with a space problem. Last summer, they bought an iBook wireless lab for the high school, and it was probably the best decision they ever made. They were able to take a room that used to be a computer lab and turn it back into a classroom, and the iBooks are built so well that repairs have been to a minimum.
Some people might say that there is a problem with the laptops, but I'd just like to examine some problems and some possible solutions.
1)They get "lost."
Well, then don't lend them out. Honestly, if you don't want them to get lost, make sure they don't leave the school in the first place. However, if you do want them to go home with students, make sure they and their parents sign a release form holding them responsible for any loss or damage while the computer is in their possession. Now, you've just released yourself of a whole lot of possible financial burden while still allowing your children the wonderful opportunity to use this technology.
2)They aren't powerful enough.
OK, when was the last time you needed to play Quake 3 on your school's laptop? Any computer these days is more than powerful enough to meet a school's needs; word processing, presentations, educational software; it isn't THAT processor intensive. And if you need machines that do need more power, then keep a lab of desktops around; with the laptops, you won't need two or three, which means you'll have one or two more classrooms for your students.
3)They're easily damaged.
I admit, sometimes this can be a problem, but a shrewd shopper should not have a problem with this. Apple makes EXTREMELY durable notebooks in their iBooks, and for those districts who are more PC-centric rather than Mac-centric, I've used a Gateway and a Dell laptop in my time that have stood up to quite a lot. Learn as much as you can before you commit to a purchase; find out how durable the hardware REALLY is before you sink such a huge investment in it. And if all else fails, take out an insurance policy or other guarantee/warranty on the hardware; depending on the machine, it could more than pay for itself.
4) Students may use them for unapproved activities.
Install a good security software on it. My district used a software called MacAdministrator; everybody was hooked up to a central server and had their own folder on the server. Nothing on the hard drive was allowed to be touched, except for a temp folder where students could save their files until they could be uploaded to the server. If you can't install software on the computer, then there' sno risk of students installing illegal things on the computers. I know there will always be one or two mastermind students who will spend their whole years trying to work around the security, but it's better than every one of your kids casually copying software and possibly getting your district in a boatload of trouble.
I know there are more issues; I could probably write a hundred page book on it. The point is, I'm strongly in favor of these machines being in kids' hands. With the proper measures, the district should not feel such a huge financial burden, either.
-A.C. from A.I.
...since those little lappies will run several different open source OSes...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
please let them be loaded with MacOS X
All Macs being produced right now come pre-loaded with MacOS X, ain't that a wonderful thing? :)
Sapere aude!
What's with all the complaining about using laptops? from an overhead standpoint, using laptops in conjunction with a wireless network is by far the best solution on the market.
First things first, you're not running a few miles of ethernet through the entire school. sure, there will still be some cable to pull if the building isn't already wired. But in the short term at least, you're not doing anything that's all that invasive. You also don't have to hire in a contractor to tear up the building for a couple weeks while the ruins are being laid. If there's a network problem the admin isn't chasing his way through as many cables. Next, you're not paying for furnature. If you want to use desktops, you've got to have the desks. and the chairs. and the mousepads. and the other useless crap that needs to go along with having dedicated computer labs.
what are you gaining with a set of laptops? functionality. 7th 8th and 9th are middle school around my area, so we'll make the assumption that it's the same for maine. You give a kid a laptop at the beginning of the day. He/she associates with a base station at 7:30am and begins roaming. In government class he/she can pull up all the information they'll need, math they'll pull down the homework and notes from the instructor, and during gym the laptop gets time to charge and the airport can cool itself off.
Seriously though, you put in a 200 dollar access point, and every room becomes a computer lab. That kind of functionality is something that educators, administrators, and bean counters drool over.
Are there better uses the money? sure. Everyone's agenda can be served with education's money. Will laptops get dropped and broken? probably a little more often than in a work environment, but they won't all shatter on day one. Will the kiddies learn all the joys of AIM? sure, if you don't block it first. Props to Maine for trying something different and modern. Free thinking in education is a novel concept
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
He hit it right on the head:
5) Useable UNIX - escape the MS tax AND teach the kiddies some UNIX all at the same time (that was my requisite karma whoring). I could actually see this being fairly useful, though. Only give the kids user privileges in OS X, and make them find someone with root access in order to install programs. "Okay little Billy, tell me again why you need Starcraft for school use...". This also solves any problems that might stem from some jerk trying to erase important parts of the system.
Someone else mentioned that their students do nothing but use AIM all day. Sounds like piss poor management, if you ask me. Mr UserChrisCanter4 here has the right idea - don't let the kids have admin privs. on the iBooks. Problem solved. No AIM. No Starcraft. No Hotline. No kids trashing the Finder.
If you people would prefer to give them all Windows 2000, I'm sure Compaq would love to have the contract.....
So, which would you rather have?
Teacher: Today kids, we are going to start the month-long process of reading Hamlet...
Student: Couldn't we just watch the movie in two hours instead?
Techer: No!
There is plenty of potential for technology to revolutionize the education system... Of course it is NEVER used. Television, VCRs, they are a joke in the classroom. It's what you use when you don't want to teach. I think that the laptops will be just the same.
I happen to recall a class I had in high-school. It was called 'Honors' Computer Science. Strangely enough, the technophobic computer department had the systems locked down with Novell, giving us only two items, Netscape and Microsoft Office. Lo-and-behold, the teacher decided that because of the internet access, students weren't getting their work done, so the my teacher unplugged the ethernet, and left us with $2000, Top-Of-The-Line typewriters.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
At $30 000 a year over 4 years, using that $38.6M you could hire 320 more teachers. Add that on to the 1280 teachers and you get 1600 teachers. With 38 600 students you now only have 24 students per class rather than 30 per class. By adding more teachers, teachers have more time to spend on students. Is this better than a laptop for each student?
"Kids, on the other hand, overdrive any machine you give them, and that's without games contributing to the fray. "
... fun!
When I was at school we had BBC Bs and Sinclair Spectrums. The rich kids had BBCs at home, us working class kids had Spectrums, and the poor kids just didn't have a computer at home. From memory a spectrum cost about a years pocket money!
On the whole the rich kids were crap with computers, but they were all too busy watching their dads satellite porn, and about 50% of us with spectrums could write BASIC programs to do stuff like draw spider patterns, calculate the stats from the football on a sunday morning. Actually, one of our best programs was an early version of HotOrNot where we rated all the girls in the senior classes out of 10 for Spots, Tits, and Legs. Should ahve patented it! Damn!
Anyway - all kids should have computers. BUT - Office software is not enough. These machines should all have as many development platforms as possible on them. Even with shitty spectrum BASIC we learned a lot of programming technique, that GOTO was just stupid, and that this was
Ok, dumb question but thinking of all those computers connected to airport base stations made me wonder: has anyone ever considered the idea of wireless clustering?
Also, just curious but what's the limit to the size of a 802.11 wireless network? The question doesn't apply to the iBooks in Maine but is just meant as a hypothetical question.
Anyone know?
hm... 38,600 take that div it by 100 and you're left with 386... Is Apple trying to say something to the PC-WinTel world?
Well, I was all set to jump in here to trash this thing and thought, "How are they going to measure the effect of this?" Politicians like nothing better than to throw some of your money down a black hole, and nobody knows if it was a net benefit (other than the folks who got the computers.)
So I go to look at the Maine educational stats , thinking that it is some sort of backwater, lagging behind Arkansas. I was quite suprised to find that the average scores are all above the national average. ALL the scores are all solidy above average.
So I need to rethink this. Maybe they are smart enough already, and don't need computers. Maybe they will do and learn very clever things with these laptops.
Oh, the other interesting thing on the gov's web site.
Students at all three grades who reported using the Internet at home had higher average scores than those who indicated they did not use the Internet.
Other than the disingenuously scaled graphic, they forget the basic statistical principle, "Correlation does not imply causality"
You might be better off saying "Smarter kids use the Internet more." Or the two may have nothing to do with each other.
Exuse me but does anyone remember
what their assigned textbooks
looked like at the end of the year?
Year and a half?
I dont think it will make it that long...
And what's gonna happen when little Jimmy breaks the Ibook while blocking a nice snowball thrown by little Tommy?
Charge the parents for the repair?
We wont go into the whole fact that kids who are getting beaten up for their lunch money are gonna make nice (and lucrative) targets....
You could go on forever....
At least, spell checkers should catch things like "cant"
two or three make about $400, if they are math books. Kids stole each others' pricey shoes cause they were a status symbol. A laptop the school gives out is not a status symbol.
and how much did you learn about computers trying to get games and porn when you were young? And problem-solving? Critical/analytical thinking?
iBoks ship with OS 9 and X, so they get a full gcc and gdb envinronment included, as well as project builder, Cocoa and Carbon.
If they pick up RealBasic too they'll be all set
I know it's offtopic, but it's a new .sig, and I haven't nitpicked in a while...
The Russian word 'tsar' has a trailing magki-znak, IIRC - perhaps this should be reflected in the .sig?
Thanks for letting me share...
...When in doubt, think for yourself.
On a frivolous side, there will be lots of kids with laptops that the will carry and show around. And they will see them as a gift, so they won't hold them sacred.
I expect a lot of customization in the cases. People pasting logos, pictures and spraying the machines. And some may even be interesting to look at!
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Not that I'm saying my posting was well rounded or contained supporting documentation, but neither did the strawman that somehow rates a "2".
It didn't get modded up. The person replying to your previous post had earned the right to post at 2 by having a karma over 25.
However his post is common of the moronic arguments against homeschooling. It ignores children who are homeschooled generally score much higher on standardized tests, as well as being much better socialized. I could go on about this, in fact I could rant for pagess about the idiotic public school system, but as you said, all of this IS oftopic, so I will keep quiet for now.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
Saw on tv few weeks ago we are doing the same sort of thing here in Indianapolis for city schools.. Giving them Ibooks for the duration of classes.. I guess township children are unimportant here...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know there was one recently on ArsTechnica's forum about this. It links to a couple articles 1 2 discussing some of the ways people see this and why they see it as good or bad.
-N
he has no right to complain about his lack of laptop.
I have to service those crappy p2 233 desktops, 4 floors of them, at work. At least pretend they are good.
I had an Apple II and lots of other Macs through the ages, and a number of them were possible due to educational discounts. Donated my Apple II to my old school (kinda wish I had it now tho').
I believe the smooth, beautiful Mac user interface (doesn't have to be OS X) is superior to Windows because of its smoothness and ease of use (it was developed with cognitive science lessons heeded) and also because it has less of a corporate feel.
In other words, the same reasons designers prefer Macs is why kids should use them too. But there is *no reason on earth* why there should be *any* Microsoft software on those computers. This could be a great time for digital teaching materials, ebooks, and open source software to make waves.
The render exention is struggling to do something that Windows and OSX do with ease.
Until Xfree86 can do basic tasks via the render extention, theres no way its going to ever get to the point where it can do the genie effect of OSX or advanced special effects. Forget about it.
And even if we do somehow by luck get to that point within the next 5 years, it will most likely be for enlightenment not gnome or kde. I'm talking Enlightenment
IF Xfree86 were not so complicated, more people would be able to help develop it and it wouldnt take 5 years to get genie effect, 2 years to get alpha channelling, and 2 years for anti alaised fonts.
The fonts and very very basic alpha effects (not true alpha channeling) are availible right now.
However we are a long long way away from OSX and still trying to catch up to Windows2k.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Its how you spend the money not how much you spend.
Notebooks arent as good as Laptops.
You can use a notebook to take notes, and most kids with bad handwriting dont take notes much, or the kid can hit record and not have to take notes.
The teacher can be telling the kid to research blah blah for homework and the kid can research it while the teacher is telling them.
The homework can be done before the class is over.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Teachers with good grades in college dont make them good at teaching, it makes them good at academic work.
As far as textbooks, why buy more if they havent been working all this time? Thats why the school system needs improvement.
Why keep spending money on the same things year after year with no improvements.
The laptop idea is good, now kids who want to learn have no excuse! Bad teacher? doesnt matter, the laptop will be the teacher.
Notebooks? why buy new notebooks every year wasting millions when you can reuse the same laptops.
Why even waste time taking notes when you can record the teachers voice?
If laptops help people in college, and people in harvard all get free laptops (well not free technically but they are required)
why the hell should highschool students be using stone age tools to learn when the best tools are electronic?
Instead of a student worrying about bad spelling and handwriting (stuff which doesnt matter anymore)
Now a student can actually focus on learning how to WRITE.
A student can learn to read best by READING via the laptop, not by reading some silly book and answering some stupid questions.
A student can learn to THINK, by being forced to think, not by following some rules in a text book "The rules of how to properly think" and then pass some test which says if they fail they cannot think and can never graduate.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If a cheap mousepad costs, say $1.50, then supplying them for 38600 desktops would cost nearly $60k. Saving that cost would definitely be an incentive to use laptops.
Thats right you heard me, pay LESS>
Teachers who dont work for the money and actually care about their job are the best teachers.
There will be less teachers, but really better to have a few great teachers (it works in college)
than have a bunch of crappy ones making kids drop out.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
A bad teacher cant figure out how to use the computer and lets the kids figure it out.
A good teacher tells the kid to type an assignment in word, and tells them to make a powerpoint and tells them what to research.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"Intellectual Bonsai Kitten". God you are a genius, Mr/Ms Waffle Iron. I'm going to use this expression for *years* to come.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Lets see, they go online and come to slashdot and read your writing. I suppose they would not learn how to read and write.
Hold up, I thought the internet was all text??????? How can they not learn to write if they are writing all the damn time? And how do you use a computer if you cant read?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I went through the Maine school system, and while the idea of laptops is nice, the $39M could have been better spent - like increasing the salaries of the teachers to retain the really good teachers who have to take another job because it pays better. Also, the money would attract good teachers from other states (well, in theory).
The money could have also been put to use in renovating the schools which are falling apart, and help build new buildings for those schools which have to resort to trailers as classrooms because of overpopulation.
The best of intentions, but not the best end result.
..Apple has won the bid to provide Maine 6th, 7th and 8th graders with Apple iBooks and Airport wireless connection points.
Exactly how many companies put in bids to sell Apple iBooks and Airport wireless connection points? And among those, how many thought they could get the hardware cheaper than Apple could? Uh huh...
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https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
It is not a good value compared to a PC. You can get PC notebooks that are faster for a much lower price... not to mention much more useful in the way of being able to run hundreds of not thousands more programs. The iBook also is missing certain standard features that few PC notebooks lack.
Or better yet...
Employer: I see on your resume you have some experience with computers.
Graduate: Yes, we used Macintoshes in school.
Employer: Oh, well we run Windows XP here. Are you familiar with that?
Graduate: Er...kinda. It's got a trashcan and finder like OSX, right?
Employer: Uh...(stuttering trying to think of something to say in order to hide the fact he's not computer literate) Sort of.
Graduate: And I have lots of experience with software applications!
Employer: Word XP?
Graduate: Um, no.
Employer: Visio?
Graduate: No.
Employer: Outlook?
Graduate: No.
Employer: Internet Explorer?
Graduate: Yes! Well, not version 6.0...and the version I used on the Mac crashed a lot and had loads of compatibility problems, but I...
Employer: That's too bad.
Graduate: Uh...Anyway, the point is that all computers are the same nowadays. As long as you can use a mouse...
Employer: That's great! I love using my mouse.
Graduate: Yeah, me too.
Employer: And I just discovered that little trick of using the right mouse button. It makes using Word so much easier!
Graduate: Right mouse button? What's that?
Employer: You know...that other button?
Graduate: Huh? Mice only have one button.
Employer: Hmmmm... Thank you for your time. We'll be contacting you shortly if there are any positions available. Next!
Dell laptops are incredibly heavy, oh... and not that good really... sent mine two times to repair already.... and stupidest thing: the keyboard compartment is not isolated, so if you spill something on it, it goes on the logic board....
Thinkpads are better, Fujitsus are waaaay better than Dell... and well, Apple makes pretty good laptops as well, especially for their size, weight and battery life... which are all important for kids...
I Think the common opinion is that Kids will mistreat the computers. I know that many many will treasure them, but others like the PHD's will break them. So, make them pay $50 for the notebook origionally, so they have a sense of responsibilty, and your break rate will go down. Make it a deposite, so when they leave the grade, they get their money back.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Our school district in Illinois, Naperville IL district 203 did it a two years ago for teachers. Every teacher got a laptop. They went the Wintel way. Then they wired all the schools, bought software, upgraded software. Now the laptops are slow...(winNT on a laptop, enough said) outdated (win95 dual boot), printing is not networked. Not many enough rooms are wired, so you can't pick up and say go to the lunchroom, gym, library and work. The school district had to hire one person to TEACH the teachers how to use the machines. The school district is also in debt and in the red! The cost of the laptops was one thing...we knew what that was going to be. The other costs, assorted wiring etc etc was enormous and unknown at the time. What is the ultimate cost? Well...many student programs are being cut. My biggest beaf with them is that if they had gone the Apple way, with airport etc....the cost savings would have been huge! They committed to MicroCost and now the kids will pay. At least Maine has the right idea. Its for the students....and the upfront cost for building the infrastructure is known.
I was one of the unlucky SOB's to be running wires over the drop down ceilings at one of our prestigious schools that got wired for net access in under a day. It got a jack in every room, holes drilled in every floor, took more cable than you could load onto a pickup, and the Govenor himself showed up for a photoshoot because it was the first in the line for the great wave of internet access that was to sweep across the state.
I remember lifting up the cardboard ceiling panels and having roofing that had shaken off from years before sift down onto the floor, rocks, dust, just all kinds of unimaginable crap, and then shimmying a wire along the ceiling. I remember people yelling through the floors, "Hey, you got that wire yet?" "Nope, Can't see it." as they try to thread it up some imaginary hole they just drilled.
All told, it took about a day, and we got 4-5 jacks in the computer labs, maybe 1 in each of the regular classrooms, and if it wern't for the free labor (kids who really had nothing better to do) they would of had to put down a second morgage on the school to cover expenses.
Wireless is a wire to every desk. Wireless is no hanging onto the rafters as you toss a few cables over twords the places where you want them to end up, crawling back down, and doing it all over again. Wireless means the 2 techs for the entire county don't blow their brains out before they get the system in some reasonable facimile of working order, no, that comes after the kids get their hands on the laptops.
It isn't a perfect setup but if they are going to shoot themselves in the foot, why use the shotgun when the handgun is so readily available?
As an undergrad my university did a long study to find out if multimedia made any difference in classes. Since the University spent $40,000 in every classroom to make it computer ready, the research was a little late. It was done by our Stats department (I did research in Epi with one of the major contributors to this project). The verdict: It is all hype. Students did not learn any better with interactive movies and shiny things all about. Most people learn just fine either way. Unfortunately a look at the literature reveals that everyone charges forward, but few ask if technology really has any benefit to learning. This study reveals that it makes no difference. So, the computers will be nice and shiny, but it is doubtful they will contribute much to the student's bottom line of learning.
You don't think all those AirPorts will be secure, do you?
Mellow out man :) - I graduated from college a while back, I just thought it was funny - especially when were talking about excellence in public education.
Where did you hear this? Am I supposed to believe it just because you "believe" it?
Very Skeptical,
GPS
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
That's exactly why kids should be using Macs. I don't think it makes me a Mac bigot to point out that Windows and Linux have consistantly become more and more Mac-like over the years. A person who mastered the Mac GUI as a kid in the '80s is much better prepared to use Win XP today, than a person who mastered DOS as a kid in the '80s.
Perhaps more importantly, Mac OS X is a (partially open-source) Unix, and Apple is now the largest Unix vendor. If you truly believe that the Unixes will someday win out over Microsoft, you've got to believe that the kid who masters OS X today will be better prepared for the "real world" than the kid who masters Windows XP today.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Maybe at this point you should clarify which type of students are being taught. I would think that college students require a lot more after-class hours to grade/prepare for than, say, grade school children. I'm not in the know, but that just seems logical.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
I had hoped this wouldn't happen on Slashdot of all places. Now we get to see all the wintel trolls come out and whine.
(sighs)
As far as the laptop hardware concerns, ie: hardware failure, repair, expense, etc.
1. Price: The iBook costs $1,059 at education level pricing.
2. Repair: Yes, laptop tech is expensive. But this is closely related to my next point:
3. Hardware Failure: Anyone who has owned a Mac (come on, stand up and be counted!) knows the quality level of Apple's hardware. I personally own a Centris 660av (ca 1996) that still works 100% perfectly. Not old enough for you? I also have a Mac Plus (ca. 1986) that *also* works 100% perfectly. How many PCs can you say that about? The myriad of broken PC parts I have strewn about my room can attest to that.
Anything that gets tech into our schools and into the minds of students faster will only be beneficial. How many people here really do wish that there *wasn't* the kind of tech we have today? No PCS phones? No ebay? No Internet? No Linux? No Slashdot?
Why not jump in the pool instead of just complaining about the water's presence?
-Andy
Microsoft announces new emoticon product ratings, gives latest Windows and Office products XP
Schools that can't afford it don't pay for wiring. Under eRate schools can apply for government grants, where they only have to pay a VERY small proportion of the costs. Some schools near where I used to work (Southeastern Oklahoma) had 4% or lower eRate percentages (they could buy a million dollars in hardware, installation, etc and pay 40 grand.)
S.
No wonder america's kids get dumber with every generation. Our education system is braindead as hell.
Yeah, well maybe when you put a few more years between yourself and college, you'll find making a teenager feel badly about himself a bit less funny.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
you work at deere?
what dept? i am an IT intern at the harvester works.
send me an email bholt@uiuc.edu
Apple was selected over two other finalists, NetSchools and MindSurf Networks, a company affiliated with Sylvan Learning Centers. Companies that responded to the state's request, but either did not submit a bid or failed to meet the state's requirements included: Sprint Business; P.C. Connection; Celt Corp.; Tencorp; IBM; Compass Learning; Verizon; and Dell.
l ap tops_.shtml
http://www.centralmaine.com/news/stories/011204
I've been pleased to know several home-schooled people, and even did some algebra tutoring for them. I have never seen more reasonable, socially adept, and fast learning people in my life.
Those that bash homeschooling cannot use anything but ad hominim and strawman arguments, because if they actually looked at the subject they would have to abandon their prejudice.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
No, that would be grammar checkers. Cant is a valid word, although nobody ever seems to use it.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
actually.. if you ever lost a book in highschool and had to pay to replace it, you'd know that the average school book is about $120 .. so yeh.. a laptop costs about as much as 3 or 4 school books.. its not that big of a deal..
Actually the Maine School Area District isn't funding the purchase of the laptops. The project is financed from a combination of private funds (the Gates foundation) state funds (derived from sales tax revenue) and Federal funds (federal matching fund grant).
The project was recently reduced in scope from $50M to $30M due to budget shortfalls in Maine and is in jeopardy of further cuts.
BTW, when Governor King originally proposed giving the laptops to the students directly there was such an uproar that he revised his proposal to have the teachers control them.
Why dont they get the kids in maine some real notebooks... with a hardcore os.. so they can begin to learn something usefull.... not that a color coordinated notebook wont teach something...................
--BSOBN--