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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."
Ibooks come with 802.11b, so its not an extra purchase. So the schools can actually save money by NOT putting in a large network. So they get good cheap computer, and save money on a network. Lots of people forget about other expenses on a computer lab.
BTW, some high school experiences are much better, programming, typing tests, doing actual work, being a TA and grading assignments.
Side note - Every kid should play Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego and wagon train.
As a "Real World" educational technology person, I'll toss in my 2 cents on why we think it doesn't matter what OS kids use.
In my experiance, kids can move between platforms (Mac OS 8-9, 10, Windows 9x, 2K/XP, Linux) with no problems at all. In fact at my work we in the IT group think it's better for the kids to be exposed to mulitple platforms because it assists them in learning how to deal with different things.
For the Middle School grades, a Mac makes more sense than Windows for a number of reasons.
1. iMovie - Easy as pie DV work.
2. Office 2001/X - Works better than Office for Windows
3. AppleWorks - Nice, easier to use "light" Office Suite for younger kids.
If you think giving a Middle School kid an iBook will do them little good in the "real world", that's just FUD. A computer is a computer, what a 6th grader will be using when they get to the "real world" in 6-10 years isn't going to be what they are using today. Windows, Mac and Linux have changed a great deal since 1995 (5 years ago - when a 12th grader was in Middle School).
If anything, concentrating on one OS through a child's school career will, if anything make them unable to deal with changes. In short, they will end up like the majority of thier teachers.
As for the tired old "open Apple's hardware" speech...IDE, USB, Firewire, AGP, PCI - It's as open as most PC vendors, and alot more open than offerings by Sony or Compaq.
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."
around 90% of the computing world runs M$ software
And around 100% of the Mac computing world also runs Microsoft software. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, WiMP, etc. The fact is that you can get just as much real-world computer experience with a Mac as you can with a Windows computer.
Sure, Windows machines have tons of software that has been developed for them. Let me ask you one thing: how many programs do you typically use? 10? 20? I bet that for just about all of the programs you use there are either similar programs on the Mac, or there is the same exact program available!
Not to mention that since MacOS X is out and doing very well, there are a ton of developers scrambling to produce programs for it. Another thing is that BSD is built-in to MacOS X. Can you say "huge world of open-source software with just a simple compile"? I knew you could.
Macs do cost a bit more than a similar IBM-clone, but they also have a ton of added-value in the extras and attention to detail which comes with the platform. More and more people have been realizing this and have been trying Macintosh and loving it. This is a good thing, since with competition all of us benefit. Would you want to be the one to advocate giving the remaining 10% of the computing world to Microsoft without a fight? I didn't think so...
Sapere aude!