Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!
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.
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
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
...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 $300 a piece (wish I could grab one for that price) so they are taking a loss on this one. Apple probably is betting that this will help them make a comeback in the school. It will be very interesting to see if they can pull it off (the other solutions that lost served up terminal apps and web pages over WAN connections) on a tablet type device. Unlike the other solutions however, I think Apple is doing the whole thing at a loss. As Mainers here know (myself included), this entire plan has not been without controversy. I for one think its a neat idea.
..this is but a fantasy..
Apple has led the educational market for many years, and 38K laptops is certainly a big win for them....
However, with M$ 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...
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
"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."
>not ugly graphics of Xfree
Wouldn't that be a problem with the window manager, not the program that simply interprets what dots are to be drawn on the screen?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Hey, you said it. Let's not discount colleges (and even my sisters' private high school) "providing" students with laptop-which means, "We just increased your tuition by $2000, and you don't get to choose what computer you get."
In my experience, implementation of computers and particularly the Internet has been excreble, especially outside the college level. At my sister's school, they got to pay $2100 for a Compaq that feels like a 486 (supposedly a Celeron, but it's the slowest POS I've ever used).
They also set up a wireless network, which allows students to IM each other (when their computers work.) IT sucks up a huge amount of budget, as the assheads had to set up an on-site repair shop in the high school just to keep the Compaqs up and running.
How are the laptops being put to use? PDF versions of textbooks are replacing their paper counterparts (I could understand for searching/indexing purposes, but who wants to read 50 pages of PDF?) Other than that, nothing.
The Internet (and computers in general) have been hailed as next great tool in education, just like the TV was before it. Let's not forget that implementation makes all the difference. Forcing students to carry around a laptop doesn't help anything.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
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
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 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.
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.
Because there's a difference, a gaping chasm, in fact, between responsible and effective use of technology and a wasteful "technology for technology's sake" approach. This is the latter. Transportation is important, too. We need our government to maintain roads, not give everyone a car.
I understand the concept all too well. The responsible and ethical thing to do would be to say "Thanks so much, but giving children laptops is not a productive use of $2k or so per student." As a taxpayer, I don't really care whether the money spent comes from my state or federal tax return. I care first whether it's something government even has any business being involved in, and second, if they're performing their role responsibly and with at least some semblance of efficiency. You don't have to be perfect, but you'd better not buy $800 hammers. Kindly stop looking at this as government money. It isn't. It's the money of thousands of hardworking taxpayers who had numerous productive uses they could have put the money to had it not been taken from them for this wasteful pet project.
I disagree. The complaints you hear are from people (like me) who don't think using a computer is such an integral part of schooling that every student needs a computer 24x7. That's the wasteful part, and that's where it gets needlessly expensive. Computers simply don't add as much to the educational experience as you seem to believe. There are select exceptions (CompSci, some mathematics), and for those exceptions, "Students, please take a laptop on your way in to the classroom." or "This will be your laptop for the semester. Take care of it."
It's hardly a drop in the bucket. Educating a student costs $4k-8k per year depending on your school system. Spending $2k or so on *each student* is therefore a rather massive increase. If it's justified and warranted AND we have the money, fine. When there's no established return on investment, I find it wasteful. I care when it happens elsewhere because other unwise politicians will emulate it.
No it won't. Zero sum doesn't apply. Whine this year for laptops for everyone, whine next year for a raise. Voters have a hard time turning down more money for teachers. I happen to agree on that point. Most teachers aren't paid enough.
Schools are not vocational education centers. They should teach you the academics. In other words, here's how to write a quality paper, not here's how to type in Word.
You're still missing the point. It isn't about dollars, its about effective use of a limited resource. Books remain a more friendly medium. It's easier to read a book, you won't get repetitive motion problems from a book, you won't get a headache from staring at a book all day. We have a nice, long history of students learning effectively from books. If you want to throw them out in favor of something else, PROVE (do a peer reviewed study) that something else works at least as well FIRST. Once you've shown that, only then do I even care whether it costs more or less.
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."
...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.
Apple won a bid to provide iBooks? I bet the competition was really fierce.
sulli
RTFJ.
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!
You're probably thinking of FrEdWriter.... which, I believe, stood for Free Educational Writer. More info on this great program can be found here.
I remember typing papers up on that in 5th grade.... and being all happy that we'd gotten the latest version of ProDOS. Every once in a while I get a FrEdWriter flashback when I'm using pico... heh.
------------
"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."