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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 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.
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..
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."
Apple won a contract, they are selling laptops to Maine public schools. They had to respond to an RFP with a bid and beat competing bids (that most likely involved laptops using Windows). They won the bid based on technical merit and cost (by law).
Microsoft offered to give (as in 'dump') software to public schools in exchange for settling class action suits against them. This has the effect of a) getting rid of a bunch of potentially expensive law suits, b) paying damages based on retail value of a bunch of MS software, and c) freezing Apple out of the competition for equipping a large number of schools.
Big difference!
[Insert pithy quote here]
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.
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.
Apple won a bid to provide iBooks? I bet the competition was really fierce.
sulli
RTFJ.