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Apple's School Days are Numbered
prostoalex writes "Business Week describes the current situation in the educational market, suggesting that Apple will lose its share among the high school teachers and students. The worst enemies, according to Business Week, are school superintendents. "We want a single platform," one of them said. "We're trying to get there using the carrot, or blackmail, or rewards, or whatever you call it.""
I think we all knew this.
Im glad
I'll call PTA and the local newspaper and I'll sue the school too
... and become part of the [american] problem. It's BECAUSE you risk getting sued schools and teachers don't dare doing anything outside what's in the plans and books.
it's in my head
The article has a mac zealot slant. Not that it's a bad thing. There's room for everyone. But, when you are teaching children to survive in the real world, the odds of them getting a job because they know how to rearrange their icons on a iMac just don't cut it.
Proprietary hardware is more expensive than intel/amd x86/i64 based systems. And that includes Mac. I think the schools would do well to introduce their students to multiple platforms. If cost containment is a concern, then linux/x86 would be the answer. If teaching students job skills is a concern, then sadly wintel is the answer. If breadth of knowledge is a concern, then give them Mac, Solaris, HP/UX, Linux, et. al.
Honestly, if these students wnt through 12 years of school, and just used Mac's- they would be fucked. Their prospective employers would laugh them out of the office. Mac's are pretty, and their user base are geared to rich retards or graphic artists.
There is no freedom with Apple anymore. Their software is closed. Their hardware is closed. you can't learn dick. They don't pay these kids, when they get out, to believe in the power of their dreams. They pay them to do work. The rest of this shit is artistic window dressing. It's time for this dark age Mac weenies to realize this. Think different(TM), as it were.
Except if this article was about a school switching entirely over to Linux then we wouldn't get this sort of comment. Slashdot is obviously very bias to start with, but most people in education are not growing up to be computer techies and will be using Windows with Office. Forcing an open source philosphy down someone's throat is not going to help them if it won't be any use later. And how many businesses do get a few unix boxes just to avoid uniformity? No they use them because they are productive. Uniformity mean maintaining one set of support contracts, one set of software, one set of patches for when things go wrong and there are less obscure bugs (there may still be bugs ;) getting machines to talk to each other.
And saying that you can only do video editting on a Mac in this day and age is simply not true. Only publishing remains a bastion of Apple and that's because it's what they are used to. (the usual argument given against Windows).
Hi troll,
Here's what the Capital Times printed:
"We want a single platform," he said, referring to having all one type of computer in the network. "We've never made any secret about that."
-and-
"We're trying to get there using the carrot, or blackmail, or rewards or whatever you call it," Rainwater said.
I don't think anybody is thinking about this the right way at all... Teaching students how to use a computer (or a computer program) should not be a goal, in and of itself.
Teachers should be teaching their students how to create a spreadsheet, the fact that they are doing it with Excel should just be a footnote, and even the fact that they are using a computer to do it should not be a primary factor at all.
A better example: The goal of teaching students how to use iMovie should be to teach them how to edit movies... The software that they use to do it matters very little, the operating system matters very little, and even the fact that it is being done with a computer shouldn't matter much at all...
With that said, if teaching students how to edit video, create a spreadsheet, etc., is easier on a Mac than a PC, then why should a PC even be considered? Should I be forced to write with a #2 pencil just because everyone else does?
Learning Excel for the sake of learning Excel is the equivalent of high-tech masturbation. It's as if your only goal in life, is to have a goal in life... There is no sense to it at all in public schools.
The public school system is not a 13-year-long trade-school. The goal is education of an individual, not marketable corporate skills. Maybe that's one of the primary reasons the U.S. education system is FAILING. Instead of actually educating kids, they teach them to memorize and recite facts. The education system is in a poor state, and this idea of computer monoculture is a great example of the symptoms experienced by a school with a serious problem. It is likely a school where the administrators don't undertand what their jobs are, and students aren't actually being educated at all.
Even if we are to believe that schools legitimately wanted to provide students with experience on the systems used in corporations, and suspend logic to believe that it was a laudable goal, then we still run into the question of why are schools using Windows 98 instead of 2000? Win 98 certainly isn't popular in companies at all, so what's the point? Also, why are they locking down computers so tightly that students can't actually get any experience on computer, if that is really the goal? And why aren't they teaching any useful and valuable skills, instead of crap like Word and Excel?
I think uniformity, and "using what's used in corporations" is a red herring, and much of this comes down to simple payola, and other Microsoft lobbying efforts that convice educators that is might be reasonable.
Disclaimer: Much of this content comes from some of my replies to other comments. I thought the content was important enough that I should give it it's own thread, and more exposure on the main thread, rather than less-trafficed areas. Please moderate/reply to this one, and ignore the others.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If you want to teach kids what "the most popular OS" will be doing when they get out of school, teach them Mac OS today.
Do not touch -Willie
There IS one neighboring district that is buying Macs like there's no tomorrow...and that's because their IT Director is a former Mac salesman. When he retires (or is fired for mismanagement) they, too, will switch over to PC-only. I look forward to the day when I can rid my own district of them, personally. Mod this what you want, but this is what is going on in the world of education.
Not gonna mod, gonna reply, because you asked for it...
It's not what's going on in the world of
education, it's what's going on in your
world. Big difference. You've got an obvious beef
against Macs and you actually take pride in it.
Your opinion isn't backed up by hard, reliable
facts, just your anecdotal evidence. I'm sure,
should you get that job you're gunning for, there
will be someone below you with a differnt view
hoping you get fired for mismanagement as well.
Also, your constant cries of, "I'm not trolling",
and, "this is not flamebaiting", seem to help
your argument even less. If you weren't trolling,
your argument would stand up on its own merits and
not need the protestaions of "mod me what you like".
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...