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MA High School Forces All Students To Buy MacBooks
An anonymous reader sends in this excerpt from the Salem News:
"A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer to prepare kids for a high-tech future. But there's a catch. The money for the $900 Apple MacBooks will come out of parents' pockets. 'You're kidding me,' parent Jenn Parisella said when she found out she'd have to buy her sophomore daughter, Sky, a new computer. 'She has a laptop. Why would I buy her another laptop?' Sky has a Dell. Come September 2011, every student will need an Apple. They'll bring it to class and use it for homework. Superintendent James Hayes sees the technology as an essential move to prepare kids for the future. The School Committee approved the move last year, and Hayes said he's getting the news out now so families can prepare. 'We have one platform,' Hayes said. 'And that's going to be the Mac.'"
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Students who don't participate will be able to borrow a school-provided laptop during the day, but they won't be able to take it home, Hayes said.
Which essentially means that the program is voluntary. The school is hoping to be able to save money by not having to provide computer labs.
Suppose I were the parent of an underprivileged child. Suppose I live paycheck-to-paycheck, and don't have room in my budget for this. What the hell is the school going to do when I refuse to adhere to this absurdity? Fail my child? This wreaks of something illegal.
My other sig is clever.
A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer
Odd, from reading the summary, it sounds more like the parents will do that, while the 'program' will just require it.
Is it really necessarily to require every student to have a laptop in order to learn? Are they saying it's nearly impossible to correctly teach students without this technology?
And sure, while technology makes things easier to do, it almost feels like they're blaming the lack of technology for not being able to properly teach the students. But, that's my opinion.
Public schools should never require parents to pay for expensive items or programs. This is dead wrong. Many parents no longer have a job nor savings. How will their children get by in school? Further why in the sam hell would anyone push Macs on the kids? There are alternatives such as Linux that could save these families a fortune on PCs.
Probably a far better idea to get them all netbooks. They're cheaper and they will draw less irk from parents. Besides, what can a Mac do that Linux can't when it comes to schoolwork? And I'm not going to even mention using Windows and how much a joy that could be.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
You can't say "the 900 dollar mandatory price tag aside" and then say there's no issue. Putting a statement that you want to ignore the major issue in your post doesn't make it go away.
FTFA:
"Parents can pay for the computers upfront or lease them from the district, with the option to buy after three years. The payments should work out to about $20 to $25 per month, Hayes said. The cost also includes free tech support.
"We realize for some families that will be a stretch," he said. In those cases, the district will provide financial assistance.
Students who don't participate will be able to borrow a school-provided laptop during the day, but they won't be able to take it home, Hayes said."
---
IMO, $20-25/mo is a fair plan. That should be well within the finances of most families, and as they noted, they will provide financial assistance.
That said, using a unified platform is not a bad idea, but why make students buy heavily marked up hardware? Why not Netbooks with Linux?
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
If we are training kids for the future we should definitely have them use a windows/linux variant. I remember back in the university our C++ class had a computer lab that was split between Macs and PCs. The PCs would always be all in use and I had to make do on a mac. I definitely did not enjoy having to do everything differently than the majority of the class, but my teacher appreciated me taking one for the team. If anything I think having a multi platform environment would be good for students having to deal with different platforms at different companies.
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The first three years I was in high school, the school had this ridiculous program going on where they issued every student an iBook. Teachers tried to make us use them, but seriously, how useful is a laptop in high school math? Admittedly, it was nice for language and social studies classes to have something to type/browse Wikipedia on, but the hassle of carrying them around, dealing with the constant breakage, and etc. far outweighed the benefits to the students. And when you look at the $2 mil that the school district spent on the program, the whole thing just seemed like a really bad joke.
Sounds like a lawsuit to me. The school board is requiring people purchase a specific computer without reimbursement to get an education. Last I checked, everyone in the U.S. is entitled to a free education up through high school.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It doesn't require a lot of experience to switch between Windows and Mac. I'd expect someone with experience with one platform and absolutely zero on the other to be up to speed in a day or two.
Macs are at least a step up from Windows in terms of viruses...
Yes (popularity).
...and security
Lol. No.
... I would say there is some wisdom is chosing apple for that purpose. If they instead opted for a Windows laptop it would be nearly impossible to standardize. Even if they said "everyone go buy a Dell model ABC123" you wouldn't get very good consistency, because inevitably some parents would try to substitute something else (and yet others would substitute by accident). On top of that you do have the problem with the Windows (in)security mentality that leads to crashing systems all over the place.
So if the purpose really is for the kids to learn subject material that doesn't include how to fix the computer, then the apple probably isn't a bad choice after all.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Outside of a programming class why the hell do high school, hell even college students, need a laptop for school? I guess it's because of idiocies like this that we spend more, by far, per student than the rest of the world.
Good point, but I would submit the fact that 90% of all people who have a PC have Windows to go with it would be an excellent answer. Yes, the school could also (bad car analogy FTW!) standardize on right-hand-drive vehicles to drive in their parking lot so everyone is driving on the same side of the road, but that's ignoring an underlying standard that pretty much everyone already has a car, and it's probably a left-hand-drive here in the US.
I know standardizing will make the school admin's jobs easier, and I don't think tax dollars should be buying laptops, so as far as this program goes it makes a certain sense. Pick a standard, make the parents buy to that standard, offer in-school loaners for kids who need them.
But if they need to standardize on something it would seem to make sense to standardize on something that most people already have. If you don't already have it, you can get a basic netbook for $250 to run Windows, and a decent laptop for under $500 rather than forcing a high-school student to be responsible for a $900 machine and their parents responsible for replacing it when it gets dropped. I bet Apple won't offer the same deep discounted price of $900 on the MacBook when Little Jimmy drops his first one in December, and his second one in March.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The difference is that, by making this a requirement, this amounts to a tax to attend school. And, the tax isn't even being paid to the school district, it is being paid to Apple.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If we are training kids for the future we should definitely have them use a windows/linux variant.
Is using Windows so hard that you need training to use it? In that case, we shouldn't be training the kids to use it, we should train them to say "no" if their boss wants them to use windows. But you may not have noticed a subtle change: While the CTOs still use their Windows PCs more or less unhappily, their CEO bosses use iPhones and iPads and MacBooks Airs. When these kids leave school, the change won't be so subtle anymore.
They are "requiring" Macs because they have more chic style cache.
It's built right into the hardware? That's awesome and creepy on so many different levels.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
My daughters school added the requirement that she have a laptop for school. The school here said that it must run Windows and have Microsoft Office on it.
I gave her a new Toshiba with Fedora Core and open office. She is happy with it, then I get a note from the school that It must be Windows because they had software to install that required windows. I told then that if they would let me know what the software does I would be more than happy to find a similar package for Linux or to set it up in a restricted virtual environment.
Never hear another thing from them. IMHO if the school wants to require an OS or Specific software packages then they need to pony up the money for the laptop and set it up the way they want it.
As a Mac user of 23 years, I've gotta say that this headline is abso-fvcking-lutely surreal.
It seemed like Mac users pissed and moaned for decades about being forced to abandon their platform as schools moved toward cheap PC running Windows 3.1 et al.
Is today backwards day?
Direct your hate mail this way: jim.hayes@beverlyschools.org
AccountKiller
Have you ever used Mathlab? http://www.mathworks.cn/access/helpdesk_r13/help/base/install/mac/inst_mac.html
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
What are you talking about? In 1991, I purchased an IBM PS/2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_System/2
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
EVERY employer requires M$ Office experience...
This isn't always true either. I doubt the largest employer in the city where I work require any computer skills for the assembly line workers. Neither do the construction companies whose employees are expanding the building I am sitting in. If you are talking about white collar jobs, you might have a point but most of these require a degree of some sort. Anyone graduating with any sort of degree is going to have used Microsoft Office at least a little so what students use in High School is irrelevant to the real world.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
Who was the Apple sales rep on this account? Huge WIN - to FORCE parents to buy a kid a new machine when they might well ALREADY HAVE ONE that works perfectly well.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
How many of them are just going to get robbed by other students?
If the school had said windows there would be many comments like:
Windows is evil!
Microsoft is evil!
Windows is the source of all evil!
Windows is making the kids dumber!
The school will be virus/malware central!
The school has been assimilated!
There are many others.
It doesn't require a lot of experience to switch between Windows and Mac. I'd expect someone with experience with one platform and absolutely zero on the other to be up to speed in a day or two.
I switched from Windows to Mac on my work laptop about eight months ago, so I have personal and recent experience.
It is not something that takes a day or two. It takes a month or two to regain all the lost productivity. Most people where I work that have switched to Mac have a similar experience. Just getting used to the keyboard with the extra meta keys, and missing keys you're used to, takes a long time.
Once you're over the learning curve it's a better experience, but it's not as easy as you think it is.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
That is usually how these sort of things come about. I mean when you get down to it, there is no good reason to require students to have computers. It makes sense to have computers at your school, and to use them for various things and tech students about them, but it does not make sense to try and make everything computer based. I do not believe everything is made better by computers, and I love computers. Sorry, but I don't see math being better done on a computer. I think a book, a calculator (for more advanced math) and a piece of paper is a good way of doing it. I work at a university and we don't mandate laptops for students. We have a lot of computers on campus and they are used extensively, but you don't need a computer for everything.
So programs like this do not tend to come out of real educational needs. Rather they come from fanboy types. You get the person who thinks their chosen computer is just the greatest thing ever and thinks life would be so wonderful is everyone had one. So the district technology person, or the superintendent or whatever is a Mac head who thinks their Macbook is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They get the idea through their head that every student should have one, rather than evaluating what technology might be useful (for example maybe the money is better spent on projectors and digital whiteboards for classrooms). Thus you get a program like this.
Never underestimate a poorly informed fanboy in a position of power. As an example the newspaper here on campus is, as one might expect, Mac centric. So they badly needed to replace their newsroom computers, they were old original iMacs (the 5 colour kind) and were breaking down in addition to being not supported. Also as you'd expect being a newspaper and on a campus, they are strapped for cash. So my friend who is their tech guy worked up a cheap Linux PC for them. Would have cost like $350 per seat including monitor. Wasn't powerful, but didn't need to be, newsroom computers are just for word processing and some web surfing. They wouldn't go for it. The higher ups are Mac heads and insisted they had to have Macs. My friend brought in a system to show them how well it worked, how it integrated with what they had and so on. No go, they bought a bunch of $1500 iMacs. They spent many times what they needed to simply because they had fanboys who decided that was what they had to have.
How can you expect Americans to have aristocracies if you stand in the way of holding back or penalizing the poor!?
Matlab (no h) is very much most highschool math. Heck what it is used for is shot more towards Graduate level courses and above.
I mean I suppose you could pay $10k seat for matrix algebra.
Maple would be closer to what a highschool student needed.
Damn right. I'm glad that my school was forward-thinking enough to teach me Windows 3.11 and Microsoft Works and Word 2. All that other time that they spent teaching me the concepts underlying the systems was completely wasted, because when I got out into the real world I found that everyone used Window 3.11 and Word 2.
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This is just as bad as mandating all Microsoft software - I feel like I'm back in the 1990s.
They should be using the web to get any content out to students, and then students could use whatever sort of computer (or device!) they want, including ipads, thinkpads, or smartbooks or their latest phone which they use instead of a computer. Then in five years time when the next hot new thing comes along or their mac software is broken by a new OS, or Apple drops Mac OS completely (the last WWDC was almost entirely taken up with iOS), they will not be left stuck on an abandoned platform dealing with bit rot in old applications and wondering why they mandated that everyone must use this. You know, like those companies that still use Windows 2000 because they are tied to binaries on that platform and they don't want the hassle of moving on.
This is exactly what the web was made for. If they used platform-agnostic html to deliver their student content (no active-x, no binary plugins), they would have an always up to date resource which students could access from anywhere, and which did not mandate any particular technology to access it (every platform nowadays has a browser). Students could deal with their own tech support, and the school could issue free (far cheaper) web devices to those who needed them.
The question nowadays is not mac or PC, it should be binary or markup, and the answer is pretty obvious for the needs of a high school.
Differences
1: The ubiquity of windows in a work/real world setting makes forcing students to learn how to use it logical. OSX, less so.
2: An equivalent windows laptop usually doesn't cost $900 (hence why you can't ignore the price issue)
3: This is the first time I've ever heard of any school district forcing students to buy laptops at all let alone a specific made model and brand. I was required to have a computer for COLLEGE that ran windows but I fully free to pick the one I wanted. And laptops, while helpful, were not required if you didn't mind carrying a flash drive to move files from the lab to your home.
Too bad you never learned that it was Mark Twain who said it.
Prithee be true.
Because a future with Microsoft is as horrible to contemplate as a future run by Cardassians.
Would you trade one Microsoft for another? It's like driving the Cardassians out only to let the Dominion in...
Bow-ties are cool.
Wait... you expected more of IBM than that they give us a standard connector for mice and keyboards that didn't require thumbscrews, a socket the size of a light bulb, or multiple adapters, which lasted from its creation until a general phase-out only because of the introduction of USB? Yeah, you're right I guess. They didn't really contribute anything worthwhile to computing. Silly me.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Has anyone noticed that putting an exclamation after apple's iStuff makes it look like it's in spanish? iCarumba!
"Variously attributed to Lincoln, Elbert Hubbard, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and Socrates"
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and his cronies in IT without pay and start investigating whatever sweetheart deal the superintendent made with Apple or with an Apple VAR instead, including any kickbacks paid or to be paid to the superintendent. For instance, is the guy now driving a car far more expensive than superintendents usually drive? Is he moving to a wealthy, upscale neighborhood? Basically, the only justification I can see to require parents to buy their kids Macs is either dishonesty or incompetence... while the superintendent isn't required to know anything, he is required to be able to obtain honest, competent IT advice and it's obvious he didn't even try.
I can see requiring a laptop for students in the 21st Century. It's a lot cheaper to deliver textbooks on that platform and it's easier for students to carry a dozen textbooks if they're all on a hard drive and weigh nothing over and above the weight of a laptop.
If the IT people are incapable of delivering platform-agnostic documents and applications, they're either incompetent or should be under suspicion of participating in a conspiracy with the superintendent of defrauding the taxpayers.
Tech Public Policy stuff
School requires macs (personal or loaned, wtfever). Kids do schoolwork on macs at school. Rich kids learn to have things handed to them. Normal kids learn to work to buy themselves a mac, or they learn to do things on the home PC and how to use compatibility tools and/or how to convert docs from one type to another for use across both macs and PCs. Either way, lots of people will learn how important a worth ethic is and how important it is to understand the PC world in general as well as knowing how to launch facebook on your particular device.
Win/Win.
I don't get why school/educational institutions use Macs. 99% of businesses use Windows. Don't they want there kids to be prepared when they leave schools? This is once again a dumb school administration making a decision in a vacuum
AC
A few years ago when I was in high school we had a similar program. I say similar because it differed in two ways. 1. We had iBooks and 2. the school completely funded it, like they already did with everything else that we used, like pencils, meals, bus tickets etc.
It made me think a bit closer on why we have these programs and my conclusion is that most people actually get it wrong at first. It is not about making students familiar with computers. It is not about teaching them Office. It's not about writing papers in Word. It's not even about programming.
It's about better education.
Ask yourself why we are using pencils in schools. It's not about teaching people about pencils. Sure there may be an introduction for very young pupils in how to use it but that's far from why we have them. It is simply a really good tool for learning.
A computer can also be an insanely good tool for learning.
A lot of teachers get that. Some schools don't and they usually buy netbooks. I'm not saying that netbooks are bad, but when you are basing the decision only on "equipping them with computers" and trying to get away with it as cheaply as possible you are likely to make a bad decision. I have seen quite a lot of schools where they bought cheap laptops, loaded them with locked-down copies of Windows and Word and never really gave it much deeper thoughts on how they could be used in the actual learning process. They only thought of it as a digital pencil. Guess how well it usually turned out.
The important thing is that a computer is so much more than a pencil.
My experience is that these programs is much more effective if you buy decent hardware. It doesn't have to be the most expensive but at least don't go for the cheapest. Then give the students root access and the reinstallation discs just in case they need them and say "Go Play".
It's incredible how creative a student can be when it comes to finding good use for a computer if they have tools that are designed for that.
Apple gets that and I think that's why so many schools use them. They have been doing this for a long time. The other players are starting to get it just now while Apple has already been talking about it for over ten years.
I signed up for my highschool's laptop program (completely voluntary) back in 2000. All students were required to provide their own laptops, and since the school was "PC-only", that's what students were told to buy. I ended up being probably one of maybe two students in the program who did have a Mac. Never had any trouble completing any assignments, and actually had it a little easier since some of the "security" measures they tried to implement were only Windows compatible, so I wasn't bothered by it.
While I find it cool that a school has decided to be pro-Mac, I think it's unreasonable for the school to dictate exactly which computer students need to buy. I could understand if the school said "we only support Macintosh" and PC-laptopers had to troubleshoot their own problems. But there's no reason students shouldn't be able to use PC laptops at their own risk.
schools is where they begin to indoctrinate the young people to step the line, not to do anything that is even remotely different.
How is it at all sensible for a school to require everybody to buy a laptop, especially a laptop with a non-Free operating system?
this is insane, if a laptop is really required it must be a laptop with an operating system that is Free to look at the code and probably free to own.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah, my wife taught at a high school that bought every student and teacher a Macbook Pro. Yes, Pro. At the cost of several million dollars to the school district, no less... oh, but that wasn't the REAL cost. The REAL cost was that the teachers could no longer buy books to teach with. They were supposed to use only the laptops. Oh, and at the end of the year, the school laid off 50 teachers.
They closed down one school in the district entirely, electing instead to privatize it and lay off all of the teachers to "save some money." The private company that came in was supposed to "specialize in teaching underperforming students using technology." Good luck with that... Remind me again when technology became better than books and teacher interaction for students.
Then again, I guess I can't expect much, given my state's history in education. (Hint: We're the dumbest, poorest state in the US.)
It's caramba.
To do list for Windows
Having worked with school districts let me tell you there is some supreme incompetence that goes on there. Also there's the simply Mac fanboy cognitive dissonance at work. What probably happened:
Superintendent gets a shiny new Macbook because it is cool looking and stylish. It works great for him/her because all they do is surf the web, read e-mail, simple stuff. A new, powerful machine without crap will do that blazingly fast and easy. Goes double because he has a nice new cable modem connection that is just super fast (or in reality more like 10mbit).
At work, however, they have old PCs running even older software to handle student records, grades, etc. These have problems, as old computers are wont to do, in particular when running software designed for even older architectures. Also, as with most schools, they have a slow network connection. The whole school has a connection maybe as fast as the superintendent's home connection, so simple tasks like web browsing feel slow.
Rather than looking at the situation logically, the superintendent believes everything is because of his shiny new Mac. Clearly that Mac is the reason everything is so good. Thus the solution is for everyone to have one! Things would be so much better. Nothing would ever break, because his never has. There'd be no problems, because he hasn't had any.
That's my bet. Nobody bought him/her off, it was just a case of someone who knows fuck-all about enterprise computing. They figure since their sample size of one is perfect, that will hold true for all the rest.
Proverbs 17:28
I'm from the area, and I can assure you that this is not true. Sure, Beverly has some very affluent sections, but it also has some very poor sections. They were also in quite a bit of hot water a few years ago when budget shortfalls precluded required maintenance that put the high school on the brink of loosing its accreditation. They now have a new high school, but it's been a very rough road. My guess is that this is a case of reactionary posturing to try to paint a picture of some grandiose recovery... but with OPM (Other People's Money).
Well, whoever really said it, we can safely attribute it to Oscar Wilde.
What do you think, sirs?
The Bible predates Socrates?
iWhooosh!
No ragging on the PS/2 - those machines were TRUCKS. Several times in 1988 I checked a PS/2 Mod 80 as baggage on American Airlines without packing it in anything, just lugged (and I do mean lugged) it through the airport by its handle. And it arrived working just fine.
.. but I'm just advocating that all news sources discuss the latest apple releases together with the latest tween toy trends.
For example, you really needed to contemplate the iPad together with vajazzling if you hoped to comprehend either. I assure you that Apple's engineers were intently involved with bedazzling their phones while designing the iPad, just like the vajazzling developers.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
IBM didn't offer a "standard" mouse interface until the PS/2, and even then it took several more years to weed out the proprietary "bus mice" and RS-232 rodents from the marketplace. This was partly because common AT cases didn't include a knockout for a PS/2 mouse, combined with the fact that motherboard makers always seemed very reluctant to move the PS/2 interface (if they even offered one) to a blank ISA panel.
Really, it doesn't seem that PS/2 gained wide acceptance until ATX made back panel knockouts useful and replaceable, thus providing a good place for a PS/2 mouse connector. And since, IIRC, IBM had nothing at all to do with the ATX spec, I don't really think they deserve much credit for the PS/2 mouse's eventual widespread acceptance.
So, though I myself think that IBM contributed a whole lot more than a couple of peripheral interfaces to the development of the PC, I must conclude for the sake of argument that your post is, at best, 50% correct.
Kid-proof tablet..
Seriously, guys, take a deep breath
:)
OK, I've been maintaining Macs in business environments since the Mac II. First for a printer (first in the province to use a Linotype imagesetter with PostScript RIP) and now for an advertising agency. I also have to do a little Windows maintenance as well (accounting department uses PCs, and there are some PCs in the production department to check websites out on Internet Exploder). So I have a fairly good idea of why this school board made this decision. Their administration and software costs will go WAY down. I'll explain.
Macs hardly need any administration at all - some quick setup for printers, and some basic filesharing rules, and you are good to go. You do not need to worry about self-propagating viruses. You don't need to worry AS MUCH about the kids installing strange and harmful software off the internet. You don't generally need to worry too much about the kids running games when they are meant to be doing work on the things. The Macs come with a very good suite of basic software to do document creation (Pages), presentations (Keynote), spreadsheet work (Numbers), movie editing (iMovie), disc burning (built into the Finder). There are a number of very high quality educational products for the Mac. And everything works very well with each other. I imagine that for most of the tasks they are going to have the kids doing with their Macbooks, there will be zero software to purchase.
From an educational standpoint, Macs have a full BASH terminal, and comes with a full software development package, so there's teaching all that nifty UNIX stuff that is actually useful in the "real world."
More importantly than all that, Macs need very little on-going maintenance. There's very little that a combo of Onyx (free), and Disc Warrior (not free, but not expensive) cannot cure on a Mac. If you set the kids up with non-administrative user-accounts, they cannot destroy the application software or the operating system. No need to ghost the OS and apps, and re-image the computers at the end of every day like I know a lot of school computer labs do with Windows machines. I imagine that a school will only need 1 "computer guy" around, and he will not be busy full-time. Macs are a breeze to maintain.I think the last Mac virus I had to deal with was back in the OS 8 days.
I live and work in the "real world" and we use Macs every day. Dunno what kind of world you all work in, but I bet your fonts are awful and kerned funny.
planet texture maps and more
No, it's whatever Steve Jobs says it is.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Hi's bad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Must be good if people are lining up across the Pacific to get it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
ok .. buy the Apple ..
Install windows on it and see how the school administration freaks out ... great plan!
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