Texas High School Gets iBooks

bigjnsa500 writes "Starting in December, high school teachers and students in the sleepy south Texas town of Pleasanton will be receiving Apple iBook wireless laptops. The school has installed wireless access points throughout the campus, including classroom buildings, the shop areas, gym, field house and press box at the football stadium. It will be first high school campus in South Texas to go high-tech." Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't that $2.2m over four years be better spent on books and teachers?

Re:surely...

[PainKilleR-CE]

I would think that technology funding and teachers come from different pools of money, but I could be wrong.

Additionally, they might be able to save some money if they can buy the books on CD-ROM. Hell, they might even save some of their students from serious back problems if all they have to carry around is a little paper, and iBook, and a pencil.

They can take them home?

[mahart]

How many of these are going to get lost/stolen/broken? I remember the hardback textbooks at my highschool had a tough enough time making it through the school year. I think a better computer lab or even laptops that are confined to classrooms would be a better idea.

Books? Books! Now hold on there, pardner...

[nystagman]

Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't that $2.2m over four years be better spent on books and teachers? Only if those books do NOT mention the heretical "theory" of "evolution". Note to the humor impaired: I am totally serious. Really.

Re:They can take them home?

[SavoWood]

Depending on the angle the machine hit the ground, it could have ended up being a non-issue. I've dropped my iBook twice from about 6 feet. It landed fairly flat both times. The first time, you couldn't tell anything happened. The second time, I broke the hinge, but it still worked so I didn't get it replaced. It's an amazing machine. It took a serious beating and still runs like a champ.

My 12" PB has also taken a fall from about 4 feet, and it never missed a beat. It was running a long process at the time, and compiling The Gimp. There's not even a scratch on the PB, the process never stopped and had no errors, and The Gimp is running just fine.

Either I'm unusually lucky (and clumsy) or your sister has incredibly bad luck. Lucky for her, it's still under warranty and Apple is VERY liberal with their warranty repairs.

Re:surely...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax money is the only pool that this funding comes from.

I'm not convinced that this is the best way to spend the money, but it is not my decision to make.

Would the money be better spent on teachers? If it is spent on hiring more teachers, improving student-teacher ratios.

Even though teachers are grossly underpaid in relation to the importance of their job, major increases in their salaries might bring in more of the "I'm in it for the money" teachers rather than "I want to teach" teachers.

Breakage

[borkus]

When Henrico County near Richmond, Virginia did this, they initially had considerable problems [henricocitizen.com] with systems breaking. Part of that was educating students in how to handle the systems properly. Part of it was underestimating the support needs of 25,000 laptop users. Even if 1% of the systems break each year, that's still 250 repairs a year. Initially, the county didn't have an on-site repair shop; machines had to be shipped to DC to be fixed.

Interestingly, after two years of iBooks in schools, the issue has generated enough controversy to be an issue in school board elections [macworld.com]. The results? Two incumbents were voted out [richmond.com] - including the chairman.

Perfect Price Discrimination

[denisonbigred]

Perfect Price Discrimination [google.com] explains why we pay so much for textbooks here in the US, while in poorer nations, the prices are so much lower. We are willing and able to pay the higher prices, while people in say, Ghana, can't. Schools could save tons of money by simply ordering textbooks from international distributers over the internet and having them shipped in to them. I have a friend who makes tens of thousands of dollars a year at his university by doing this fro kids there, which also saves them money.