Apple's School Days are Numbered 674
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.""
Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
If your kids can't figure out how to use a different operating system because its widgets are on the right side of the window, then they're pretty fucking stupid.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
A fair percentage (like most of them) don't even know you can do little things like that. And if you really really want to be nasty... drag the top edge of the task bar so as to turn it into one that's only a few pixels thick as well...
Mac OS X is a FANTASTIC teaching platform (Score:5, Insightful)
On one platform, you can:
Thorough study of Mac OS X can land a student a $100k+ job. Thorough study of Microsoft platforms gets a student an MCSE and $8.50/hr.
School administrators, do not cripple your students with Microsoft products.
Um, tap-tap, is this thing on? (Score:3, Interesting)
Things to remember to bring today:
Oh, well. (-:
In point of fact, the Mac will avoid teaching them how to reboot their machine when it wedges, but it will show them what a nice UI actually looks like (by 2005, I'm sure MS-Windows-YQ will look the same but Apple will have moved on), and give an even more fundamental lesson: that not everything out th
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
You can teach them to use photoshop or a number of other things on a Mac and they can go home and use their windows machine and still function in photoshop with no problem.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Monoculture sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
In some ways, Apple sucks. If schools were to lose just one platform, it should be Microsoft. If schools were to switch to a monoculture, it should be a Linux distribution (for the felxibility that gives). However, I firmly believe that schools should teach as many systems as practical for the important lessons to be learned therein, including the Greatest PERL Lesson: TMTOWTDI [perl.org]. (-: Note that I say this as a near-non-PERL-programmer :-).
The Greatest PERL Lesson is a more important thing to know (not just hear occasionally) than most if not all of the entire high-school courses I can remember.
Schools really should be teaching principles, not single-obsolete-system recipes. That way when the systems they were taught on are obsolete, the students aren't left high and dry, a herd of one-trick ponies - and The Greatest PERL Lesson will continue to serve them well in area's they not yet faced, perhaps in areas that don't yet exist. The "How to produce greeting cards in MS-Publisher 101" course won't even make a dent in that.
Re:Monoculture sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Gah - I'd love to see some real numbers on this; my mother (a learning-disabled-kids teacher) is perpetually complaining about the kids she has to bring up to snuff, damaged (both academically & socially) from "home-schooling". There's a reason why teachers receive training to teach - to mak
Re:But PC's are not mono-culture... (Score:3, Informative)
Heh? Actually, your Mac (if you still owned it) has more than just two choices. In addition to OS X and Yellow Dog Linux, you can also choose from GNU-Darwin, NetBSD, various linux distros (including Gentoo, LinuxPPC, Debian, and Mandrake) and let's not forget good old MacOS 9 and older versions. On top of that, you can run (basically) any X86-based OS via Virtual PC.
Limited? Only by how much you know (or don't know, in this case).
Re:But PC's are not mono-culture... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the PC box I have:
Windows, Linux (essentially all flavours), BSD's (Free, Open, etc essentially all flavours), GNU Hurd, OS/2, AtheOS, BeOS (many flavours), Plan9, Minix, QNX, Solaris, etc...
The list goes on for miles and miles and miles... The x86 instruction set is king, it has won hands down. That I think is the essential problem of OS-X. OS-X is a great OS. It is what many OS's should be. Because it is only available of PPC, it becomes a secondary OS.
Re:But PC's are not mono-culture... (Score:3, Funny)
On a Mac, I have:
In fact
Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they see only one computer, then they make many assumptions that will hurt them later on.
These things only become evident when more than one platform is used.
That platform could be a PC running more than one OS, so this does not exactly support Apple however.
Every kid should be equipped to understand on a
Yes it is a lot to ask. (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess what is missing is K-12 basic computer science. We are showing kids how to get other things done with the computer, but are not showing them anything about the nature of the computer itself.
Many of the educators today are not really capable of this and they should be.
In that, I agree with you.
However, working with a couple different platforms just from a user perspective is a good thing and can be done today. The kids will get the idea of computing by inference, not the details min
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning to Learn (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of having computers in the classroom is not to teach kids how to use computers, but instead to use computers to teach kids how to do all kinds of other things. I think it will be a sad day when the purpose of school is to prepare kids for clerical jobs.
If you stick a young child in front of a PC, they're lost. If an older child wants to do anything remotely advanced on a PC, they're thwarted and frustrated. Half the time will be spent learning to use Windows, rather than learning things like reading.
And if we do want to prepare children for the real world, using Windows they'll learn nothing about computer concepts, because everything is hidden from the user. If a kid uses some Unix variant - Linux or OSX - they're going to be a lot more prepared for doing real computing work than if they grew up using Windows.
The problem with IT admins, in my opinion, and I will probably be flamed for this, is that they're IT admins. They're not computer scientists, they're not engineers, they probably didn't go to University. As such, they don't really know much about computing in general, instead usually knowing only how to administer a certain OS, and maybe if they're lucky, a couple of OSes. Obviously someone who only knows how to use PCs is not going to go out and buy a pile of Linux or Mac boxes.
Re:Learning to Learn (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you are right and should be modded up. What goes in the classroom and in the office should be two different things. If our schools thought teaching computing ment something other than teaching MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint then it would matter. Reality is that most educators can't do much more than email and bad PrintShop newsletters and posters.
The point is not to teach computing (Score:5, Insightful)
But times have changed, and that's no longer the focus.
Those kids in Maine didn't get an iBook each just to learn how to use an iBook. They got the laptops to use them in class, to google up facts, to write essays, to edit short video presentations.
It's not about learning to use a computer. Believe me, the 10-year-olds of today are so computer savvy that they don't need a mouse usage primer. And if they later in life encounter a system with the widgets in slightly different places, the difference is trivial enough to be completely inconsequential to them.
Diversity is a survival factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:5, Insightful)
That's reality. It's not necessarily right and good, but it is what is. You can fight to change it all you want, but the money's going to have to come from somewhere and I don't see a lot of extra tax dollars being burned on schools here in Texas. Hiring qualified teachers is a bitch down here, since the payscale is so low, compared to the work required.
If you're looking for waste (Score:5, Interesting)
The waste is at the district level, not the classrooms. And the worst offenders are usually the district network admins why are owned by MS at the vast majority of American K-12 schools.
In large part, this district level administrative waste is the major motive for the charter school initiative.
It's all rather insidious though because if you ask for more information, you won't get anywhere for so-called security reasons. That's security like as in job security. Call it the corporate/educational complex if you will.
Re:If you're looking for waste (Score:4, Interesting)
One.
Now, tell me they're wasting money on IT staff. MS works for them because it's easily explainable to teaching staff, who wind up handling the actual hands on (for obvious reasons). While Linux might be a better solution from a technology standpoint, the training and setup (in labor) costs would be exhorbitant, and way beyond the capabilities of one person to make it secure and idiot (student & teacher) proof.
Plus, where's the software? Wine? Does it support every feature of each installed package? The administration is going to want to know that they can get the full potential value (not the real, actual value) of their software. Will Wine run everything that's available for the PC? If not, what's the replacement package on Linux?
These are questions that aren't being answered very well by the Open Source community, because (opinion coming) they don't care! They're so focused on technology for it's own sake or on beating down Microsoft, they're overlooking that it's not realistic to just up and replace things without some sort of infrastructure to support it.
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:5, Interesting)
This would also be the responsible thing to do since using only Windows systems is practically an endorcement of them, considering there are reasonable and affordable alternatives. IMHO, this is akin to have "Pepsi: the official softdrink of Wake University" which they may be considering anyway. 10 Years from now, Microsoft may not be the 97% gorilla it is now, and it is irresponsible for a college to only support this one company.
Last I checked, the goal of higher education was to expose students to a variety of opinions and situations, to prepare them for later life. If you want an institution that ONLY gives you a singular experience on ONE thing, from one perspective, then perhaps a trade school is a better way to go.
My first instict is: follow the money. Is Microsoft offering sweetheat deals if universities kill Linux and Mac support?
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:2, Insightful)
real reason (Score:5, Interesting)
My entire school's network accesses the web over one of two T1 lines. Rather than a load-balancing Linux server, they have two 80486 systems with 32mb apiece running illegally purchased copies of NT4, with only service pack 2.
The school's techs worked for 3 damn weeks trying to get an iMac G4 on the school network. Every printer in the school is shared, while none of them have passwords. Every teacher's computer is shared, while none of them have passwords. Hell, the records server's Administrator password is the initials of the school!
In the middle of a budget crisis(we'll go broke Oct 1), the school bought 40+ Athlon computers.
Macs are going out of schools. It's not because OS X is any harder to use (perfect blend of idiot friendliness and power), but rather because idiot-proofing is now being winshit compatible.
Apple computers will always be used in video editing classes, and PCs have wormed their way into the rest of the school years ago. Apple lost the battle during System 7, it's time to move on and accept that the world at large can't be steered by a better product. If they focus on the informed consumers and professionals, they'll survive and flourish.
Re:real reason (Score:3, Funny)
What school is this?
*concocts a plan to get failing students to help fund a G5 tower purchase*
Winshit compatible? Try Virtual PC. (Score:3, Informative)
Any Mac under 2 years old with 256MB of RAM can run Virtual PC under MacOS X. And any native G3 or G4 with a CD-ROM and 192MB of RAM can run Virtual PC under MacOS 9. (And I'm talking Virtual PC 6, of course - latest and greatest.)
That means the schools can have their "single platform" in terms of hardware support -- yet also have diversity. OS X? Check -- and of course, you can run Office:X on it, if you want your students to learn to be mice, er, MOUSes. OS 9? Just start Classic. DOS? It's in
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:5, Insightful)
More than that, by far the most virii and worms are "available for" (pardon that) the Microsoft platform. I know there are bgillions of Linux zealots that are gonna say "but even fewer are for Linux than are for Apple." This is true. However, as much as I use (and enjoy using) Linux on both my desktops and my servers, there are some very real benefits to using the Apple platform. The obvious (and possibly hotly debated) one is ease-of-use. In the school of interface design and usability, Mac wins. They've pretty much always won. If you take a person who has never used a computer before and sit them in front of Gnome, KDE, or Microsoft's latest offering, they're going to choke. (I know it has been pounded into the ground, but who would honestly think "I should click 'start' in order to shut down my computer"?) I've seen it. Take that same person and stick them in front of a Mac, they'll be intimidated for a few moments perhaps, but when things act as they expect them to act, they'll be relieved and comforted. No right clicks, no middle clicks... (yes I know MacOS supports these functions, but it doesn't need them, especially for what a brand new user wants). Simple baby steps.
Yes, I know there have been "studies" done comparing these interfaces. Unfortunately none of these that I have seen has been done by a person who has never used a computer before. I'd be interested to see one, but I imagine I know what the result would be.
Another thing to think about when comparing OSX to XFree86: uniformity. I know that you like to customize your widgets and this and that so that they're just the way you want them under whatever your window manager of choice is. I know this because it's something that I often want too. It's just not so for Joe Blow-I've-never-used-a-computer-before or his cousin Jane Doe-I've-used-a-computer-twice-in-my-life. They generally just want one thing as far as interface design goes: Everything to look the same. Uniformity. They don't want to mess with the differences between things that use gtk or qt or any number of other similar things. They want it to look the same in their word processor as it does in their web browser as it does in their instant messaging client, etc.
Another thing about MacOS: it tends to scale with the user. If the user's skill level advances over time, MacOS (X especially) tends to grow a bit with the user. They discover what it is that that "shell thingy" that their geek friends talk about can do, for example. The dos promptish thing under Windows XP just can't compare. Linux has a great many things under the hood for the curious user, but the competence level to just get your work done is a great deal higher than either of the other OSes mentioned. Yes, I know you can make X act almost however you want but the key here is that most people don't want to know how to do this because they don't care, they just want it to work
Anyway, I hope I've made some sort of point anyway. Believe what you will. Hurray for {insert OS of your choice here}.
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather, I think it's extremely important that students have the opportunity to use more than one platform. It gives them the idea that the is something beyand Windows. It also makes them much more adaptable to different environments and thus makes them more marketable and trainable.
I was an adjunct faculty member at a very small University. One of the classes that I taught was How to Use MS Excel (that wasn't the actual title, but that's what the material consisted of). Anyway, I thought it was a crying shame that that was all the computer training most of them would get in their college careers, so I took some liberties (various internet based projects). There was an extra day, so I thought that I would teach them to log in to a Unix server through telnet. They were clueless. They tried to follow what I said, but they had no concept of figuring things out on their own.
If there had been Macs (with OSX) in their high schools, most would probably have been more confident using a shell and in general not so stuck in a Windows frame of mind. If anything, I think high schools should use more Macs. Now that they are BSD based, they are more compatible with real OSs while at the same time being fairly easy for a novice.
I know, I know it's hard to have much of an IT budget as a public school, and that's sad. Schools should certainly get more money. It will certainly help the future of the US more than lining oil barons' pockets or dropping bombs on brown people.
Why are students so passive - one story (Score:5, Interesting)
(This is slightly off-topic, but I just want to get this off my chest)
I don't know about you but I am a lecturer at university level (I'm posting AC because some of my students might recognize me) and for the last five years I've observed a gradual decline in the motivation and, in particular,
They come to the class and sit there like empty receptacles I am supposed to fill in with information that'll be on the exam. If I digress and try to tell them something extra-curricular (like showing photos from my latest trip to the ALS [lbl.gov]) they'll scream bloody murder (or first they'll ask if this will be on the exam and if it's not they'll scream bloody murder).
You try to ask them questions and you get blank looks. Some students look at each other as if they're confused by the prospect that they'd actually participate in the class. Some people who I know know the answer won't say anything and keep staring at their open book as if there's something particularly interesting in there.
And don't get me wrong. They are not fundamentally stupid people beneath the surface. They just don't know how to use their head until someone tells them how. Some of them actually do know how, but the reason why they are so passive remained unanswered for a long time.
Then, last week, I was visiting my brother who's married with children when her 10-year old niece came to me and asked if "uncle could help with my math homework". The homework was typical 3rd grade mathetmatics and it was apparent that while my niece was mathematically talented, the problem was actually quite hard to solve using the methods they had been taught so far. I skimmed a few pages forwards and lo-and-behold, there was the method I would have used. I showed it to her and said something along the line "You can always go ahead and look for help in the later parts of the book - you're so good with math that you can learn these things by yourself".
She took the book, smiled shyly but looked a bit worried. Then she said something that still makes my blood boil: "But my teacher says that we are not supposed to learn anything by ourselves because we might learn wrong things".
I mean what the hell?! Since when did thinking for yourself and being interested in the subject become "a bad thing"? Learning wrong things?!
I know this is just one case and it's impossible to draw any conclusions based this, but I have a suspicion that something is horribly wrong in the school these days. Could it be that this "do what I say and God help you if you try to learn things on your own!" attitude is prevalent and actually making people into these passive vessels that expect teachers just to pour information into them.
Anyone else experienced anything similar?
Oh, and with my bros permission I called that teacher about the matter and told her in no uncertain terms that if I ever hear that my niece has been discouraged by teachers from thinking and learning, I'll call PTA and the local newspaper and I'll sue the school too.
Re:Why are students so passive - one story (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think the kids are stupid enough, you will only allow them to learn what is on the standardized tests that the TEACHERS are graded on.
My wife and I talk about this all the time, one reason we DONT have children. The schools simply are too focused on outcome based education: every child must be equally smart (or dumb) and must learn the same way. It requires effort to help on an individual basis, and the teachers themselves are strongly discouraged from using their own judgement. It's not just their fault, its a problem with the entire system, top to bottom.
Part of the problem IS federal money. There should be none, since it is only given in return for schools having programs or acting in ways that may not be the best for THOSE students. The more removed an agency is, the less it knows what is best for your children. The schools must be 100% answerable to the local population, and 0% to the feds. There is a reason there is NO mention of public schools in the constitution, it should be a local matter, where you can hold them accountable, and choke the living shit out someone when necessary, such as your well stated comment implies you verbally did.
To the contrary (Score:3, Informative)
I mean I did go to public school and I had to deal with smart kids, stupid kids, social kids, anti-social and outright aggressive kids, kids from rich families and kids from welfare families. Exactly like it will be in the real world.
As a homeschooling parent I have to disagree on two counts. 1) While there is a lot of diversity among the students in a public school classroom I n
Re:To the contrary (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience with homeschooled kids is that being less peer-dependant and secure in their identity and relationships they are less vulnerable to bullies. More importantly they are less likely themselves to *become* the bullies. You may view that as a liablity in fields that tend to be "dog eat dog". However, my personal experience with homeschooled kids is that the confidence that comes from being raised in a nurturing rather t
Re:Why are students so passive - one story (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I did, when I was in 3rd grade, forty-odd years ago. I'm not surprised to see that nothing has changed. Teaching children is a low-paying occupation, and you get two kinds of people:
1) Those who aren't competent to do anything else ("those who can, do...")
2) Those who have a calling to teach and are willing to accept substandard pay to do it.
Teachers in category one mainly teach by rote, following a rigid lesson plan, so a bright student who thinks and reads ahead is a problem. Of course, teachers in category 2 are delighted by this kind of challenge.
School administrators, of course, tend to be mostly in category one, since they don't actually teach. And they tend to favor teachers in category one, because they don't make waves. Basically the same mentality that leads them to favor a single computing platform...
Re:Why are students so passive - one story (Score:5, Insightful)
teachers in category 2 are delighted by this kind of challenge.
I'm afraid the current push for standardized testing and the over-administration of teachers is quickly clearing our schools of this kind of teacher.
My mom has just retired early (59) out of frustration because she can no longer teach in a way that's meaningful. She taught for 35 years as a public kindergarten teacher. She worked at school from 8 am until 5 pm, at-home lesson planning at least an hour and a half every night, and at least 3 or 4 hours every Sunday (my entire childhood). She had her kids doing creative mathematics and writing their own (albeit short) stories and illustrating their books by the end of the year.
Then the mandatory standardized testing started a few years back and the district locked down all of the ways she can teach. She has to teach only from textbooks and workbooks and give these five year olds frequent standardized tests. The kids must earn a letter grade at the end of the year. There are classroom observers that come in frequently that will downgrade the school if she isn't teaching according to this new curriculum. No more story reading. No more creative mathematics and learning about patterns with unifix cubes. No more buddy projects with the 4th graders who would come in for additional creative learning time. It's all gone. My mom's students always loved school at the end of the year and couldn't wait for first grade. Now they all hate school and much of my mom's job is keeping them on task when they're bored out of their skulls.
My mom was the most dedicated teacher I have ever known. She easily worked 55 hours a week for the duration of her career and has a masters in early childhood education and a certificate in bilingual education. Teachers like my mom are no longer welcome in the public school classrooms of America.
It's pretty clear that we're in the midst of the corporatization of our public school systems [ascd.org]. Textbook conglomerates like Houton Mifflin [sacbee.com] and McGraw-Hill are making an absolute fortune off of the recent changes. Not surprisingly, they were also the companies who sponsored the educational studies that were used by legislators to push for these changes. Is it any wonder that a company like Apple would get pushed out of such an environment?
Re:Diversity is a survival factor (Score:3, Informative)
Switching to entirely an Apple solution quickly would be too expensive. That would mean liquidating a great number of new x86 hardware and software. To be e
The Mac advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoth the article:
It all comes back to what I call the lemming effect -- the willingness of people to follow blindly along, never questioning as they march in step with everyone else.
Ah, the age old problem. One might say Mac zealots are a similar breed, but I'd have thought that for education, a computer as damn simple as a Mac would be an enormous boon, especially when you think of the savings on support.
And they're so purdy...
Oh well, guess it's all downhill hereon. Still, he shoulda called Apple beleaguered...
iqu
Re:The Mac advantage (Score:3, Funny)
They ditched their working mainframe software that handled billing and scheduling for an NT based system. I'll be kind
Educational discounts aren't much of a discount (Score:5, Informative)
I've worked in an educational setting this whole summer and I can vouch for the administrators' (both educational and technical) point of view. Now throw in another point briefly mentioned in the article:
Gee, a $100-$150 (at most) educational discount on a $1700 IMac (~$1600 total) or a $500 Dell?
Granted, that's not entirely comparing apples to apples (pun intended purely as an afterthought), but that's how most educators, teachers, and students will see it. What would you want to work on or buy if you were a cash strapped student?
Re:Educational discounts aren't much of a discount (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there is also the fact that you are educating the kids to learn a unix operating system. As Microsoft is so fond of pointing out Unix sysadmins get paid more then Windows sysadmins. Why educate your kids to get lower paid positions?
Re:Educational discounts aren't much of a discount (Score:4, Insightful)
What I was trying to portray in my post is that 99.97% of the educators out there would get a glazed over look when it comes to Linux, Unix, etc. I'm sad to say that all they want is that "cool, black Dell" and to be sent packing so that they can surf the web and check their email.
Besides, the whole idea of TCO in the world of information technology would baffle administrators who also want that "cool, black Dell" and to be sent packing so that they can surf the web and check their email. As long as it's initial purchase price is CHEAPER than everything else.
Sad to say, but true.
Re:Educational discounts aren't much of a discount (Score:2, Informative)
Hm, I'll take the $799 (oops, make that $699 educational institution price) eMac.
e for Education, see.You're probably exaggerating the Dell price too, but I can't bear the thought of going to their site to check.
Re:Educational discounts aren't much of a discount (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen a number of PC computer labs in the past couple years, Gateways, Dells, and HPs have been most prevelent. In most of the labs I'd say a good 5% of the machines were down at any given time from hardware failure. Each of those failures required one of the lab adminstrators to at the very least diagnose if not fix. A suprising number of times I've seen entire computer labs entirely screwed over by the latest Windows VotW (Virus of the Week).
The several Mac labs I've either administered or have seen have been run by fewer admins and have seen far less downtime. Both OS9 and 10 are relatively simple to manage, even in a large lab environment. OSX works very well with Windows and Unix network shares meaning no third party software to provide such support. OSX Server is very well priced per client than Windows Server 2003 or 2000 Server. The OSX Server can also provide services for Linux, Unix, and Windows systems as well as Macs.
Each down system or per seat cost of a supporting server OS raises the TCO of any purchase. The adminstration costs of a Windows lab will quickly raise the price of the lab over that of an equivilent Mac lab. Say you've got a district with a need for 1000 computers. Admins say are running $50k a year. Per hundred computers you need two MCSEs. Per three hundred eMacs you might only need two admins.
The first year your eMac lab will cost the district $799,000 just in administration and upfront purchasing. The PC lab will cost you $800,000 or so. By virtue of the PCs just needing more care you've eliminated any price advantage they had in the first year. Subsequent years the problem is exacerbated even more, the PC admins are going to suck down $300k a year. The Mac admins only $100k. Over five years the PCs are going to suck two million dollars out of the district coffers. The Macs will cost the district eight hundred thousand dollars less than the PCs despite the higher up front price.
Any institution looking only at the initial system price for computers is foolish and should be removed from their position promptly.
Re:Educational discounts aren't much of a discount (Score:5, Insightful)
Btw, the cheapest Dell (with a monitor) I managed to find for a K12 institution in PA was $666. This model didn't have a modem (wich probably doesn't matter, though) or FireWire (probably more interesting).
My experience with ed pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently needed a couple of workstations for my office area. I went to the network administrator to ask for price quotes. He of course pulls quotes from a PC manufacturer. He only buys one brand of PCs for desktops, another brand of PCs for laptops for the school.
Here's what he quoted me:
2.4 GHz P4
512MB RAM
40GB HD
CD-ROM
17" Standard CRT Monitor
Price (with loyal customer discount because our institution buys so many machines from them): $1050
Now, I decided to do a price comparison on a similar equipped Mac. Here's what I was quoted from Apple:
emac, 800Mhz G4
512MB RAM (remember the prices of RAM from Apple?)
40GB HD
CD-ROM
17" Flat CRT Monitor
3-year AppleCare warranty
Price: $953.00
Despite the inflated prices Apple charges for RAM upgrades, a comparably equipped Mac was about $100 less than the PC. When you start looking at PCs with CD or DVD burners and flat-panel displays, the iMacs in comparison are an even better value at the education pricing. The 800Mhz processor? These systems would be primarily used for wordprocessing and spreadsheets, so I would think the 800Mhz processor would be adequate. Our desks are small, so the eMac's space saving design would work well in our environment. Our campus has the sitewide Microsoft licensing that INCLUDES Office for Mac OS X, so no additional charges for that. Not to mention that with the Mac I would have had the capability of creating PDF files built-in without having to go out and purchase additional software or worry with licensing issues with some of the freeware/shareware equivilants on the PC side.
To make a long story short, I COULD have got the Macs and saved the state some money and still had very capable machines for the job I was doing for years to come. But I had no choice but to go with the PCs because I WASN'T GIVEN A CHOICE. The network administrator has final say on all computer purchases. Be damned about the needs of the folks who need to do the work or the students. Need to create PDF files? "Well, we can purchase a license of Acrobat..." More of the state's money being spent that wasn't necessary. The money could have been spent on something else that was needed but will have to be put off.
Oh, and one more thing. You've gotta watch the educational price quotes from the PC manufacturers. I see their education material all the time, and you can find out some of it on their websites. They inflate the retail value of the equipment so they can say the education price is $500 lower. And despite their "lower education price", often times what they offer is last year's technology at prices that's higher that what you can purchase today's technology through the standard consumer channels. Apple's education discounts may not look great, but their pricing scheme for education is straightforward with no smoke and mirrors.
Mod this down if you want, but if you don't believe it, go do a little research and find out.
End of rant.
Am i the only one that finds this disturbing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look cloesely at the "sponsorship announcement" next to the article.
Redundant Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
operating under flawed assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality is quite different. For example, a good friend of mine's wife is a grade school teacher. Their school last year had a bunch of LCIII's and IIsi's that they wanted to replace with new Macs. The district IT said no, and they would be replaced with Wintel based machines. So, not only did the Macs work with only a single teacher administering them for over ten years on his own time, they now have a staff of four administering the Wintel machines, their costs have gone up 600% for administration alone and the district tells them the machines will be replaced in four years.
I ask you. How has this scenario saved the district, the school or the taxpayer any money? Administration costs have skyrocketed and the computers will have to be replaced more often. Rather as Cringley and others have stated, it sounds like a consipiracy to maintain IT jobs and expand their budget.
Re:operating under flawed assumptions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:operating under flawed assumptions (Score:5, Informative)
Yes you can, actually. Up until a few years ago a 68k Mac could handle basic internet tasks quite well.
Uniformity is for the ignorant (Score:4, Insightful)
The same is true today. People trained to use MS Office and Windows are frequently hopeless when put in front of another OS. Someone who has learned how to use computers rather than a particular OS and package are much more flexible and know how to read a manual. They will be more productive in the long run than these MS trained drones.
For this reason I would encourage schools to look for less uniformity not more. Mac, UNIX, Linux, Windows, Be, even VMS, it's all good and the diversity helps stem the tide of malware. Whatever happened to the network being the computer? The client shouldn't matter, mix 'em up and we'll have more rounded students entering the workforce.
And when Microsoft goes bankrupt...? (Score:3, Informative)
Justify that presumption, I dare you!
Will Microsoft be in business when by 13yod hits the workforce in 5 years? Probably. But how about my 4yos, in 14 years? Maybe, maybe not - but the office tools will be completely different. His older sister won't have hit 30 yet, and the stuff she was taught in school will already be totally obselete.
Teaching kids to use a single toolset (and this applies outsi
Price was never an issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Who needs the truth when you've got a Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)
Haddad said: "Hear what Art Rainwater, superintendent of the Madison (Wis) school district, told the local Capital Times. He conceded that Macs outperform PCs, but he didn't care. "We want a single platform," he said. "We're trying to get there using the carrot, or blackmail, or rewards, or whatever you call it."
Not quite. Here's what the Capital Times printed:
Superintendent Art Rainwater acknowledged that in some cases, Macintosh computers outperform their competitors.
Slight difference there?
Haddad continued his imaginitive use of quotes further on: "Drama teacher Rebecca Jallings at Madison West High School, for one, is fighting Rainwater's effort to strip her classroom of Macs. She told the Capital Times that she finds them the best machines by far for editing video, an important tool in her acting class."
Jallings may have told the Capital Times that, but it never published it, at least in the version that appears on the Capital Times web archives. [madison.com]
As an aside, Jallings records the students on video and then puts it on the Mac. The Capital Times [madison.com] reports "Rebecca Jallings, a theater teacher at Madison West High School, shoots video of her students as they learn to act. If they're "doing that swaying thing again" during their monologue, she said, she rolls the footage on her Macintosh computer and can prove it to the student immediately."
Quite how that's superior to using a video camera alone is beyond me.
Re:Who needs the truth when you've got a Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why haven't steep price cuts stemmed Apple's market fall?
Because they didn't happen, at least not compared to wintel boxes. Proof [slashdot.org].
It all comes back to what I call the lemming effect -- the willingness of people to follow blindly along, never questioning as they march in step with everyone else.
Riight. You don't like it, so everyone doing it is a lemming. If everyone we buying macs on the other hand, they would definitely not be lemmings.
Don't get me wrong: Conformity isn't all bad, especially when it comes to computers. A decade ago, most workplaces were a mess of different models, few of which could work together, let alone speak to one another.
Huh? Usually, when you use the construct "few could A, let alone B", B is harder than A. In this case, A = work together (doesn't that imply "speaking" to one another?), B = speak to one another. I don't get it. This reversal of sense is disturbing.
The whole article is disturbing, in fact, and I'm sorry I read it.
Show them what's out there (Score:5, Insightful)
To show them that there are other options besides Windows. What kids really learn on computers at school is how to use applications more than the OS itself... word processors, spreadshee software, video editing... all these things translate fairly easily between OSes. At least having kids "grow up" and learn on a Mac shows them that there are other choices out there for Operating Systems once they leave the nest. The fact that OSX is now BSD-based makes me all the more in favor of it... might get a few more kids interested in *nix/open-source development. If only the decision-makers had a broader vision of the future the say they're trying to make the best of.
OS Change (Score:3, Interesting)
That's been in the last 10 years. A kid is trained on Windows XP in high school (or even grade school or middle school!) and the operating system is going to be fundamentally different--even if they are still using "Windows" or "MacOS"--by the time they are out of college.
So many ways of looking at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Case in point: I go to the University of Nebraska. They used to have Macs all over the school, but now they are all but phased out by PCs. Despite the fact that many of my classmates still have problems with papers getting lost of their floppies (floppies!) and have their computers "break down" on them, they continue to use PCs at home and at school. Just last Thursday I was at a workshop where we were all given iBooks to access a web page. The setup could not have been simpler, for the dock contained exactly three items: the finder, the applications folder, and the trash. And yet people still couldn't figure it out. Their home PCs were familiar and therefore simpler to use. And from their perspective, why should they have to use a computer at school that does not take their floppy disks and is different from their home PCs.
From an administrative standpoint, it is a lot cheaper (in the short run) to get a truckload of Dells for $400. They will break more often, they will be attacked by more worms, and they will continue to reinforce the age-old reliance on floppy disks, but the up-front cost is half that of an eMac, so it's a better solution.
I wish Apple still controlled the education market, and to a large degree, they still do. Schools keep their computers for years, but the new generation of educational PCs won't be stamped with my much-beloved Apple logo. For now Apple is still riding out their honeymoon with schools, but shortsighted thinking and short-term economics may make that a thing of the past.
Re:So many ways of looking at it... (Score:3)
The times I've been in charge of a large number of Macs I've made bootable OS discs. If something goes wrong I simply put the CD in the drive, run Disk Utility to erase the drive, and drag over the System folder. I can have a Mac running in the time it takes to copy the files off a CD. With Charles Sr
The problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Not much of a surprice... (Score:3, Insightful)
...at least not when you consider what ought to be the primary focus of any schoolsystem: to give the children knowledge and prepare them for a life in the real world. A school is not a place you keep your kids until they are old enought to move out, it's supposed to be a place your kids are prepared to become a contributing member of society.
One may or may not like it, but for most kinds of work out there, the Wintel-platform is what it is all about. Working with office-apps? Chances are that you're not using a Mac. Accessing a database? I'll guess ten to one that the clientend is a windowsapp.
As long as the subject matter isn't one where the Mac dominate in the real world, schools shouldn't "miseducate" (sorry, I couldn't think of a word that fitted better) the pupils by using machines from Apple - weither or not they are better / cheaper to maintain / has more fancy colours than a wintel machine. If they do, they are not doing our children any favours.
Towards the end of school, say the last couple of years before people graduate, I think it would be wise to have a "general OS" class, teaching the pupils the basic of not just the wintel or the MacOS, but also divers flavours of Linux, BDS, Contiki and whatnot. Show the pupils that there are many more operatingsystems out there, each with a distinct set of pros and cons, and make them make up their own mind what they will use at home; because when they start working they will have to use whatever the company has decided on.
PS: the line 'Here and there you'll still find an original Mac -- not to mention a few Apple IIs -- hard at work in classrooms' isn't really saying anything about the longvity of the mac - but it does say a whole lot about the lack of proper funding of the schools.
Re:Not much of a surprice... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd have to be completely ignorant of any history of computers to assume that the computers these kids will be using in ten years will be anything like the computers they're using today.
If you want to teach the kids spreadsheets, any random spreadsheet will be fine. There's nothing particularly special about MS' spreadsheet that any school kid should care about. If they have to learn how to use a different app when they get out in the world, who cares? If they learned anything during school, the new app shouldn't be a challenge.
There's certainly no advantage to teaching kids how to use Microsoft products as if K-12 is some kind of vocational school. Give them squeak. Give them Linux. Give them whatever tool happens to help them learn whatever you're trying to teach them. Just don't hold ``computer'' classes where you teach them today's popular business programs and hope nothing changes in the industry in the next ten or twenty years.
Re:Not much of a surprice... (Score:3, Insightful)
As stated by the parent poster, they can't possibly expect applications and OS's to be the same 10 years down the road. (well, maybe if MS gets its way and gets a 100% monopoly, they will. . .)
As an example, when I was in high school, they taught keyboarding on WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS because that was
From a HS teacher... (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, as others have pointed out, the price difference is far from inconsequential. Even under a Preferred Purchasing agreement for Wintel that, IMO, is a slimy ripoff, we would still pay $200+ more for a low end Mac.
Second, Macs are used in precisely the places the article points out as strengths - video editing and multimedia. While my district in general and my school in particular are pretty crude technologically, we do have two small labs of Macs for Graphic Design and Publishing courses.
As for losing other opportunities in the building, Apple's got no one to blame for themselves. As behind as I think we are, we've still got attendance and other functions running on an NT domain. Why? Not because we're close-minded and bought-out (well, maybe we are, but not in this context). But because Apple all but abandoned the educational market years ago. We had the NT domain long before we moved critical functions to it. If Apple had halfway reasonable pricing and a larger educational program four years ago, running those functions on NT might not have been as simple a choice. The argument that "we've got to teach MS because that's what's out there" is powerful, though not as much so as some Slashdotters may suspect. But combine that with a preexisting NT network assembled during years of Apple's educational neglect, and it makes buying Macs for the classroom foolish.
Single Platform is a Marketing Myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Salesmen have to sell whatever they're given.
Most companies will simply shoehorn all thier products into whatever market they can get thier hands on, just so they can compete. But any engineer worth his salt knows that things work best when you use the right tool for the right job.
The real issue here is that people are lazy. So when someone comes along with a song and dance about how all thier support problems are going to be solved by the One True Platform, they swallow the bullshit. Lazy IT people never follow up to figure out if that's actually true. And even if they do, and lazy managers ignore the IT people to make it look like they're 'managing' something by pretending to save money.
there's more to it (Score:5, Informative)
a little story. a year or so back, district tech at my school brags about coming back from some microsoft conference, (mind you we are a novell network) and he's got freebies galore. XP pro ( no reg key copies), VS.NET, 2K server, office XP (no reg key), and other crap. thrown out like halloween candy. you think they're gonna cut off their source.
another story. 3-4 years ago, we were finishing the wiring at my school. so, the district tech head is there, yada yada. so i ask her about the servers, since we didn't even have a local file server for our one lab, (and I had lots of student work get lost), and she says the district goal is to consolidate on get this, "fewer, more powerful, servers". this at the time that when the industry was moving the opposite direction. and then she retires, and we're half way there, and there is just too much momentum to change. so we go ahead, and have a crappy, unscalable network, and we have win98 clients rather than 2k, because of a multitude of piss poor decisions, we have no money to spend on memory upgrades.
these people have the ears of the PHB's. and let's face it, if it needs 20 admins where another solution would need 10, and their input makes the call, what do you think they're gonna choose.
for those of you who don't quite understand school spending/funding, let me explain. every year, principals have an end of year "wish list", if there is money left over. why? if they don't spend it, they get less next year. so, saving money is specifically NOT DESIRED. in fact, deficits are preferred. don't ever expect linux to make it in this environment. i could go on. get the ear of your school boards. or vote their asses out.
I've always seen PCs in school... (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember my high school computer teacher in 1991 telling us that we needed to learn DOS and Wordperfect 5.1 because "that's what they use in industry." He always said "industry" as if it was this mythical, magical place, the one place where people paid for computer skills, the monolithic arbiter of everything good and meaningless.
Of course, I used a Mac. And his explanations about our need for DOS seemed strange. We used WordPerfect in computer class, and I wrote my English, Biology, and History papers at home in MacWrite and PageMaker. I learned how to program a simple ASCII charting program in GW-BASIC at school, then went home and wrote a grade record tracking program in HyperCard.
I was, of course, told that my efforts were wasted, because "industry" didn't use Macs. That turned out to be mostly true. But it seemed awfully strange, a year later, taking the second "advanced" computer course to be using Windows, the "future" of the industry and finding myself completely bored to tears. I wrote a simple word processor in C in my spare time from samples in a Mac programming book. The geeks in my school never learned from Windows. They used Macs or they used DOS, and most everybody respected the motive, if not the platform. I learned more from the Mac geeks, though. They just seemed to have more fun, without having to rely on "games."
When the SoftArc FirstClass bulletin board/email system was really hitting its stride in 1993, I proposed to the school principal and the head of the computer program the idea of creating a school-wide bulletin board hooked up to OneNet and then, eventually, the Internet. I demoed it on my Mac IIsi. All they could see was the Mac. "They don't use Macs in industry," the computer teacher said. "PCs don't do graphics like that," the principal said. It was all very disappointing. I was trying to point out the possibilities of interaction. All they saw was something that they couldn't do (they could, but they just didn't know) with their Intel-Microsoft computers. I learned that day that it didn't take a lot of imagination to be a teacher or an administrator, and that's why I sift dumpsters for food and clothing now, rather than teach.
I've said this before (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if every driving school in the US was to use nothing but Ford. Or every geometry class required kids to buy one particular make of compass, ruler and protractor. Or if every school was required to use exactly the same model and make of chair and table from one manufacturer only, even though independent studies had shown that these chairs and tables had a shorter life span and needed more frequent repairs than the alternatives. There might be problems.
The logical thing, as with other public procurement, would be to have an agreed open standard for school procurement, and allow suppliers to tender freely to meet that requirement. School IT administrators would be trained on the administration and maintenance of the base standard, and any supplier proposing any proprietary modifications would have to declare them and explain the on-costs for support staff training and additional maintenance.
The answer to the parents who complain that children are not being trained to use home PCs is, it is no more our job to teach kids how to use your PC than your dishwasher, your TV or your lawnmower.
Of course it won't happen. But it is the genuinely free market approach (i.e the customer decides the rules and the market delivers). What we have at the moment is literally fascism, i.e. a society in which the State works with and favors particular sections of industry, and in which officials corruptly work in both fields despite the conflict of interest. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a free, democratic, idealistic 1940s US to ride to the rescue any more.
Macs in High Schools vs. Macs in Higher Ed. (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at the IT office [umbc.edu] of a state-run public university [umbc.edu] that focuses on research. UMBC's 24-hour student computer labs contain hundreds of terminals with a variety of hardware/OS configurations (PCs, Macs [ranging from G3/4s to eMacs] and a smattering of SGI Indigos/Indys dating back to the mid 90's, when the state budget allowed for such purchases).
Gradually, our student terminals -- PCs and Mac -- are shifting towards a "common platform": Unix. Our Macs are being upgraded to OSX, and each PC (most are Dell Optiplex GX-110s, GX150s and newer 270s) can be booted into either Windows 2000 or a customized RedHat lab image.
Cost is a factor... (Score:3, Informative)
Its frustrating for me as I always try and push alternatives - refurbed cheap (but still hugely powerful) SGI's for CAD work, Linux in many situations, etc - but its always the same old story. Some excuse to get out of it and buy Intel boxes.
From a techie point of view it makes the job easier, but I enjoy getting little diversity in the job - it makes it more of a challenge, and it forces the people I work with to learn new things. Most of them find it amusing to chastise Linux even though it is the backbone of the network - the proxy everyone is routed through, the DHCP address provider, and the DNS servers for every machine.
I think the most overriding factor is money.. MacOSX itself is cheap, and if you could buy it for x86 machines, i'd buy it myself in a second - but the Apple hardware just costs too much, when you consider we were able to get Dell workstations with P4 2.4GHz, 256MB DDR RAM, 15" TFT monitors, and about 30GB harddrives for around $800. Apple can compete by providing machines at that price I am sure, but as OSX really does need a bit more horsepower to get the best out of it, then you really need to spend more to beef it up. How do you justify that to your Wintel loving mansgers with tight purse-strings...?
Fresno State's labs tell it all (Score:5, Interesting)
In the Mathematics department, we have a room full of ugly-ass old iMacs. I've only seen 1 or, at absolute most, 2 machines in the room that were not functioning.
The worst part is that the Pentium III systems are set up on a fancy little "imaging" system, where each boot restores a remotely hosted disk image for whatever OS you choose (Win2000, Win98, or an old Red Hat Linux). So we're not even talking OS problems here - every working machine gets a fresh one every boot. It's pure hardware failures in that room.
The iMacs all run off persistant locally-installed copies of OS something (not OS X, and I'm not much of a pre-OS X Mac user, so I can't tell you if it's OS 8 or 9 or what). No fancy re-imaging on boot or anything. Just an OS that doesn't tend to break, on hardware that doesn't tend to break.
Students don't know what they want... (Score:3, Interesting)
The student body voted and came back with Windows.
So, the Macs were carted out, sold off cheaply (Yes, I made out like a bandit) and new PCs were installed.
Then the problems started.
Y'see. When the Macs were there, they were pretty open. There aren't too many viruses available for the Mac and the students could while away their lunchtimes playing UT on the iMacs and no-one would care. There just wasn't much malware and what there was, wasn't unrecoverable. All of the Macs had FireWire and I know of half a dozen really good student films that came out of students with a cheap camcorder and a couple of hours on ANY of the Macs there.
The students came in and eagerly logged into their new Windows PCs and then discovered that they weren't permitted to install software. Or change the system clock. Or the language of the system. So, now there's no UT or CounterStrike during lunch.
The other problems were hardware related. 20% of their CDRW drives have already been replaced and they had to buy extra machines for swap-out when the PCs flatline during or just before a class. There's a separate "Video Suite" which has higher quality PCs but the students involved in the film-making claim that it takes too long to edit video on those machines. Instead they bought a low end iMac and do it at their digs. For general use the PCs are fine - to get rid of registry crud and keep them up to date with patches, they re-image them every month and put a fresh install out there.
Maybe it's not a fair comparison and a lot of the blame lies with the sysadmins but at the same time, due to the amount of malware for Windows, they couldn't just leave the machines completely open.
532 Nanometers. (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to go downtown to the Hall of Justice one afternoon to pick up some paperwork. Waiting for the clerk to find the file I needed I was looking around the office. On the clerks desk I noticed an X terminal. Some sort of database search program was open on the screen. When the clerk came back I asked her about it and she just knew the box was a "terminal" and it ran her database software. Way back when my city signed a contract with Sun for a bunch of mainframes so I'm betting the terminal was probably hooked up to a Sun mainframe.
That clerk was using a Unix system and X11. It is entirely likely at home she had a PC with Windows running on it. She was a bit older than me so it is even more likely she had never seen a computer in school. She had never used a computer before and was using SunOS daily. Did she know anything about it? Judging from the way she looked at me when I questioned her she didn't seem to know much if anything about the terminal or the mainframe driving it. She was using the terminal because she was trained to click the right buttons on the database app and type the right things in the right spots. Anyone who isn't a complete moron could be taught the same thing.
At a publisher I worked for the pre-press office consisted of about twenty eight Macs. They were all running a program specifically written to layout and work with advertisements. Being as the program has little use outside of pre-press departments dealing with advertisement composing even the most advanced users in the office did't have it at home. I'd be really suprised if any school had ever taught that application specifically.
Several of the people in the office had PCs at homes. All of the advanced (well paid) artists had Macs at home with most of the software in the office - Photoshop, Illustrator, XPress. My friend had a PC at home with those apps on it. At work he used a G4 PowerMac. Some of the people there while very nice people were computer dummies. They were however still able to use a rather purpose specific graphic design application, a custom written database system, and a Wyse terminal in the corner for order processing.
The idea that people can't figure out how to use a PC because they were taught on Macs in school is simply absurd. If you understand basic computing concepts like clicking bottons on a mouse and typing things on a keyboard you can be trained to use just about anything. Thinking you're somehow going to train third graders useful or even applicable computer skills is an obscenely myopic idea. It would be at least ten years before a third grader ever really needed to use a computer in a professional capacity.
Ten years ago DOS was all the rage and networks were voodoo. Teaching a third grader how to do everything in DOS would not be much help to them in today's job market. The Excel XP tips, tricks, and shortcuts will be equally useless in another ten years. What is important is teaching people the concepts of using computers. With the knowlege of concepts anybody can pick up the specifics pretty quickly.
The pre-press workers and clerk I mentioned had been trained to use systems they were entirely unfamiliar with. They understood enough however to know what a keyboard and mouse were for. They were able to grasp the concept that clicking on-screen widgets would cause the program to do things. People who could not so much shut down there computers without help were able to lay out very nice looking advertisements. It is a shame people want public schools to become vocational daycare for minors.
Erm... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be great for them in 10 years when some other company or consortium is producing the dominant operating system and all those hours of IT classes will be for absolutely nothing.
I don't know what they're teaching kids these days, but a word processor is a word processor and a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet no matter what it says on the box or what operating system it uses. Shouldn't they be teaching people to look beyond the Microsoft Excel toolbar and realise that when it boils down to it, practically all these programs do the same thing? Sure perhaps OpenOffice.org doesn't do pivot tables like Microsoft Excel does them. But I have yet to see a school that teaches kids how to do pivot tables.
Teaching them exclusively on one platform leads to the possibility of giving them a false sense of intuitiveness. Just because a you can't find C:\ or the Start Menu doesn't mean a platform is harder to use - unfortunately this is what many people seem to believe these days.
If taught right, you should be able to pick up the basics of pretty much any program or operating system in about an hour.
School Superintendents say "We want a..." (Score:3, Funny)
"Most important to remember though, is that we don't really teach the children anything other than how to be the secretary or register monkeys of tomorrow, earning minimum wage, and never quite enough to own the likes of the beautiful machines in our computer lab. So what does it matter, if they only get to experience the most ill-designed OS ever concieved, that's what Microsoft is extorting every PC and POS manufacturer into using." said J.D. Umbass.
schools dont need computers... (Score:5, Insightful)
It amazes me that educated people get all up in arms about the computers in their kids schools. These are tools people!
Reliance on computers in the classroom is turning academic programs into vocational ones. Mac? Windows? Linux? Who cares! Teach kids concepts not tasks.
Some kids are learning how to fix carburators over in auto shop (for those schools where these things still exist) while other kids are in physics class learning how the internal combustion engine works. The kids in auto shop can apply that knowledge, pretty much just to fixing carberators.
Similarly if we teach kids to accomplish specific tasks on specific hardware on specific software, that's pretty much all they'll be able to do with it.
I've worked with some people who received serveral Cisco certifications without ever having touched a simulator much less a router. They had a far better conceptual understanding of what was going on and learned new skills and tasks very quickly as a result.
Schools, Macs, PCs and quality of education (Score:4, Insightful)
Most if not all students these days write their essays on computers and having to write everything on paper would take far too much time. The world has changed and life without computers would be all but impossible these days, irrespective or whether they are Macs or PCs. It definitely is true that most businesses use Windows and knowledge of Office is worthwhile, but will this be true in 10 or 15 years time? There is a good chance that much of the developing world and a good portion of the developed world will be using Linux by then, which will always be cheaper than Windows, and definitely will have a much larger share of business life by then. And OSX, as a Unix like platform, is better shaped to fit in there than Windows, which hasn't had any good press for a long time.
Monoculture The lazy man's way of avoiding thought (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't want to have to think. And stop developping new applications too. They are still pissed off at having to teach VisiCalc (What do you mean they don't sell it anymore? Who cares anyway? Its only for school.)
From the trenches... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a technology coordinator in a 2,200 student school district, I feel that articles like this are important as I plan out the future. We have 700 workstations, 94% of them are Macintosh. K-5 run OS 9, 6-12 are now running OS X.
Some of the reasons we stay with the Mac:
Ease of administration: Mac OS X Server and Macintosh Manager/Workgroup Manager coupled with Apple Remote Desktop makes managing this setup possible by one person. Imaging of machines is taken care of by Apple Software Restore.
Price: A $723 eMac ($699 base + $24 for an additional 128MB of RAM). No additional license costs for: server client licenses, imaging software, and virus protection. For $500 I get an unlimited OS X server license.
Years of Service: We can usually get 6-7 years out of a Mac. The 5400s in service all have at least 32MB of RAM and G3 upgrade cards.
For our PC lab I made the decision to move to K12LTSP [k12ltsp.org]. These machines were aging PII with 32MB of RAM. a $2,500 dual xeon machine brought this lab back to life for around $100 a machine. I use IceWM as the window manager and installed a XP theme. They run OpenOffice.org. I had one student ask if it was Linux, the rest just blindly use it. :-)
Most of the administrative office uses Windows 2000.
The best tool for the job.
Opposite happening at the University level (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously, the Mac GUI is much better than KDE or Gnome, so most people want the Mac, and on things like our Beowulf cluster we use Linux (I'm not paying for 32 copies of Mac OS X). I don't think I'm alone. I've talked to other colleagues who are moving to Macs for these same reasons: easy integration of OS X and Linux.
I took a tour of campus last week as part of an orientation group. The university had just purchased hundreds of iMacs! There are G4's in almost all of the graphics labs, or anywhere that graphics demands are high.
This high school may be preparing kids better for "industry" with MS products, but it doesn't seem to me they're preparing them well for college, given the trend I see.
Reality Check (Score:3, Informative)
At my school (high school), there are a kabillion windows machines. The newspaper area uses macs, but other than that, it's all windows. People know how to use it. Computers are almost like cars these days. You don't have to know how an engine works to drive a car. Most peole don't want to know how the engine works, they just know "there's the steering wheel, the brake's on the left, gas is on the right, and the shifter is somewhere". Like it or not, Windows is by far the most dominant operating system on desktops today, and that isn't likely to change. People don't care what OS is on their computer, and they'll take whatever the manufactor gives them.
How the hell is parent "informative"??? (Score:3, Insightful)
You then go on to say that computers are like cars-- cars have the brake, gas, shifter, and steering wheel. You assert that if someone can drive one car, they can drive practically any car because they have a grasp of the concepts of its operation.
So by your own argument, anyone who knows how to use Windows should be able to effectively use a Mac or Linux (with GUI) system with a minimum of effort, because it's ju
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Of course that's what suits think (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing that has always amazed me is how much the elementary school teachers have integrated their Macintosh computers into their curriculum. Those 1995 Apple Macs are still in use in their classrooms today and are still play a key role in the students' coursework. High school teachers in the same district that have had new computers every 2-3 years rarely touch their computers. Computers are what they tell their students to go use when they want to right a paper. Their computers play no role whatsoever in the classroom even when they have a much newer, much more powerful computer than their primary education counterparts. It baffles me sometimes. Strike that. It baffles me all the time. If the elementary school had only half the IT budget the high school gets, the elementary students would graduate from 6th grade with an even richer technology experience. Of course they would be sorely disappointed once they reached junior high at the other school. Still I think it would benefit them in the long run.
I can understand how an administrator can initially believe Macs are sub-par. What I don't understand is how a person like that who obviously doesn't have an open mind can stay in a key position such as that over an educational institution. Don't get me wrong. I do think PCs have an intrigal part of a child's education. I also think that Macs have just as equal a part in their education and I don't see how administrators in education can be so short-sighted that they can't see that.
Re:an apple for the teacher (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to make the usual Apple enthusiast party-line complaint about the article, but it just seems like a whole lot of assumptions and FUD based on no real facts. Even the comments about the Maine program fail to mention the general budgetary hard times that have fallen on the states (who have to choose between cutting educational computer programs or healthcare, or raising taxes).
Is there anything to this other than more "Apple's about to go under!" talk that we've been hearing since 1984?
Anyone know if parents are really complaining? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would sound stupid, even for a non-technie daddy to throw a fit because there is a PC at home, but Macs at school
I hate Macs, BUT like many people in their early 20's now, my first exposure to computers were Apple II E's, IIGS's, and Mac's in elementary school...
My issue here is that I think it's stupid for parents to complain that kids are getting both systems...I think it's good, and on top of that, I think kids should get linux exposure too...if we real
Re:Anyone know if parents are really complaining? (Score:4, Insightful)
The best place for a computer in a primary school is nowhere. Perhaps in the office to automate cumbersome clerical duties.
The Anonymous Coward writes:
You're in your early 20s and used either an Apple ][e or Apple ][gs in elementary school? Wow. Those machines are as old as you are! I'm ten years older than you and could say the same thing.
Re:Anyone know if parents are really complaining? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone who is interested in real security (OpenBSD).
Yahoo (FreeBSD).
-uso.
Re:error: does not compute (Score:3, Insightful)
I learned computers on a Schneider CPC (an Armstrad clone). Nobody even knows this computer nowadays, or even 13 years ago, when I got my first job. Your post is pointless.
When learning a Mac running OS X, people at least have a chance to learn some UNIX basics, which might actually be
Re: (Score:2)
Re:kids like windows (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:kids like windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, it's a bit more of a challenge if you have to be a sysadmin for both systems (like me), but if you're an end-user, what's the big deal?
IMNSHO, the knowledge you learn about the specific operating system (be it Windows, Mac OS, or *nix) is far less important than understanding how a computer functions. Once you have the concepts of computing down (again, I'm just talking about using them, not administering), you should be able
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Perhaps, but I don't think anyone is expecting an unbiased opinion from someone with "x86" in their name.
Re:It just isn't true. (Score:3, Insightful)
Emachines PC $399.99
32MB Radeon $129.99
17" Flat CRT $209.99
Total $ 739.48
Cheapest emac $799
Difference is $59.50
Ok so $9.50 more than $50, You win!!!
I think to really make it more comparable Windows XP home should be replaced with XP pro to match MacOS X's networking features. And also the iApps. So there goes the difference in pr
Re:It just isn't true. (Score:4, Insightful)
>99% of the k-12 computers are
Stop.
You are assuming word processing/basic app machines, this is not necessarily a valid assumption--I've known schools that do digital video work or teach programs like Photoshop or even use programs such as Lightwave or Maya. These are *not* all that uncommon uses.
Also, on another note, macs now have Quartz Extreme and in 2005 Windows will offer "tiered" user experiences and offload the user interface to the graphics card, an integrated chipset is (likely) not going to fare as well with Longhorn.
>The monitor's a non-issue because a flat picture tube is
>only (marginally) beneficial to people who are using it day
>in and day out.
1) It is better. Whether it is worth paying for is in question, but it is better.
2) If you find another CRT, make sure the quality is good, I've seen monitors in some HS's which were so low-quality they hurt they eyes to even glance at.
>You don't need the networking features of XP pro because
>once again, you're in an environment where you just need
>to crank out texts.
XP Pro is also useful to programmers et al. Programming tools are free with the mac, they are not with the PC, so if you teach AP (or even basic) computer science you are going to need to fork over more for the PC.
You are also looking at Windows 2003 Server, which costs a hell of a lot more. MacOS X's unlimited client license is your friend.
> The iApps are similarly worthless for a great deal of the
>market we're talking about, and aren't a great added
>value.
They still present an added value that (especially with iMovie/iDVD) I can certainly see schools being willing to pick up on.
iPhoto+iTunes, which can be used to create image slide shows and set them to music, also have a good bit of classroom utility.
>So, you're still left with spending several hundred dollars
>more for a comparable emac.
Non-comparable emac, you mean. The school may not see the additional utility as being worth it, or they may, but that is their concern.
>Add to the fact that the PC's non-integrated monitor
>leads to cost savings down the road as one doesn't have
>to replace the monitor at the same time as the rest of the
>system, and the PC is clearly a better deal.
If you are going to factor this in you might as well factor in as well that the Mac is going to cost less to support.
Re:It just isn't true. (Score:5, Insightful)
In about 2 minutes of searching on google I was able to find this, which compared a 733 mac to a 1.8ghz PC and the Mac came out on top in a couple of the tests. http://www.techtv.com/products/hardware/story/0,2
I don't know a whole lot about Macs but I do know that when you're used to using PCs, Mac system specs can be misleading. So it is very possible that truly comparable macs and PCs differ by about $50 in price.
Re:stupid question (Score:3, Insightful)
First: Touch typing is a critical skill in most of today's society.
Second: Last I heard Dijkstra's _grad_ students took a minimum of 6-7 years to graduate with their Ph.Ds.
Second (a): If you are gong to learn Computer Science, a little time working without a language or a computer can be very useful. If you are going to be an Chemist or an Engineer, but need a little programming, it is probably best if you learn it on a computer a little more rapidly (al