youtube.com— Here is a video of the 700+ MacBooks ready to be handed out to the students, the boxes of pointless Mac OS X Tiger install packages, the new cases, and Apple's entire stock of luggage tags to label them.
Sep 24, 2006View in Crawl 4
Our blind Apple fanaticism has gone so far that we are supposed to think a video of a bunch of computers is cool? I have 3 macs and a few iPods myself, but I have to tag this as lame.
darkomen, i dont think you quite grasp the potential of giving adequate technology to students. we are a public high school in a rural community and we have proven that high end technology is not just for rich kids. This wasn't a frivolous waste of money. Our IT department was going to be overhauled one way or another and it just so happened that we were blessed with a good IT director at our high school, and we were lucky enough to be given such a favorable proposal by Apple. If the laptops are considered a waste of taxpayer dollars then so are computer labs in general. This change allowed us to get rid of obsolete computers and allowed us to show other districts where the future lies in computers in school. If i could point you toward the one laptop per child initiative, distributing notebook computers to the masses and giving them access to the internet is a valuable way to improve education, especially considering the 20 or so percent of our high school students who lacked internet access.
"In short, any failings for a particular school are the fault of the local community - not the school system in general."I am well aware of how schools are funded. You'll note that I didn't say that I felt that everything should be equal or fair. There is in my opinion, however, a growing disparity between the top and the bottom, just like the rest of American society. There is a certain baseline minimum that all school children should be getting, and when the aren't getting it and there are districts that are dropping this kind of coin on machines for each student, something is wrong.Putting the blame onto the "city council" is niave and short sighted. They (generally) just ask for money, or not. It's up to the voters to approve or shoot down millage issues, which are what find the schools in a particular district. There are times when a mayor or council could be using funds more wisely but in general if a school board wants cash for they can ask the voters to fund that specifically.In short, though, the system is setup wrong, which allows for this massive gap from top to bottom.
My old school (middle & high school) has two Tech rooms with 28 old as rocks themselves computers. They are P2's with dying or dead CRT's. Oh we also have a movable rack of 30 or so P3 Dell's. But they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars moving the school to an established building from Temp's. They wanted to sell puzzle pieces for 200 bucks for the new parking lot.My new school has I don't know how many tech rooms all filled with P2 or P3 Dell desktops that have been banged upon by the 1400 students for six years. However each teacher has a new Celeron Dell, and the entire math wing has smart boards and they are all educated on how to use them. but the worst part of it all is that they have the things locked down to the point the won't work. First of all they have so much junk on them that they work as though they were running XP on 64 MB of memory. They have this Novell software which won't let you do snot. they didn't bother upgrading any of the software which was designed for Win95. They back everything up on a server hidden somewhere in the school, down to the log files of every key-stroke you push on any keyboard. I'm planning on finding someway I can bring the whole thing down around them. I may start with trying a Linux distro on one of the classroom computers.
bobasaurusSep 24, 2006
Modern day treasure chamber. Abu, don't touch that laptop!!! *lava flying carpet scene ensues*
crammazSep 24, 2006
Who took the jam out of your dohnut???
gowolverinesSep 24, 2006
Our blind Apple fanaticism has gone so far that we are supposed to think a video of a bunch of computers is cool? I have 3 macs and a few iPods myself, but I have to tag this as lame.
simpranosSep 24, 2006
darkomen, i dont think you quite grasp the potential of giving adequate technology to students. we are a public high school in a rural community and we have proven that high end technology is not just for rich kids. This wasn't a frivolous waste of money. Our IT department was going to be overhauled one way or another and it just so happened that we were blessed with a good IT director at our high school, and we were lucky enough to be given such a favorable proposal by Apple. If the laptops are considered a waste of taxpayer dollars then so are computer labs in general. This change allowed us to get rid of obsolete computers and allowed us to show other districts where the future lies in computers in school. If i could point you toward the one laptop per child initiative, distributing notebook computers to the masses and giving them access to the internet is a valuable way to improve education, especially considering the 20 or so percent of our high school students who lacked internet access.
sweenerSep 24, 2006
ok so im confused, how do these highschool students get free macbooks? is this a rich private sschool or soemthing? and do they get to take them home?
mightymouseSep 25, 2006Staff
I have to say that I'm happy that I have a black macbook after watching that video.
hwangmSep 25, 2006
I can almost smell the nice new plastics. hmmm
mrassmanSep 25, 2006
Reading you latest comment makes me wonder how you ever even managed to get into the college..
mrgreen4242Sep 25, 2006
"In short, any failings for a particular school are the fault of the local community - not the school system in general."I am well aware of how schools are funded. You'll note that I didn't say that I felt that everything should be equal or fair. There is in my opinion, however, a growing disparity between the top and the bottom, just like the rest of American society. There is a certain baseline minimum that all school children should be getting, and when the aren't getting it and there are districts that are dropping this kind of coin on machines for each student, something is wrong.Putting the blame onto the "city council" is niave and short sighted. They (generally) just ask for money, or not. It's up to the voters to approve or shoot down millage issues, which are what find the schools in a particular district. There are times when a mayor or council could be using funds more wisely but in general if a school board wants cash for they can ask the voters to fund that specifically.In short, though, the system is setup wrong, which allows for this massive gap from top to bottom.
startrekSep 25, 2006
My old school (middle & high school) has two Tech rooms with 28 old as rocks themselves computers. They are P2's with dying or dead CRT's. Oh we also have a movable rack of 30 or so P3 Dell's. But they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars moving the school to an established building from Temp's. They wanted to sell puzzle pieces for 200 bucks for the new parking lot.My new school has I don't know how many tech rooms all filled with P2 or P3 Dell desktops that have been banged upon by the 1400 students for six years. However each teacher has a new Celeron Dell, and the entire math wing has smart boards and they are all educated on how to use them. but the worst part of it all is that they have the things locked down to the point the won't work. First of all they have so much junk on them that they work as though they were running XP on 64 MB of memory. They have this Novell software which won't let you do snot. they didn't bother upgrading any of the software which was designed for Win95. They back everything up on a server hidden somewhere in the school, down to the log files of every key-stroke you push on any keyboard. I'm planning on finding someway I can bring the whole thing down around them. I may start with trying a Linux distro on one of the classroom computers.