Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Macs fight back in education
My "Two Year Rule" states that it takes two years for new information about computers to funnel down through all the marketing, misinterpretations, and know-it-all brother-in-laws to find its way to the typical consumer. As such, consumers tend to make their computing purchases based on what was true two years ago. In the education arena, the "Two Year Rule" often extends to four or five years. In general, districts like to be conservative when adopting new technology (regardless of its benefits), school tech specialists often prefer to stick with what they know (as opposed to what's best), and teachers are usually too busy changing the lives of children to pay much attention to technology trends.
I make it a priority to fight the "Two Year Rule" in my school by regularly throwing the "new stuff" in the direction of my teachers and administrators and then letting them decide what should stick. Not only have the majority of my teachers chosen to migrate to MacOS X on their school laptops already, about a fourth of them have chosen to beta-test Safari along with me. Unfortunately, this is not the case in far too many other schools. So if I read about a district choosing to abandon the Mac platform, I am convinced that this decision is being made based on what was wrong with Apple back in 1997. Nevermind that in the past five years, Apple has graced us with the perfect education computers (the original iMac, then the eMac), the ideal education suite (AppleWorks 6.2), the world's most advanced operating system (MacOS X), and applications that can change the way we educate students (iMovie, iPhoto, even Keynote). Sadly, most of that is still slowly sinking in for large chunks of the education arena, so PC's have been purchased by those who simply didn't "get it" yet.
All things sink in eventually, so it stands to reason that many of those schools who junked up the place with truckloads of PC's would eventually have to humbly inch back toward the Mac once they realized that they were missing out on all the things that their students and teachers could have been accomplishing if they'd just stuck with Macs in the first place. But just as there's no more vocal a non-smoker than someone who has kicked the habit, there's no greater adorer of the Mac than someone who switched away from it only to later switch back. If school districts can be personified in such a way, then perhaps we're in for a whole lotta Mac-lovin' going on in schools as they re-embrace what they realize they should never have forsaken.
When I asked if any readers were lone Mac users in a land of PC's, I was expecting responses from corporate readers. But two education stories I received stood out. Joe Croker (not to be confused with Joe Cocker) wrote in to share that his Media Lab is beginning to revive some of that old-time religion:
I spend several hours a day working among teachers in a Media Lab with 12 VAIOs and one Macintosh G4 Quicksilver. The folks who outfitted the lab decided to phase out Macs and use the Sonys as "ultimate multimedia machines." In practice, the Sonys have been solid machines for general purpose uses but a bust for video work. By comparison, the Mac is constantly in use, and the tech coordinator who instructs faculty on multimedia projects has come to rely on the Mac exclusively for video.
As our program expands, we have convinced the powers that be that more Macs are needed. Six have arrived from the Apple store, and we will be outfitting them with After Effects 5.5, Final Cut Pro Express, and a host of other applications. A final note—regarding Windows XP. For all of the supposed benefits of Microsoft's newest operating system, I've found it to be lackluster.
Perhaps the more intriguing case arises when a school gets religion for the first time. Howard Johnston (not be confused with Howard Johnson or Howard Johnson's -- hey what's going on here with the celebrity sound-alike names from the mailbag today?) wrote in to share the story of how he's changing his school one Switcher at a time:
I'm a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My school is completely pc except for me. I recently got a new iMac Flat Screen with a grant I received. Once I set it up in my classroom, our tech guy at our school who is completely PC (He had recently bought a Dell), loved it and bought one himself (for home use). I also showed a teacher how easy it was to use iPhoto and iMovie. She used it to make a wedding album and movie and burn them onto a DVD. She was so impressed that everything came already installed, she decided to buy one herself. The more I show the teachers and explain to them the ease at which things can be done, the more I think I can keep changing things here.
The importance of the connection between which computers teachers have at home and which computers they're willing to accept at school cannot be overstated. You want to turn your PC-clad school into a Mac haven? Start with the teachers. Get them to see what personal computing is supposed to be like, and then they'll start to see what educational computing is supposed to be like, and then they'll realize that it can only be accomplished on a Mac, after which they'll accept no substitute. Campaigns to litter schools with PC's usually rely on doing it all in the dark, using reasons that don't make sense when held up to the light, and relying on the fact that teachers are too busy teaching to notice. If a faculty collectively decides that it wants Macs in the school, it'll happen. Even if it takes a few years longer than it should.
Joe Croker sums it all up:
Often [the Sony Vaio] doesn't work at all. I can't begin to describe to you the frustration I've felt during countless "Bill Gates moments," as I've found myself waiting and waiting only to have the system stop responding. All anyone can do at that point is mumble, "He has $55 billion and I still can't transfer a file...." The Macintosh suffers from no such idiosyncrasies. I'll stick with what works.
Are you successfully turning a PC school on to the advantages of the Mac, one person at a time? Brag about it.
My "Two Year Rule" states that it takes two years for new information about computers to funnel down through all the marketing, misinterpretations, and know-it-all brother-in-laws to find its way to the typical consumer. As such, consumers tend to make their computing purchases based on what was true two years ago. In the education arena, the "Two Year Rule" often extends to four or five years. In general, districts like to be conservative when adopting new technology (regardless of its benefits), school tech specialists often prefer to stick with what they know (as opposed to what's best), and teachers are usually too busy changing the lives of children to pay much attention to technology trends.
I make it a priority to fight the "Two Year Rule" in my school by regularly throwing the "new stuff" in the direction of my teachers and administrators and then letting them decide what should stick. Not only have the majority of my teachers chosen to migrate to MacOS X on their school laptops already, about a fourth of them have chosen to beta-test Safari along with me. Unfortunately, this is not the case in far too many other schools. So if I read about a district choosing to abandon the Mac platform, I am convinced that this decision is being made based on what was wrong with Apple back in 1997. Nevermind that in the past five years, Apple has graced us with the perfect education computers (the original iMac, then the eMac), the ideal education suite (AppleWorks 6.2), the world's most advanced operating system (MacOS X), and applications that can change the way we educate students (iMovie, iPhoto, even Keynote). Sadly, most of that is still slowly sinking in for large chunks of the education arena, so PC's have been purchased by those who simply didn't "get it" yet.
All things sink in eventually, so it stands to reason that many of those schools who junked up the place with truckloads of PC's would eventually have to humbly inch back toward the Mac once they realized that they were missing out on all the things that their students and teachers could have been accomplishing if they'd just stuck with Macs in the first place. But just as there's no more vocal a non-smoker than someone who has kicked the habit, there's no greater adorer of the Mac than someone who switched away from it only to later switch back. If school districts can be personified in such a way, then perhaps we're in for a whole lotta Mac-lovin' going on in schools as they re-embrace what they realize they should never have forsaken.
When I asked if any readers were lone Mac users in a land of PC's, I was expecting responses from corporate readers. But two education stories I received stood out. Joe Croker (not to be confused with Joe Cocker) wrote in to share that his Media Lab is beginning to revive some of that old-time religion:
I spend several hours a day working among teachers in a Media Lab with 12 VAIOs and one Macintosh G4 Quicksilver. The folks who outfitted the lab decided to phase out Macs and use the Sonys as "ultimate multimedia machines." In practice, the Sonys have been solid machines for general purpose uses but a bust for video work. By comparison, the Mac is constantly in use, and the tech coordinator who instructs faculty on multimedia projects has come to rely on the Mac exclusively for video.
As our program expands, we have convinced the powers that be that more Macs are needed. Six have arrived from the Apple store, and we will be outfitting them with After Effects 5.5, Final Cut Pro Express, and a host of other applications. A final note—regarding Windows XP. For all of the supposed benefits of Microsoft's newest operating system, I've found it to be lackluster.
Perhaps the more intriguing case arises when a school gets religion for the first time. Howard Johnston (not be confused with Howard Johnson or Howard Johnson's -- hey what's going on here with the celebrity sound-alike names from the mailbag today?) wrote in to share the story of how he's changing his school one Switcher at a time:
I'm a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My school is completely pc except for me. I recently got a new iMac Flat Screen with a grant I received. Once I set it up in my classroom, our tech guy at our school who is completely PC (He had recently bought a Dell), loved it and bought one himself (for home use). I also showed a teacher how easy it was to use iPhoto and iMovie. She used it to make a wedding album and movie and burn them onto a DVD. She was so impressed that everything came already installed, she decided to buy one herself. The more I show the teachers and explain to them the ease at which things can be done, the more I think I can keep changing things here.
The importance of the connection between which computers teachers have at home and which computers they're willing to accept at school cannot be overstated. You want to turn your PC-clad school into a Mac haven? Start with the teachers. Get them to see what personal computing is supposed to be like, and then they'll start to see what educational computing is supposed to be like, and then they'll realize that it can only be accomplished on a Mac, after which they'll accept no substitute. Campaigns to litter schools with PC's usually rely on doing it all in the dark, using reasons that don't make sense when held up to the light, and relying on the fact that teachers are too busy teaching to notice. If a faculty collectively decides that it wants Macs in the school, it'll happen. Even if it takes a few years longer than it should.
Joe Croker sums it all up:
Often [the Sony Vaio] doesn't work at all. I can't begin to describe to you the frustration I've felt during countless "Bill Gates moments," as I've found myself waiting and waiting only to have the system stop responding. All anyone can do at that point is mumble, "He has $55 billion and I still can't transfer a file...." The Macintosh suffers from no such idiosyncrasies. I'll stick with what works.
Are you successfully turning a PC school on to the advantages of the Mac, one person at a time? Brag about it.
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