“The [Quaker Valley, PA] school board last night voted 8-0 to approve a $3.1 million contract with Apple Computer Inc. to lease about 1,200 laptop and desktop computers. The four-year lease provides laptops for use at school and at home to students in grades nine to 12,” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. “Under the new lease, sufficient computers, both laptop and desktop, will be available for use at school in libraries, computer labs and mobile computing carts at the elementary and middle schools.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: More happy students and teachers in Pennsylvania.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Pennsylvania school district to equip 620 students with Apple laptops – June 22, 2004
I like this trend =]
This is great! I love the quakers – and their oats. I donated some $$ to help the Quakers purchase (and protect) some precious rain forest in Ecuador called MonteVerde. Many of them have left the US because they are peaceniks and will not shoot anyone. Even though they are willing to serve the country as doctors and other non-combat roles, the US has persecuted them for their non-violent stance. I’m glad the Quaker kids are getting Macs!
If nobody stood up and put their lives on the line to protect the U.S., we’d all be running around with our heads cut off. Literally.
Yeah. If one person could choose to not fight, then all the patriots would have to stop defending our country too and then everybody would become peaceniks too then we’d be communists. Or christians. Or something.
Maybe we could elect Quakers to positions of power, so that way their kids could avoid serving in wars without recrimination.
Right, indaly. We elect Quakers and then they’ll vote to provide iBooks for all our kids everywhere!
Another Pennsylvania story! Now we have Pittsburgh are represented. Now we need State College / Penn State to jump in blow the state adoption of Macs wide open.
ps. Paterno is God. God save Paterno!
1. Make Iraq a parking lot. That will send a message that an infinite number of beheadings cannot drown out.
2. Make the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan a parking lot while you’re at it.
3. World peace. Peace through strength. Reagan knew the solution.
now speaking of Quakers, would you rather have them or the Taliban?
geez, get a grip people. And don’t start with the Amish either.
I posted this at <http://www.macdailynews.com/comments.php?id=P2925_0_1_0> this morning, but here it is again as we’re on the topic of Macs at school.
I’m from the Caribbean island republic of Trinidad & Tobago. A few years ago, my children’s primary school (grade school) had to replace the old Mac computers in the computer lab. I worked hard with the teacher in charge of the lab to propose replacing them with new iMacs and a PowerMac G4 server. We had a hard time convincing the school board, but they finally agreed. The kids now all use e-mail and access the net as required, under supervision of course.
Every year the topic comes up again with new board members who believe that we are doing the children a disservice by continuing to use Macs. This in several cases from parents who cannot receive e-mail because their Windoze PeeCees are riddled with viruses. They do not know anything about computers other than that Windoze (“Dell”) is the only choice, as far as they are concerned. They have not stopped once to consider that there has NEVER been a single virus on any of the Macs, even in the pre-OS X days or that the whole show, comprising fourteen iMacs for the kids, the G4, an iBook and a mix of about six eMacs and iMacs used by the staff, is maintained by one teacher who is also a mother with kids in the school and who has never had any IT training.
In the mean time, my daughter’s secondary school (high school), one of the best in the country, has a “state of the art” (according to the school) computer lab using only Windoze PeeCees. They are not allowed to access the internet or bring in CDs or floppys for fear of virus infection. The whole lab is an island. So I ask – what’s the point of having this “state of the art” system if students are so restricted? Apparently those in charge of the school are unaware that there is a better way. Who is really doing a disservice to the kids?
Gordon,
It’s all here:
http://forgetcomputers.com/~jdroz/pages/01f-pc_myths_debunked.html
yeah i just saw sleepy hollow the other day.. scary..
Actually, we had a quaker president previously. His name was Richard Nixon.
The place where the quakers went was not Ecuador, but Costa Rica, though the name of the place is Monteverde (I’ve been there). It’s part of the “cloud forests” high in the mountains. Fantastically beautiful.
I’m glad to see Pennsylvania getting onboard these ibook programs. I can’t imagine how any school district can justify the costs associated with strictly Windows networks, considering all the virii and assorted evils one is forced to contend with.
dude mike, sleepy hollow is based in a town in NY (Terrytown) in the White Plains area.
get your geography correct, please.
Thurott: “Dell Rockets to Commanding Lead in Education.”
Dell, the world’s number-one PC maker, gets an A in the education market, in which the company’s market share is three times greater than its nearest rival.
Good luck to the D_users, they’re gonna need it.
Thanks Fred!
Nice story Gordon. Keep on keepin on.
Ron, thats right. It’s Costa Rica, not equador. I only saw a slideshow. I was thinking the other country ‘cos it’s settled so you can see both the Pacific and the Gulf.
quaker valley is the name of the public school district, and has nothing to do with any religious affiliation.
i’ve met a few students from the school district (i teach nearby,) and the majority of them hate macs. why? there’s no instruction, no tech support, and teachers don’t know what to do with them. kids are given foreign machines without a clue as to what to do with them. they’re not allowed to do any maintenance or install any software (violates the contract.)
it was a sad day when a student i knew said that the quaker valley mac program made her a die-hard pc user.
my big hope is that the school’s administration knows how to dish out the technology appropriately and back it up. spending money is one thing, and teaching kids how to use it correctly and creatively is something else entirely.
i’m keeping my fingers crossed for a new generation of mac lovers…
(quaker valley issued iBooks to the high school students a few years ago. this new purchase is round two.)
Students should learn on a computer system that is predominant among computer users. Having to reboot several hundred times and run software patches hourly eductaes me to the teal IT world experience. If I learned on a Mac, I would never have learned how to use a software patch or clean my system of viruses. Kids should learn how to do these things, and Windows is the optimal system for that education.
�
“dude mike, sleepy hollow is based in a town in NY (Terrytown) in the White Plains area.
get your geography correct, please.”
Webbyswim. If dude mike, should get his geography right, maybe you should think before you type.
Thats Tarrytown, But atleast you got the general area right.
I thought it was Terrytunes.
I can’t believe the crap that gets spouted here at times. Just because the Quakers don’t want to kill people, it doesn’t mean that no-one should ever defend their country, it just means that the Quakers shouldn’t be persecuted if they don’t want to kill. Doing that won’t suddenly turn everyone into peaceniks, since not everyone is a Quaker. To use a parallel, allowing gay marriage won’t increase the number of gay people, it just shows respect for those who are gay by giving them equal treatment.
Honestly, how do you lot come to these conclusions?
<i>Yeah. If one person could choose to not fight, then all the patriots would have to stop defending our country too and then everybody would become peaceniks too then we’d be communists. Or christians. Or something.<i>
We wouldn’t have to worry so much about defending ourselves if we weren’t such bullies. Reagan may have been right about peace through power, but Clinton was right with the idea that it is better to be liked and feared than to be hated.