“MacArthur has always been Mac, but in the fall it’s going PC, thanks to the PTA. The aim, says Lisa Ash, vice president of the Parent Teacher Association at MacArthur Elementary School, is to improve computer instruction and get parents more involved. And it couldn’t come soon enough for the school’s aging machines,” Tom Kertscher reports for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Kertscher reports, “Ash said many parents of MacArthur students believe that Windows-based personal computers, or PCs, could serve their children better, and they set out a year ago to switch the school from Macs to PCs. The PTA has raised nearly $20,000, received donated computer equipment and taken other steps to begin the transformation, she said… The parents ‘have taken it on as a professional commitment,’ Ash said… The timing is good because six of MacArthur’s 30 computers weren’t working at the end of the school year and the 7-year-old Macs were very costly or impossible to maintain, Ash added… A key advantage, Ash said, is that students will be able to do work at home – and get help from their parents – since more families own PCs than Macs.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Great job, PTA. Excellent decision. Have fun with it. Hey, because you bought Honda mini vans as the family car, why don’t you get donations to change all of the school buses to Hondas, while you’re at it?
Virus and malware removal is not a computer skill.
For those who are actually interested in serving their children — as opposed to being lazy by refusing to learn how easy it is to use Macs with the Windows PC you ignorantly bought for your den just because other lemmings you know bought Windows, too — there are many reasons why educated people choose Macs over Windows PCs: http://macvspc.info/
To think that these kids could have had 30 Apple Mac mini’s with inexpensive Samsung or similar flat panel monitors running Mac OS X Tiger and had access to iLife for less than they are going to spend on PCs – it’s sickening. But, you have to be informed to understand why; hence the uninformed MacArthur Elementary PTA joyously celebrate their decision to deprive their children of superior tools.
These people just actually chose to pay more for Windows XP and no iLife over Mac OS X Tiger with iLife for their children just because they ignorantly bought a Windows PC for their home. It’s simply amazing. Remind us to join our local PTA when the time comes. We’ll make some waves.
Most popular applications use the exact same file formats, making it trivial to exchange documents with PC users or to migrate existing files such as documents, pictures and music from a PC to the Mac. Not only are the files compatible with the Mac, it’s really simple to share them as well. Email is a very popular way to share files. Macs handle attachments just like a PC — using the Internet standard MIME types. Macs can also connect to the same networks as PCs and share files over the network using the SMB/CIFS file sharing protocol. Or you can burn a CD — Macs and PCs both read and write to the same standard for data CDs. Other options? Consider USB or FireWire removable hard disks or floppy drives, or a USB keychain flash memory device. Macs can read Windows formatted disks, making it easy to exchange Zip disks, portable hard drives or other portable media between Macs and PCs. – Apple.com.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs – June 15, 2005
So sad.
One day they’ll feel a bit like the publisher that turned away someone called Rowling with a book about a Harry somebody…
Well if they think the Macs were costly to maintian wait till they need 20 PC techs on call 24 hours a day. Then they’ll know what costly really is.
The Macs should have been replaced in a 3 year cycle anyways. They will find out the hard way as they waste $20,000.00 on those PC’s.
The next story will hear from here is Parents and students outraged that the money they spent on PC’s was a waste as they can’t use them do to spyware and viruses.
“received donated computer equipment”
Switchers getting rid of their old equipment in favor of new Macs.
So, switching to Windows PC…
Is it a ‘swear’ education? So they can say f**k everytime they get a BSOD
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Magic word says it all…… Trouble!!
Computer education in schools is so basic that PC’s will be fine. How many people take full advantage of what a Mac can do anyway?
The kids will research behind a firewall and write a paper on Word and that will be about it. Then when they go home from school, they can feel comfortable gaming all evening on a similar Windows machine.
You have to also wonder how many of the PTA members have ever managed photos, edited a movie, worked with music, done a file seach, or broused without fear. They are sad clueless sheep.
So where is the lawsuit?
my guess is that one guy with a disk warrior cd, or basic knowledge of disk util could have fixed all those macs… assuming their running OSX, which I doubt…
Poor kids!
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MW: sort – like sort of stupid parentdecision!
Wisconsin!?! I got the sh*t kicked out of me in Wisconsin…
Ok class, it’s time for our Math lesson…Now, if it takes 15 minutes for your new PCs to become infected with viruses and your PC has already been on for 12 minutes, how many more minutes until your PC is crippled by a virus? (Hey! PCs are good for our classrooms!)
Parents know best, right?
There are so many errors in what Lisa Ash said it’s hard to know if she has 2 brain cells to rub together.
Mac – Virus free, UNIX based OS
PC – Virus laden, buggy, sloooooow, outdated OS
Which would you choose to educate your child on? I think a lawsuit should be launched just like Cobb County.
“7 Year old Mac” …
I’d like to see the how the 7 year old PC’s are holding up. (or these PCs in 7 years)
MW army, as in the army of Mac faithful should pelt these fools with rocks for the abuse they are about to incur on their children.
I told you Apple was going down. The end is near. God save their souls. The parents I mean. You know, from their perspective they are doing the right thing. They have their best interests in mind and they are taking the initiative. That’s great. A 7 year-old Mac may not run Tiger too well and XP on a new PC might be better-off in the short term.
In two years they’ll be wondering how long they should wait to switch back to Mac and why they didn’t see the sea change in the first place.
Don’t dispair kiddies. It’s one very small school. Most of em are using PCs anyway. For every story like this there are 50 others that we don’t see. Apple is delivering the goods and they’ll all come around in the end.
The way I see it is that most parents think a computer is a windows pc. Most of them don’t even bother learning to use that so there’s no hope in hell they’ll take the time to research and learn about macs and the great alternative they offer.
Unfortunately the windows pc has given the world at large such a low expectation in respect of cumputers that they’re resigned to them being a chore. As a result all they look at is cost and windows pc’s look cheaper out of the box than a mac. Since they know nothing about macs the fact that on a windows pc they will have to pay more for antivirus software, spend time removing spyware etc is lost on them.
Similarly because expectation is so low, computer usage is basic at best, word, a bit of internet, email that sort of thing. The advanced features (of any platform) are rarely looked at so the added in box value of apple is again overlooked.
It’s depressing really.
mw: else. There is something else other than windows. If not OS X, linux even.
Well I guess the schools never sat down and calculated the value of those 7 years of Mac’s go them now did they?
And I guess they just “forgot” all the agravation their PC machines bring infected 4 minutes on the internet and how it costs much more money to maintain them.
Parents certainly don’t teach their kids how to use computers, it’s more like the other away around.
It’s good for kids to learn multiple platforms and different ways of doing things, it’s the parents who get stuck in their ways and like lemmings follow each other to the throne of Microsoft suffering.
Since the PTA had to raise the money, they obviously went with the cheap PC route, what they don’t know is it will cost $20,000 a year just to maintain them.
HAHAHAHAHA fools, stupid PC fools.
The world is full of them, absolute frigging low level mindless slugs.
All the smart folks use Mac’s, 16 years VIRUS FREE!
Beat that with a stick!
If ignorance is bliss, I guess they’ll be the happiest people on earth
Just for the record – It’s not hard to maintain a windows machine for a classroom and keep it virus free –
You just put a disk image on a network drive (or dvd) and re-image the machine EVERY MORNING
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Well, I am the first to admit I am saddened to hear that another school is switching to PC (The Scarborough Board in Toronto switched a couple of years ago, and instead of donating the Macs, litterally threw them all in the garbage!), I can only think that 7 year old macs (think original iMacs or older) were in fact a huge pain to keep alive without being upgraded. I am assuming they were probably using some flavour of pre OSX (maybe even system 7?), which, understandably would be very cumbersome to have to use on a daily basis at this point. As people have already stated, it is pretty impressive that Macs bought 7 years ago were still kicking – I haven’t heard of people using a PC past 4 without serious usability issues…
Yeah, going PC might have actually been a sexy option to 7 year old Macs, but they obviously didn’t research what owning a current Mac with OSX running would have been like for learning and productivity. I could see myself being happy using Tiger well into the 2010’s…
Sad sad sad…
I wonder if it’s the parents that need to go back to school instead of the students.
I used Macs throughout my school career and had a PC at home along with others. No brain damage so far. =P
Seriously, can these parents wake up!
Wisconsin? Isn’t that the place where they put big pieces of cheese on their heads to go to a ball game?
but of course when 2010 rolls around I’ll being using OSXI “Spotted Snow Leopard”, or “Jungle Cat” or whatever..
Parents just don’t understand.
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Quote:
“my guess is that one guy with a disk warrior cd, or basic knowledge of disk util could have fixed all those macs… assuming their running OSX, which I doubt…”
We actually did that on a campus where I used to work. The district had gone away from Macs because the technology coordinator knew nothing about them. Our techs knew nothing about them. When a Mac had a problem, the tech would show up, see that the Mac had an issue, and instruct the principal to get rid of it. These computers were anywhere from OS 8 – 9. We would fix them with an old version of Norton, and pass them around to teachers who were interested.