“In the first public announcement about his controversial laptop computer program, Cobb schools Superintendent Joe Redden told board members Wednesday the four-year contract with Apple computers to supply about 63,000 iBook G4 laptops will cost $69.9 million. Redden said Apple negotiated a price of $350 per computer while the other two companies vying for the contract charged $404.25 (Dell) and $381.50 (IBM). ‘It’s a very conservative number,’ said Deputy Superintendent Dr. Don Beers, who gave the presentation alongside Redden,” Jon Gillooly reports for The Marietta Daily Journal.
“Beers said $69.9 million includes all expenses – $2.5 million for infrastructure, $5.7 million for a wireless network, $10.1 million for teachers’ laptops, $33.6 million for high school students’ laptops and $18 million for laptops for middle school students. The program is funded by the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax II, which sets aside almost $76 million for technology,” Gillooly reports. “Beers said the school system expects to save money on the laptop program by saving money on textbooks, reducing the number of portable classrooms by transforming computer labs into classroom space and selling the laptops to students when the leases expire.”
“Despite the controversial nature of the program – 90 percent of e-mails to school board members and Redden between Sept. 16 and Oct. 18 were opposed to the proposal, the Marietta Daily Journal discovered in an earlier open records request – there was only one public speaker at Wednesday’s meeting who did not speak about the laptop program,” Gillooly reports. “The laptop program now goes to the seven-member school board for a vote.”
Full article here.
I really hope this goes through. I doesn’t look like it’s going to cost the taxpayers much money anyhow, and it helps the kids! Go for it Georgia! You won’t regret it.
Hmmm… 90% of how many emails were opposed? 90% of 10 emails? …or 100 emails?
Sounds like the Wintel droids were sending emails in opposition. How any parent or teaching professional could be opposed to this amazing deal would be beyond me.
MDN magic word is first. How appropriate.
$350 at iBook G4!!!! How can they say no???
1st post!!
BSOD–
You know, it could just be that they’re opposed to the idea of laptops in the classroom in general. Many don’t feel that the expense justifies the benefits. Of course, either way they’re wrong.
MDN Magic Word – TRY… he TRIED to be first post but didn’t try hard enough!
I hope it goes through too. Seems like Apple has begun to play Microsoft’s game… take money earned on one product (iPod) and use that to subsidise entry into another area (this deal). How else could they offer such a cut rate? They just want to get in there so that they can use that to parlay to other school districts in the future.
If you’re OK with it, you don’t generally write an email saying so.
If you’re opposed, you’d me more inclined to voice your opposition.
Thus, those statistics mean nothing.
alot can be done with $70 million. I’m sure those oppossed have reason to beleive that money would be better spent elsewhere. Or kept in the pockets of the taxpayers.
I like to see laptops in the hands of our youngsters. It levels the playing field and gives the poorest kids another chance at an education. A poorly managed program can be a terrible waste of time. I think schools are getting better at it though.
A school system near me (Ann Arbor) just bought a bunch of iBooks. I haven’t seen their plans yet though. I just hope it’s done right and the teachers are educated and that they don’t become more of a distraction. Kids carry far too many books though and if a laptop can solve that problem I’m all for it.
Where is the electronic paper? Chips printed with injet printers you can fold? Where’d all these inventions go?
ok – you idiots need to stop with the first post crap. it never works.
magic word – zebra
as in racing stripes, the zebra wins the day. and no, i have no idea what the relevance is with the thread. my creativity is being zapped working on a Dell at the office. can’t wait to get home to my G5 at home.
350 dollars is the annual leasing cost per computer, not the total cost per computer.
From another article I read I gather most of the opposition has to do with the fact that many don’t feel that the program that the money is coming from was intended to buy laptops. I guess it was worded pretty vaguely though.
But boy! Talk about an agressive price from Apple!! How can they be making any money from this? They must be going for it as a marquee account and to “hook” new Apple users.
FIRST POST!!!
All right, I finally got the first post. Hallelujah!
Doesn’t say anywhere in that article why 9 out of 10 disagree… they make it sound like it’s because they are apple laptops, when the real issue is spending their extra money on any laptops period!
I live in GA, not far from Cobb actually. This story was on the radio this morning. The problem people were having is that some of these kids can’t even read. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m all for laptops getting into more hands, especially Macs, but the government here seems to think the way to solve the education problem is to throw more money at it. What good is a laptop going to do if the person using it can’t read or write? A good point was brought up on the radio, too; what about giving the kids with the highest grades laptops? I’d much rather work with someone who is intelligent and can’t work with a computer than an idiot who can. Technology is not the answer to solving underlying problems with schools, and this money could be better spend on other things.
I disagree Plush. Getting the computer might very well help them to learn to read and write. There is a lot of excellent educational software out there that these kids could benefit from. And if they’re in a poor home without a computer at all, this will get their foot in the door. Not to mention they’ll learn much needed computer skills that they’ll need someday out in the real world. I’ve seen first hand how much a young child can learn in a very short period of time once they’ve received their first ever computer.
Maybe it’s just me, but the impression I get is that the 90% of emails are opposed to the laptop program as a whole – not specifically the purchase of APPLE laptops. Since the technology program is funded by a special purpose local tax, I don’t see any reason for such opposition.
Plush, I sorta guessed that.
I live in Los Angeles. If the Los Angeles City School District annouced that it was going to do something similar, I’d be against it. A) The schools are full of the children of illegal imigrants. The poor kids don’t even speak English, let alone read and write it. The LA City School District is always touting how many different languages are spoken in schools as if it’s something to be proud of.
B) Education is not about throwing money at the situation. That’s always the solution here also. Let’s spend a billion dollars more as if that’s going to teach a kid to read, write, and run a business.
Ha, my magic word is “mind.” A mind is a terrible thing to go to waste, but pouring money on it doesn’t save it.
RE: Plush
A child can start to read and write by using a keyboard. Reconizing the letters and finding out how to make them into words. I have been to schools where first grade kids are making iPhoto slide shows that tell a story, then producing it into a DVD to give to their parents so they see what they have learned and what they are doing. Some of higher grades were doing spreadsheets to do calculations, iChat to colaborate on projects with students in another classroom. Laptops, any laptop, but especially Apples with its easy to use creative software, helps kids learn.
I know this because I was a part of a study at Penn State to see if kids could learn from playing online games, and there had already been a partial study done. That study wasn’t looking for certain things, but it was easy to see that poor kids, when given a laptop learn quicker. Of course the person that was doing the study wasn’t looking for this so had no concrete data to back it up but the person could see it. Thus why we were doing one to get statics that can prove it. I’m not sure how it went because I was an under grad in this graduate study program and I moved on after graduation, but I’m sure it went really well. Plus, there have been schools already using laptops that have shown that grades have improved after adding laptops into the classes.
Most people are probably having problems with how the money is being spent. Like the time where a school was going to get laptops, but everyone protested saying they didn’t want their taxes to be spent on their kids education. Thus, it fell through because they removed the board members with people who would vote the laptop deal down. Just so the parents could save a few dollars.
All I can say is F our kids now and you put them behind for life. Computer are apart of life wiether you like it or not, the sooner they learn, the better off they are later.
JB, we’re not talking about little kids here. These are high school kids who can’t read. They aren’t going to use educational software. I’d much rather see this money going to start programs to teach things like financial planning. As for helping poor kids get their foot in the door, I do agree. I think they should have to prove they would take advantage of laptops by getting good grades to begin with. That would cut down the amount of money needed for laptops and open up money for things a lot more useful than computer skills. Can you imagine how much better off we would be if people, right out of high school, knew how to do things like paying their own taxes? Just basic skills needed for the real world.
So the fact that they can’t read, means they shouldn’t have the same opertunities as everyone else. Maybe it never passed your mind that someone that can’t read at their age, can still learn. There are adults that are still learning to read, and the younger you start them on the path to learning, the better. So give the kids a laptop, some software, a teacher who encourages the kid to use it, and you have everything you need to give that kid a brighter future.
Brando:A child can start to read and write by using a keyboard
eh? how do you learn to write using a keyboard? I thought that is what pens and pencils and paper were for. Personally I am not against kids using laptops of any sort although using Apple is a bonus (for Apple). I am from the old school ( I started school in 1975 just before the original Star Wars movie came out) and I learned to write by using a pencil or pen and paper, and as far as I know that is still the ONLY way to learn how to write. In terms of learning how to do lots of other stuff on a computer, an iBook is great although great artists still use pencils and paper for drawing and sketching.
Aaaah, but what about the sports programs that need new uniforms? Surely that is much more important than learning how to read and right. “Johnny is dumb as a box of rocks, but boy can he carry a football!”
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Sadly, this is the case at a lot of schools. Athletics, although important on some aspects, have slowly started to take precedence over the more important basic life-skills and core eduacation. For example, in many schools more money is dumped into sports programs than the arts and other creative-type classes. Many schools have lost that “balance” between core education, sports, and other extra-curricular activities and the arts. Face it, without the arts, we wouldn’t have music to listen to or movies to watch. Creativity needs to be nurtured as well.
If laptops in the hands of these kids can help achieve that balance, then they would be foolish not to do it.
Or you give them better teachers and a program for the younger children to teach them to read when they first start off in school and they are much better off. I do think they should have an opportunity to get ahold of these laptops. I also think they should prove they want to learn before they get all this money thrown at them. I see people every day at jobs working cash registers who can’t do basic math. I’m not talking calculus here, I’m talking adding and subtracting.
Computer skills are very important. But when you have a 17 year old kid who can’t read, doesn’t want to learn to, and doesn’t think he needs to, a computer isn’t going to help. If you don’t understand the concept of subtraction, a calculator isn’t going to help. But a 2nd grade teacher who gets through to kids and shows them why learning is important will help. And showing high school students who had that teacher in 2nd grade how to manage a bank account will help.
I can’t stress this enough, I’m all for equal opportunity, no matter how much money your family has. And if you make these kids get good grades before giving them technology, you are giving them all the same opportunity. You are just making sure they will use it.
See, I can “right” well. I meant write! woops!
In this era of conservatism, people will oppose anything the gov’t wants to do. Here in Virginia, people are always opposing everything yet when a candidate for Governor several years ago proposed abolishing our car tax, he was voted in with flying colors. The only problem was, that the car tax (property taxes charged by cities and counties, not the state), was not abolished. The state just paid your car tax for you. The cities still received the taxes. And now, the state spends more on paying everybody’s car tax than they do on schools. But hey, we’re conservatives. We believe in smaller gov’t. Yeah right.
Yes, because a keyboard has letters. When a child is told to find a letter on the keyboard, that child can associate what he/she is told to a letter by finding it on the keyboard. Hell, its just like the teacher writing it on the board and saying this is an “A” but the kid is doing the writing by finding the key and hitting it. Once the kid knows what and A looks like since the associationg witht he letter has been made, then they can find it on the keyboard, thus showing they remember what and A looks like. Moving along, that A can then be put together with more letters he learns into the word “Apple” (no pun). Thus, a kid knows how to make words. They can also then learn how to write too with pen and paper, but they can start the association quicker on a keyboard. Learning how to physically write is still going to be pen and paper and will still need to be taught, but how many reports do kids now a days submit that were written by pen and paper. My mom, and English teacher doesn’t take hand written anymore (9 to 12 grade). She even asks for an electronic document so she can use http://www.turnitin.com to see if the kids copied anything from some where else. She has even moved to having the kids submit to turnitin.com before they submit to her so they can make sure they are in the clear. Technology is moving forward people, probably at one point typewritters were said to not be needed in schools. Now most schools have some sort of typing class that is manditory (my school did). Don’t be left behind because you think the world is still flat.