“More than 250 parents, students, teachers and just plain taxpayers met Wednesday night in east Cobb County to learn more about a plan to give Apple iBooks to 63,000 students and teachers. ‘Listen to your children. They know what makes them learn,’ said Carmen Harnett, a Mabry Middle School English teacher,’ Chris Reinolds reports for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Three Cobb County school board members and Apple representatives were on hand Wednesday for the first of four community meetings, designed to educate the public and answer their questions about the laptop computer program. The majority of the comments at the meeting were from people in favor of the initiative, which would provide laptops to teachers and middle and high school students,” Reinolds reports. “But parent Karen Brown, whose child attends Sedalia Park Elementary, questioned whether laptops will improve education. ‘We have children who are not learning now and what are we doing about this?’ She also voiced concern over the cost of insurance ($50) for the laptops, which will be passed along to parents. ‘Every day I walk into the schools and I am nickeled and dimed to death,’ Brown said.”
Reinolds reports, “The system announced a proposal two weeks ago to spend nearly $70 million during the next four years to start the program. Cobb officials expect the cost after the first four years to be about $20 million a year if it continues to lease 63,000 laptops at once. Apple also will provide an around-the-clock help desk as well as 100 computer servers to the district.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Report: 90 percent of emails opposed to Georgia’s Apple iBook program – February 10, 2005
65,000 Apple iBooks for Georgia schools one of the largest school laptop programs in the country – February 10, 2005
Georgia school district to propose 63,000 Macs for students and teachers – February 07, 2005
sounds like a pretty good deal. hopefully these georgians go for it.
Definitely great news for Apple and for the students that get to benefit, but $20 million a year sure sounds like a lot for the public to have to pay. I certainly feel for those families that have like five kids and barely have enough money to buy school supplies the way it is. And it certainly is too bad that these groups can’t find a way to pay teachers a little closer to what they are worth.
if this deal goes through… I wonder what a future “Halo Effect” could result from this sale ??
A whole new generations of Mac Heads ??
hmmmm the possiblilities are interesting
More than 250 parents, students, teachers and just plain taxpayers met Wednesday night in east Cobb County to learn more about a plan to give Apple iBooks to 63,000 students and teachers…
This confirms what I suspected. Less than 250 Georgians even know what a laptop is.
Wonder if they’ll include a firewire cable?
This is an amusing website. retarded punks on crack…
http://www.jsmagic.com/spam/spam_pics.html
More than 250…met…to learn about…63,000…. — a 0.4% turnout!
Earlier, 90 percent of e-mails to school board members and Redden between Sept. 16 and Oct. 18 were opposed to the proposal….
I make that three in favor on Sept. 15, four against and one unsure out of 5 emails in the following three days; the rest couldn’t figure out how to access their e-mail or how to reset their homepage back from the MSN hijack, or were doing a security reinstallation, or pulled the plug after the constant http://www.videogals.com browser hijack.
MAW: students
Wonder if they’ll include a firewire cable?
Anon, the USB issue only relates to iPods which are marketed towards PC owners as well as Mac owners. I do note the “witty sarcasm” in your post
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I didn’t mean to insert a link, MDN, for chrissakes. WARNING — malware site.
Less is More: What is this “malware” you speak of? I’m unfamiliar with that.
– Mac User
I feel her pain about being “…being nickeled and dimed to death” by the school
I pay enough school taxes in my city…I can sympathize with her.
But we are talking a YOUR childs education here.
This is way cool. Are there similar programs happening with windoze computers or is this unique?
Funny site Boeing777. Are those guys for real?
Less is More, how do you think a link ended up in your post?
Wouldn’t this program be considered “Education: Evolved”?!?!?
Jack A, MDN code inserts the link tag automatically, I guess … I might have caught it if this site had a preview-post feature.
Mac User, I’ve only seen it on a friend’s Explorer / XP before I went and downloaded Firefox for him, thus restoring his ability to browse. He was opposed to me doing it at first, quite happy afterwards. I was, of course, flabbergasted that anyone would be so … well, you know. He’ll go Mac when Tiger ships.
MAW: “freedom” — (4) a feeling of exhilaration naturally acquired upon the removal of some Microsoft “functionality.”
Wow – Georgia rednecks are way smarter than I thought!