“Voting on a new technology lease will highlight Wednesday’s regular meeting of Hays USD 489 Board of Education,” Diane Gasper-O’Brien reports for The Hays Daily News [Hays, Kansas]. “The meeting is set for 7 p.m.”
“Mary Woods and Loren VonLintel, technology directors for the district, will give a recommendation to the board for a proposal for the next technology lease for the district,” Gasper-O’Brien reports. “They plan to have their recommendation ready for Superintendent Fred Kaufman today. Kaufman and the three assistant superintendents are to meet and go over the summaries, then reconvene with Woods and VonLintel to finalize the recommendation for the board. The Hays district, which leases 1,800 computers yearly, including 1,450 laptops — 1,100 at Hays High School alone — is its final year of a three-year lease with Apple Inc.”
Gasper-O’Brien reports, “There has been speculation the district might go with the PC platform rather than Apple this time around.”
“VonLintel said the finance proposal deadline was pushed back to just a couple of weeks ago in order to get the most up-to-date interest rates. ‘There are a lot of things that will weigh into this (decision),’ Woods said. ‘Such as durability, total cost of ownership, financing, advantages of staying with a known entity,’ she added, naming a few,” Gasper-O’Brien reports. “A long project is nearing an end for Woods and VonLintel, who have been gathering information for nearly two years.”
“Part of their research involved consulting administrators in Henrico County, Va., the same school district they visited when Hays first went to the one-to-one laptop initiative at Hays High in 2004,” Gasper-O’Brien reports.
Gasper-O’Brien reports, “Henrico County had started its laptop initiative with Apple, then went with Dell for the high school when that lease was up but decided to stay with Apple for the middle-school students. ‘They are equally satisfied with both,’ Woods said.”
Gasper-O’Brien reports, “VonLintel said he thinks that Hays could be, too. ‘I have the utmost confidence in our staff that we can use any of them to teach in either (platform),’ VonLintel said. ‘I use both the same, and I don’t even notice much difference when I go from a Mac to a PC.’ Woods agreed. ‘I really have no preference,’ Woods said. ‘I’ve been happy with Apple. I’m very confident we would do just as well with Dell. We feel we can’t go wrong with either one.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You’ve got to be some special “technology director” if you don’t understand the difference between Macs and Windows PCs. Security. Total Cost of Ownership. Cost of Anti-Virus software (dollars and processor cycles). Ease of Use. iLife. Unlimited OS capability. Ability to run the largest selection of software. The list goes on and on – every item is in Apple Mac’s favor; often glaringly so. The only type of hardware that school systems should be considering today are Apple’s OS-unlimited Macs. If any school system is considering spending money on OS-limited PCs from HP, Dell, Gateway, or any other PC box assembler, taxpayers should complain loudly because their money would be slated to be wasted foolishly. Only Apple Macs can run the world’s most advanced operating system and, if need be, Linux variants and Microsoft’s porous Windows.
More info: http://macvspc.info/
Contact info:
• Board of Education, USD 489 Board Members, boe@hays489.k12.ks.us
• Fred Kaufman, USD 489 Superintendent, fkaufman@hays489.k12.ks.us
• Mary Woods, Technology Specialist, mwoods@hays489.k12.ks.us
• Loren VonLintel, Technology Specialist, lvonlintel@hays489.k12.ks.us
Related articles:
After dropping Macs, Henrico officials work to protect students’ new Dells from viruses – August 29, 2005
Kansas City schools plan calls for 6,000 Apple Macs – April 12, 2007
Chicago area school district tech director wants to phase out Macs for ‘more appropriate technology’ – December 18, 2006
Harvard Medical School CIO picks Mac OS X over Linux and Windows – November 30, 2006
4,800 students in Microsoft’s backyard receive Apple Mac notebooks – September 10, 2006
Michigan middle school students get 350 Apple iBooks – August 30, 2006
Nebraska high school provides nearly 200 Apple iBooks to all students – August 28, 2006
The Seattle Times: Apple Macbook is best computer for school – August 26, 2006
BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom recommends students pick Mac over Windows for first time – June 15, 2006
State of Maine awards middle school contract to Apple Computer for 34,000 iBooks – March 21, 2006
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Ireland to roll out Apple Mac solutions in 3,500 primary schools – March 17, 2006
Apple beats Dell: lands deal to supply 12,675 iBooks to Henrico County Middle Schools – February 09, 2006
Group questions wisdom of dumping Macs in favor of HP Windows PCs in Boulder, CO schools – February 06, 2006
Students and teachers: going Mac could save you money on software – August 23, 2005
The Seattle Times: Apple iBook ‘a great laptop for students’ (with no viruses or spyware) – August 22, 2005
Chatham County (NC) rolls out 1,000 of eventual 7,400 Apple iBooks for students and teachers – August 17, 2005
Oftentimes the MDN headlines sound like something out of the “Onion.” This is most definitely one of those.
KANSAS: This is the state with a school district that tried to ban the teaching of cosmology becuase the subject teaches that the Big Bang as 14.7 billion years ago (more than 8,000 years is too much for some of these people). Kansas, whenever I’m reading on minerology or some science that presumes that the Universe or Earth are billions of years old, I think of your state and laugh at you.
Kansas, whenever I’m reading on minerology or some science that presumes that the Universe or Earth are billions of years old, I think of your state and laugh at you.
Be glad most of them are in one geographic location. Be twice as glad that 99 percent of the rest are in the same country — unless they’re in Iraq helping God speed the Millennium.
@Greg L… Kansas tried to ban the use of cosmetics?
(ducks)
get it? IT geeks need to stay employed. So they lie about how PC’s are reasonable. And no one understands them so they keep their jobs.
Of course this guy’s smart enough to tell the difference, which is exactly why he lied about it.
Well, Kansas is the state that can’t tell the difference between science and intelligent design. So what do you expect?
Oftentimes the MDN headlines sound like something out of the “Onion.”
Oftentimes Kansas sounds like something out of the “Onion.”
Thank goodness we’re not in Kansas anymore! When an idiot spouts idiocies, it is not bigotry to point this out. It’s just common sense!
The big bang theory: First there was nothing, and it exploded!
What are the scientifically proven mathematical odds of that theory being viable?
Think it through.
>kenh – You sound like you are from Kansas.
Poor try at a response.
If I were from Kansas, would I care what you thought about that?
What is your evidence about the mathematical provability of the big bang theory?
If you want to get in this game, play it seriously.
Spencer Tracey:
<<Why, when they’re all in one room, their collective IQ is bigger than the circumference of both seats in their school’s two-holer.>>
Would that be in inches, feet, yards, miles or light years? 😀
Any State that can produce both Bob Dole and Gordon Parks can do anything and do unbelieveably dumb things!
Jayhawks SUCK!
My God, how can anyone get mad at Kansas?
Carry on my wayward son, and ignore the hate filled libs.
Their brains are just dust in the wind.
Don’t believe me? Ask Steve Walsh. He Knew….
that some of you are past the point of know return.
>kenh
OK, I’ll play your game.
First off if you want to talk “mathematical probabilities” I suggest you look up Stephen Hawkings and ask him. I’m sure he can set you straight.
Secondly, your brief synopsis of from “nothing” to a “big bang” is confused mix of science and biblical mythology. The bible states that there was void and then there was something.
The big bang comes from a point where all matter is condensed in one place and then explodes. Not from nothing.
Get your science and mythology separated and then you can play.
well put Drunk Cheney
Hey, wanna go quail huntin’ ?
Some of you guys really seem to have a lot of time on your hands.
@ FormerEdTech, most of your statement is wrong, you must not be a very good tech.
@ FormerEdTech, most of your statement is wrong, you must not be a very good tech.
@ FormerEdTech, most of your statement is wrong, you must not be a very good tech.
@ FormerEdTech, most of your statement is wrong, you must not be a very good tech.
Golly Gee kenh, I never bothered to try to think the Big Bang theory through before. And I’m sure no scientist ever thought it through either! Boy, I’m sure glad YOU HAVE THOUGH!!! Why the hell do we need scientists? For every answer to the natural world, we need look only no further than one of your books of mythology. You know, one of those “bible-type books” that tell us to stop bothering to figure out how the natural world works and how everything is the creation of an invisible, magical being.
Have you figured out yet that I’m being facetious? If not, then I’ll flesh it out better for you as to why I would prefer NOT to run down to my nearest church, synagog, or mosque for an explanation of a scientific question: The astronomer Bologna Cecco d’Ascoli was burnt alive by the church in 1327 for suggesting the “theory” that people live on the other side of a round world. When Copernicus, around 1513, wrote that the earth goes around the sun, the church violently opposed this theory for the next three hundred years. Galileo spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest for publicly supporting this view. This time around, certain religious forces take issue with the theory of evolution. And belief in creation myths and superstition didn’t solve jack in the way of medicine. Religion massively prolonging human suffering with their stupid superstitious theories of disease, holding that:
• Disease is caused by sin
• Insanity is caused by demons
• Pope Boniface VIII caused the outlawing of dissection for more than two centuries
So spare me your “think it through” hogwash. It amounts to nothing more than “I broke my brain and went with the Easter Bunny theory so now I’m fat, dumb, and happy.”
So what’s your response going to be to all the above history(?) “”Oops… my bad”
Hey, Drunk Cheney
“One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job! [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 8-9.]
I remember readin this back when I was young, and smart……
Kansas on the other hand didn’t see the difference between creationism and science either, so …
MacDailyNews Take when Kansas announced this:
“Kansas City school administrators obviously have their act together on this one. The only type of hardware that school systems should be considering today are Apple’s OS-unlimited Macs. If any school system is considering spending money on OS-limited PCs from HP, Dell, Gateway, or any other PC box assembler, taxpayers should complain loudly because their money would be slated to be wasted foolishly. Only Apple Macs can run the world’s most advanced operating system and, if need be, Linux variants and Microsoft’s porous Windows.”
Why No MDN Take:
The same heroic Kansas City school administrators who chose Macs last week believe Dells and Macs are fundamentally the same thing. This is with good reason because if you pull a Mac apart you find that it has basically the same contents as a Dell. Thank You Kansas for opening the eyes of Mac Fanboys Everywhere.