Over 92% of Maine educators choose Apple MacBooks, iPads over HP laptops
“For the first time since the Maine Learning Technology Initiative began in 2002, schools have made a choice in the solutions they will use for 21st century teaching and learning,” Samantha Warren reports for the Maine Department of Education.
“This fall, 39,457 students and educators will start using Apple’s iPad tablet ($266 per year, per seat with network), followed by 24,128 using Apple’s MacBook Air laptop ($319 per year, per seat with network) and 5,474 using the HP ProBook 4440 laptop which runs Microsoft Windows 7 ($286 per year, per seat with network),” Warren reports. “Those figures are not final as orders – including those for most of Maine’s Career and Technical Education centers – are still trickling in following Thursday’s opt-in deadline.”
MacDailyNews Note: Okay, that’s 63,585 Apple devices and 5,474 HP POSes. In other numbers, of the 69,059 devices recorded so far, smart educators have chosen Apple over 92% of the time vs. under 8% who mistakenly settled for HP’s OS-limited devices in an attempt, we assume, to produce a new crop of Maine potato pickers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
“Teachers in schools that went with Apple’s iPad will additionally receive a MacBook Air to use over the four-year contract,” Warren reports. “The State will submit the total next generation order Monday, with teacher devices shipping in July and student devices arriving in time for the start of the upcoming school year.”
Warren reports, “Since its start, the program has only provided Apple laptops but Governor Paul R. LePage and Department of Education leaders wanted to ensure schools had options, including equipping students with the PC and Microsoft technology they are most likely to find in the workplace.”
MacDailyNews Take: On this issue, at the very least, Governor Paul R. LePage and DOE leaders are clueless morons.
Maine’s Idiot Governor Paul LePage“It is important that our students are using technology that they will see and use in the workplace.” Oh, so you think kids who learn Windows 8 will be using that in 12-20 years, you abject idiot? You teach students concepts, not memorization. Because things change; very rapidly in technology, especially. Look at Window 7 to Windows 8, for example. Look at the Mac invading the enterprise for another. You want students who can adapt, not students who learned one way to do something and who therefore FAIL abysmally the moment they enter the real world. We’ve seen it with our own eyes: The Mac kids can do pretty much anything – they are adaptable – the Windows-only kids are completely, stupefyingly lost when not on Windows 7 or earlier. (The Mac kids also know instinctively that Windows sucks compared to their Macs and beg for the MacBook cart.)
New Hire: “Duh, where’s the blue ‘e?'”
Manager: “Son, you’re fired. Helen, get me human resources on the phone!”
Anyone who can’t see that the world is moving rapidly away from Windows is delusional, blind, and/or stupid. LeTard consigned 8% of Maine students and teachers to antiquated, dying technology. Maine taxpayers should be incensed. What a waste of money and time this will be! What’s next, Maine, allowing schools the choice to replace school buses with horse-drawn carts or copiers with mimeograph machines? A long-term contract with Palm?
“It is important that our students are using technology that they will see and use in the workplace.” So, genius, hop in your time machine and bring back some pallets of 18th-generation iPads.
Read Warren’s last sentence thusly: “Since its start, the program that has only provided filet mignon, but Governor Paul R. LePage and Department of Education leaders wanted to ensure schools had options, including feeding students the beef shank that they are most likely to find in the workplace to which Governor Paul R. LePage and Department of Education leaders have doomed them: Taco Bell kitchens statewide.”
