Comments on: Maine: A MacBook for each student in grades 7-12

The state's Department of Education commits to providing a notebook to every public-school student from middle school to high school, purchasing tens of thousands of the Apple laptops.

[dbloyd]

Mac OS 9 I bet. I mean MAC.

[dbloyd]

Apple II machines were no longer being sold when those kids eventually were ready to purchase a computer later in life. Macs were a different machine. I can understand them buying a Windows machine. Besides, today there is more focus on using the web and email than running applications locally on the hard drive than it was 20 years ago.

[Cmaine]

I am from Maine and the school i went to had ibooks, it is not that great as it sounds, the teachers can block site. They even have Wikipedia blocked. They even have this thing where you can go onto a student computer and see what they are doing on it and if you are on a bad website or playing a game. you get into big trouble and you can get your laptop taken away

[Kuzzle]

I also am from Maine the laptops they gave us in 7th and 8th grade were not as good as it sounds. They were iBooks only 800mhz if I recall correctly and only had 128mb of ram. My schools network wasn't as locked down as Cmaines school seems to be. Facebook, Myspace, AIM, and pretty much every other place students could waste time at was open for access. Fast forward to my senior year and it was still the same. We had slightly better iBooks and were starting to get some MacBooks. They ditched the one computer class my school offered that year too. Security was a joke and the IT person was a slacker.

[YankeePoodle]

If the question is about education software there are possible more options available for windows. Ofcourse there are multitude of online tools too. I would have gone with netbooks with XP or windows 7. Either there is a MacFanBot who made this decision, or Apple is giving away the laptops as a educational service. I hope it is the latter

[lildimsum7]

wow, such a waste. what kind of idiot allows this waste of money?

[The_happy_switcher]

I think you got it backwards. Why is money being spent on computers for idiots who think a school laptop is for surfing porn in school and chatting with their friends over the internet?

I think the money would be better spent on buying convertible tablet pc's so that the students could use them in math and similar classes...

[zachmu02]

I think a lot of people here are getting caught up on the OS. As a teacher, I can tell you that kids don't really care about the OS. They just want to know what to click on to open the internet, Word, PowerPoint, etc. It doesn't matter whether it is OS X or Windows XP. As long as the program opens after the 2nd click, the student will be happy. Also, many educational programs are becoming web based. It doesn't matter whether the schools have Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS 9. As long as they can access the internet, the applications will work.

Secondly, these school districts are NOT teaching the technology. Why teach a student how to use Windows Vista? Technology changes constantly. Most schools teach WITH technology, instead of teaching the actual technology. The technology is the tool, not the content.

[The_happy_switcher]

Maine gets it. Remember the old adage 'as Maine goes, so goes the nation?' The revolution is nigh. Apple has brilliantly found ways to bring people into the Mac via ipod and iphone. Go to any campus today you will see large percentage of notebook toting students carrying Macs--a much higher than the oft quoted 9-10 percent of home usage. Some colleges report that 40 percent of students use Macs--eg Princeton. When they join the workforce they will purchase Macs for their families, too. Windows is your dad's OS. OS X is the future whether you like or not. Call us elitist, nobody cares. You're the same person who curses someone for driving BMW--deal with it, get over and accept it--the Windows slide into the abyss of irrelevancy has started and gravity is a b***h that won't be denied. You can post below me that I'm a fanboy, go ahead, you don't know me from Adam so I don't care--it matters not. The facts and trends speak for themselves. Peace out.

[gps_car]

i wish my school had this it would make it way easier from class to class because the school gives a schedule and an agenda every half term but the school would be way better off just giving us all laptops

[Synthmeister]

1. Maine certainly got a great price on the iBooks
2. It's the software that makes a Mac great. Nothing on a PC compares to the iLife suite with iPhoto, iWeb, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand. iMovie has no competition in the price range and GarageBand has nothing comparable on the PC. iWeb lets any non-geek set up a website.
3. You can bet that Apple threw in copies of iWork too: Keynote clobbers Powerpoint, Pages and Numbers are plenty powerful enough for High Schoolers and actually make word processing and spreadsheets enjoyable. Have any of you PC types even seen how iLife and iWork are integrated? You can easily pull in resources from the disparate programs from within each program to construct a website, movie or DVD.
4. No viruses folks, regardless of who hacked a Mac at some artificially staged demo. No virus has ever brought down OS X in the real world.

[jmacofearth]

Woot. Way to go MAINE! I went to prep school in Maine for a year. HI HEBRON ACADEMY!

Looks like someone has their priorities straight. I wonder how DELL didn't strongarm the Maine school board into buying peecees. But I'm glad they didn't. Windows/Vista/7 can be run in a window as an app on a Mac, not the other way around.

Good show!

@jmacofearth
http://uber.la

[z1221]

I am all for technology in schools. In fact, the high school I went to had an IT after school program for students to learn IT stuff. But one of the school districts started giving middle school students MacBooks, I knew the plan would be horrible. Let's face the reality, are kids these days going to use laptops to be productive? No. Are they just going to find workarounds so they can use MySpace and Facebook? Yes. I seriously don't know what's wrong with our public school system here in America. I'm not dogging any public school teachers. In fact, one public school teacher introduced me to digital recording and playing bass guitar and is influential on where I am today because of it. But we sure have some big time flaws in the system.

[BunnyWoot]

I am currently a student in Maine who has been issued a macbook. The impact it's had on my school work is actually very significant. Those who were not previously able to get onto the internet at home are now completely able to at school for research projects. It's had a positive effect on my organization and work ethic as well. The macs come with wonderful applications that enhance our abilities in school. I've saved so much paper by taking digital notes and doing my papers on my laptop. What bother me however is the fact that some people assume that every teenager is immature and not capable of being able to handle technology. There are some kids that need to learn to grow up and not waste the states time, but it's wrong to assume we are all like that.