You have all seen the commercial featuring Mac versus PC. Bancroft-Rosalie School will need to upgrade the server for next year. Now is the time to discuss whether to continue with PC’s or make a switch to Macs.
The trend is education is for high schools to provide their students with computers. Bancroft-Rosalie School experimented this past year with netbooks for juniors and seniors. Now the students have had the computers for one year, and the response has been mixed. They like the fact that they had access to a computer 24/7. But most were disappointed with the netbooks. The comments on the size of the screen and the keyboard were very negative. The battery life was positive.
The Macbooks are more expensive than netbooks or full size PC’s. But they are more user friendly. The life expectancy of a netbook is 3 years. The Macbooks is at least 6 years. Lyons-Decatur uses Macbooks. Wisner-Pilger and Oakland-Craig are providing students with Macbooks next year. In a poll or our 9-12 teachers, they all felt that they could work with either system.
What I would like to do is provide all high school students with a computer next year. My preference is a full-size computer. I like the Mac because it is very user friendly, but more expensive. The netbooks we have would be passed down to junior high students. Teachers in grades 7-12 who want their students to have computers for a class period will not be tied to the movable cart or the computer lab.
Mac also has excellent professional development workshops for teachers. If we go with PC’s, Mrs. Nolting and I will have to find someone to provide teacher training for our staff. Why do we need teacher training? We want teachers to go beyond using computers for e-mail and Internet. Student projects can be more than giving a powerpoint presentation. Research projects can be more than paraphrasing what they read in a book or on the Internet.
A senior in advanced computers spends as much time in the computer lab as possible working on the Macs we purchase 3 years ago for students in that class. He said that he likes to go in there to play on the computers. He used the word “play” because he said that doing schoolwork on the Macs isn’t work, its play.
