Education News 4/30-5/4/2001

Monday, April 30, 2001

Matthew Rothenberg has listed some interesting speculation about the new offerings that may come from Apple's May 1 press event. Rothenberg speculates on the possibilities of a refreshed iBook, Apple storefronts, and dual processor Macs being announced tomorrow.

Along similar lines, I've posted a column I've had sitting incomplete on my hard drive for some time, Apple Education: "I'm Not Dead," (Yet). After posting a bit of a rip of Apple Education last December and again in February, after an impassioned and long unanswered appeal directly to Cheryl Vedoe, Apple's new Ed VP, and finally after appealing directly to old web buddy and now Apple Higher Education representative, John Martellero, I finally got someone at Apple Ed to notice my little school in Backwash, Indiana! (Thanks, John!)

Even with all the new glitzy software around, kids sometimes gravitate to the old tried and true. Last week, a sixth grader asked if Oregon Trail was still on the server. As part of our behavior management program last year, the kids could "buy" computer time in the "Just Games" folder. It was only available when I so configured the server and held lots of great, but not necessarily educationally relevant games. Oregon Trail got thrown in with the "non-eddies" because to my knowledge, our school has only a single user license. I suspect the program is installed on something greater than one machine.

Oregon Trail Splash Screen When the kids began clammoring for Oregon Trail and had all their work done quite well, I relented and loaded one copy on one machine. The response was incredible! So...I ended up doing a lot of fruitless online shopping for a downloadable version of Oregon Trail. While the Apple II version is still available for download, I never found a downloadable Mac version. On a lark, I went into our local Staples since they often have stacks of closeout software. The closeout table was pretty bare, but I found the 1.2 version on CD for $9.99 (SmartSaver™ Series). While I'm sure the newer Oregon Trail 4 CD may have more eye appeal and features, our Macs are pretty old, so the earlier version was an easy choice.

Do you have a similar story (and/or source for free or inexpensive software)? Let me know and I'll share it with the group.

Please excuse the short post for today. I spent my time finishing the column noted above.

The tension and speculation about Apple's press event today continues to build. By the time you read this message, Steve Jobs may have again wowed the computer world. (Or, Steve may sit quietly snickering to himself as the entire Mac web peels the egg off our collective face.)

A quick peek at Monday's MacSurfer's Headline News revealed a new category of "May 1 'Special Event' Speculation." If you follow eWeek, you'll read Nick dePlume's thoughts about the possible announcement and appeal of Apple retail stores. On Nick's own Think Secret site, the speculation is about the possibility of a major announcement about a new educational software package. Robert Aldridge looks over all the many rumors on the-iBook.com. Likewise, MacVillage.net lists the circulating rumors along with their own wish list (and yeah, OS X support for beige G3's is high on my list, too). Dan Knight has separated rumor listings onto a single new page, RumorLog, along with their tongue-in-cheek The Rumor Mill by Anne Onymus. (Even though I collaborated on one Rumor Mill piece with Dan, I've gotten sucked in occasionally by the headline of some of the fictitious announcements and stories.) Steve Sobec has fabricated his dream machine for May 1 speculation in the padMac. AppleInsider is putting its money on a new iBook being announced today.

(Wow! If you're absolutely bored to death and desperately need something to do, run the last paragraph through your spell checker!)

I missed my regular Friday visit last week to Grace Sylvan's excellent Kids Domain site. I always hit the What's New page to see what I can ~~steal~~ link to for my columns or this site:-)! While I got around to visiting, it yielded a new Soccer Kicks page, complete with online and downloadable soccer games, coloring pages and puzzles, soccer clip art, and links to soccer reviews and other soccer pages. There's also a page posted of new kid's screen savers.

I received a nice email today from Mark Marcantonio about my column yesterday, Apple Education: "I'm Not Dead," (Yet). Mark wrote a similar column last January for MyMac Online (which I'd read, archived as a PDF, but forgot to link to in my column:-(. Taking Back the Schools is Mark's open letter to Cheryl Vedoe and Steve Jobs. Mark's first suggestion to Apple Education was to bring back the teacher seminars once sponsored by Apple. Additionally, Mark suggested Apple make the seminars free. Looking at recent events (Apple Teacher Institutes), I think I'd like to borrow Mark's crystal ball!

Both Mark and I agree that Apple Education appears to be listening carefully to input from educators. If you've got some concerns, maybe now is the time to track down your area Apple rep and bend his or her ear.

Want to be a classroom hero to your students? For me the trick was the $9.99 Oregon Trail CD I picked up over the weekend!

The speculation is over. Apple Computer today released its new lineup of iBook laptop computers. Based on the 500 MHz G3 processor, four different configurations of the slim, new iBook are offered. Pricing ranges from $1299 to $1799. Although each unit uses the same motherboard, each price step offers differing RAM and CD drive options. The base configuration comes with 64 MB RAM, a 10-gig hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive. All include the ATI RAGE Mobility 128 graphics accelerator with 8MB of SDRAM and AGP 2X support. Build-to-order options include increased RAM, a 20 MB hard drive, Airport card, and AppleCare service options.

Apple has chosen to revert to its previous practice of differing pricing for educational institutions (K-12) and education individuals. Prices for Educational institutions carry a $100 per unit discount, while pricing for eduation individuals retains the recent $50 discount.

I have to agree with Joe on this one. The iBook looks really cool, but the pricing just isn't there yet. I find that I am disillusioned by all of the "We'll get education back" rhetoric coming out of Cupertino in light of Apple's continued premium pricing of its products to educational institutions. Let me know what you think.

*Okay, you may think I got that Eastern Standard Time thing wrong. Actually, it is correct. While most portions of the United States change to daylight savings time for the summer, much of Indiana does not! We remain on Eastern Standard Time, effectively putting us on Central Daylight Time with Chicago and other points to the near west. If you think teaching time zones to elementary youngsters is confusing where you live, try our flavor of time zone confusion.

The Mac OS X 10.0.2 updater is now available for download from Apple. It's not as yet posted on the regular FTP sections of Apple, but can be accessed through the software update panel of OS X's system preferences. I downloaded and installed the update overnight. It does seem a tad faster. Besides some bug fixes, the update is supposed to add CD burning capability to OS X. I haven't as yet tried burning a CD with it.

Bill Fox has posted some speed tests on the update at MacsOnly. Bryan Chaffin has posted a nice comparison chart of features of the previous and new iBooks at MacObserver.

Apple has posted a press release concerning the sale of around 23,000 iBooks to the Henrico County Public Schools! Wonder how much Henrico County paid per unit? And...will Apple offer your or my school system the same deal?

Low-End Mac has a nice review of Apple's new iBook. Publisher Dan Knight seems impressed by Apple's new offering.

Disk First Aid 8.6.1 for OS 9.0.4 and later is available via the software update control panel. The utility was also briefly available for download from Apple's servers. It's gone now, but you might check the directory again later.

I ripped off a quick email yesterday, rethought and defanged it, and sent it off to our school's Apple Education sales representative. I pointed out that after all the hype, the new iBook, while cool, isn't priced to retake the education market. Even Apple's K-12 institutional price of $1199 is about $200 too high to seriously sway schools headed towards Windows purchases. If you agree with me, please don't tell just me, let your sales rep know. Better yet, write Apple directly. If you think I'm full of "it," go ahead and let me know that too:-)!

Yee-hah! We've made it through another week. I actually started my weekend early, as I took today off to move one of our daughters home from Indiana University.

While flat panel displays have fallen significantly in price recently, they still sell for considerably more than CRT displays. Maybe Apple's action will help bring prices down a bit more.

Give me a day off and watch me get in trouble. I've pulled together my thoughts concerning the ramifications of the pricing of Apple's new iBook for education. My conclusion isn't pretty, but I believe it to be accurate. I'm looking for a nice wreath for Apple Education's grave in Never Mind. Apple Education probably is dead. Steve Jobs killed Apple Education May 1.