Anyone involved in educational computing should bookmark Educators' News and visit regularly. Steve Wood is a long-time teacher, a former Low End Mac columnist, and finds himself equally frustrated by an evil NT techie, bureaucratic mandates about education, and Apple's seeming apathy about the real education market in favor of "glitz" contracts.
<http://www.mathdittos2.com/ednews/> Today's View From the Classroom column, "Straight Talk About the Education Market," really hits the nail on the head, pulling together Wood's own thoughts as well as those of Jeff Adkins (our Mac Lab Report columnist) and others. I've read much on the topic, and it's one we address regularly on Low End Mac, but nowhere is the whole messy situation laid out more clearly that in this column. <http://www.mathdittos2.com/columns/view/v021018.html> In addition to convincing our schools not to dump Macs, we need to look in the other direction and convince Apple to create computers for the education market. The iMac, eMac, and iBook were steps in the right direction, but (as Wood points out), they tend to have a high initial cost, which makes it that much harder to get them in the budget. Finally, every teacher in the United States is eligible for a free copy of Mac OS X 10.2. No postage and handling. Absolutely free from Apple itself. <http://www.apple.com/education/macosxforteachers/> Whether this smacks of desperation or not, it's an incredible deal even compared with the education price, which is about half the consumer price of $129. Even if you never use it, you can make another Mac user very happy by donating your Not For Resale educator copy to someone with an iMac, G3/G4 PowerBook, iBook, or G3/G3 Power Mac. Finally, for those who have clamshell iBooks, I learned yesterday that they can be upgraded well beyond what Apple's site and even Low End Mac knew. According to John H. Farr on Applelinks -- and confirmed by others -- the clamshell iBook can accept a 512 MB memory module, providing plenty of RAM for Photoshop or Mac OS X. <http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2002/10/20021016161606.shtml> A quick visit to RAMseeker shows prices starting at under US$100. If you're running low on memory now and again, this merits consideration. <http://www.ramseeker.com/> On the subject of 'Book upgrades, I recently put a 20 GB IBM TravelStar in my PowerBook, replacing a nice 10 GB Toshiba drive. The drive cost $101.50, gave my files breathing room, and really improves performance with a faster spin rate (5400 rpm vs 4200 rpm) and larger buffer (8 MB vs 1 MB). Another upgrade easily worth the price if you're running out of drive space or just find your old drive too slow for comfort. For similar deals, visit <http://dealmac.com/> and search for TravelStar. -- Dan Knight, president, Cobweb Publishing, Inc. <http://cobwebpublishing.com> <http://lowendmac.com> <http://digital-views.com> <http://digigraphica.com> <http://lowendpc.com> <http://reformed.net> You shouldn't need a Passport to use the World Wide Web. -- MacInSchool is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... / Buy books, CDs, videos, and more from Amazon.com \ / <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/lowendmac> \ Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> MacInSchool list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/macinschool.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:macinschool@;mail.maclaunch.com> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:macinschool-off@;mail.maclaunch.com> For digest mode, email: <mailto:macinschool-digest@;mail.maclaunch.com> Subscription questions: <mailto:listmom@;lowendmac.com> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/macinschool%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
