The School District of Superior Wisconsin recently had all of their Apple and Macintosh computers disposed of to the Wisconsin Bureau of prisons for recycling. They spent the taxpayers dollars on pee-cee laptops and the subcompact pee-cees with lcd screens. All of their educational software was Apple/Mac based and of course did not work on the new pee-cees. The School boards computer department only replaced about 1/3 of the removed computers with new pee-cee computers. So the majority of the students now only see a computer maybe 1 hour a day in a computer lab situation. I feel that the students in Superior Wisconsin will suffer by getting poorer grades due to the lack of computer access. I am sure that their standardized tests scores will drop because of this poor decision. I know of several parents in Superior that are now paying about $7,000/year for their students education in a Duluth Minnesota College Entrance orientated private school instead of going to the school district of Superior's schools. But they know that their childrens education is well worth the extra money spent.
-----Original Message----- From: Apple2list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dale Hill Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004 12:57 AM To: Apple2list Subject: Re: Computers in school (was: Apple IIc +(color monitor?)) Byron, Our school has gone totally to the dark side, other than the two or three Apple IIes with color monitors working in the 1st grade school and kindergarten. Our supt brags that we have nearly a thousand computers in a school of 2000 students. One for every 2 students? Sounds good, but, think again. All of our grades are doing AR, Advanced Reading or something. The best computers sit in a computer lab and are only used to test the kids to see if they are ready to move to another higher book. I've been in those labs while students were taking tests, and they simply couldn't read the questions much less type in the correct answer. I personally believe that using computers in that manner has set our schools' reading programs back many, many years. For kids to learn to read, it still takes one-on-one reading, if parents aren't reading at home. The Apple IIes chug along and the teachers know if there disk fails, they can call me for another copy. Unfortunately, let one of those big, new machines go down, kiss it goodbye for the rest of the year. One tech for 1000 computers. Stupid. They had dozens of their New Windows computers crashing and could not be revived. Problem? Don't set the computer CPU on the carpet because the static electricity was getting to them. I had all my Macs on the carpet and they weren't crashing. The students could no longer take diskettes to school with assignments on them for fear of viruses. The high school computer labs were down more than up. When my kids graduated from high school, the two boys went to college and quickly found jobs because they were Mac Literate. My youngest worked his way through college as a hired staff member being the Mac Tech lab overseer. Off of topic, but I had 3 TRS-80 Model IVs in one classroom and the teacher simply let the kids play on them when they were on the last bus. The kids loved them. Could just easily have been Apple IIes, as well, because the kids learned to use the keyboards, understood what a diskette was and what was on them. Now days, our kids our non-keyboard literate, using mouses at school and PlayStation stuff at home. Pretty sad, when a computer has so many possibilities, but, ... kids go from one grade to the other, computer illiterate. By the way, in the 3 and 4th grades, the classroom computers are all dead windows 95 computers or even less. It's a nightmare. I saw ?Duran Duran, the music group on Jay Leno last night. They had 2 lead guitars, a rhythm guitar, a bass guitar, a keyboarder, and a drum set, and sitting gingerly in the middle of the group was a Silver Macintosh laptop with the Apple emblem staring at you, no matter what camera they used. I'm not sure how they were using it. Maybe iMusic with harmonizing voices. It was an incredible sight. 5 Minutes of free Apple advertisement. Incredible sight. Dale -- Apple2list 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> Apple2list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/apple2.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/apple2list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com -- Apple2list 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> Apple2list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/apple2.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/apple2list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
