“Through a four-year lease agreement between Apple Computers and Greene County schools, about 1,800 students and 170 teachers will receive the computers. Piloted in Henrico County, Va., the program in Greene County is the first countywide iTech program in North Carolina, officials said,” reports Angela Harne for Cox News Service. “Beginning in late October, parents and students will attend two-hour training sessions on the new computers. Upon completion of the course and payment of a $40 insurance fee, students will begin using the machines both in the classroom and at home.”
“‘By Nov. 1, we want the iBooks going home with the students and coming back in the morning,’ Greene County Schools Superintendent Steve Mazingo said. ‘We are ahead of schedule, thanks to our component staff and the support of Apple,'” Harne reports.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
North Carolina’s Greene County endorses plan to give iBooks to every student in grades 6-12 – June 10, 2003
good Lord ibooks galore for the students. theres a new story about ibooks almost everyday. those are some lucky kids
Following on the previous post, does anyone know (or know where to find out) just how many school boards have made similar arragements with Apple? Additionally, how many of these boards are new to Apple (i.e. they are just replacing existing Apple labs with Apple laptops). Either way, it’s great for our favorite computer, what they use at school is what their parents will buy for home, or so the hope is.
And since when do technology projects work out AHEAD of schedule? Apple might get a reputation for being easily deployed… (Look at VA Tech too.)
Green County is a rural area. IF they show improvements in tha academic records I will expect a snowball rolling effect.
Fred Anderson spoke today at the 2003 Technology Conference, hosted by Citigroup and Smith Barney. Talking about Apple results Mr. Anderson said that the company’s share of the education market rose to 16% during the June quarter, up from 15% the prior quarter.
Maybe Apple is slowly gaining momentum and larger market share *might* also allow Apple – in the future – to lower prices even further.
we didn’t even get free pencils in my school…if you forgot one, you had to give it back!
Not only did we not get free pencils, we had to walk to school, uphill, both ways.
The sad part of this otherwise happy story is that the students and parents are going to get an unfair view of the MacOSX operating system. Having just upgraded from an iBook to a 12″ PB, I can honestly say that the iBook runs OS X like a one-legged man runs from the bulls in pamplona. Things that took forever on the iBook take mere seconds on the powerbook. Viewing pdf files in Preview now doesn’t slow the computer to a crawl.
Don’t get me wrong, the iBook is a good little machine. I was quite happy with mine. However, for a 4 year lease program you don’t want to buy a G3 processor machine. Apple has to up the iBook line to a G4 processor or else it has to start putting disclaimers on the boxes that OS X will run like ass on the iBook.
I have an iBook and it runs fine, Of course I also have the max RAM. I think the iBook should be okay for educational purposes. It’s not like they’ll be doing heavy stuff such as games or intense graphics
I have an iBook 500mgz and I think it runs OS X just fine. I love it, can’t get my fingers off the thing. Of course I used to work with a Toshiba laptop previously, which makes the iBook seam absolutely beautiful…
If Apple takes time delivering the iBooks, probably it’ll be loaded with Panther, which is Snappy(tm) even on iBooks if the rumors are to be believed.