Educational subsidies

Never in the 17 years I've been involved in educational computing did the government ever encourage the use of Apples. As far as I know, the only way the gov't bore any of the price tag for computers in education was through grants (platform independent) or at the state level through negotiating volume pricing (all manufacturers included). Also, in Virginia in 1988 and 1990, the state had an initiative to get a critical mass of machines into grade levels 5-8. Some of the state money for education was distributed in hardware form. There were 2 contracts - one to Apple and the other to the winner of the DOS machine bid (Tandy). I think IBM challenged the outcome of the bid process but Tandy received the contract in the end. Each district then specified which type of machine they wanted. Apple II GSes or the Tandy 1000TL. In 90 the Apple offered was the new Mac LC (with no hard drive). The number of machines you received depended on your school's enrollment. This was a departure from the usual method of basing state aid on the district's financial index. In the 80s Apple was much more committed to Computers in Education than any other company. IBM made several abortive attempts, and formed their Eduquest division to handle the market. The machines were under-powered and the software was deadly. Apple asked teachers what they wanted, IBM told us what we should have. Apple also made its Appleworks software (WP, SS, DB) software available to schools at an extremely reasonable price. IBMs prices were out of sight. And based on market share, educational software manufacturers concentrated their best stuff on the Apple platform. As the percentages changed so did the mix of available titles. The Mac only label was common in the 80s; now you rarely see it. The IIes were real workhorses in the schools - impossible to kill. The GS, which was supposed to replace them, really didn't offer too much new for us other than a 3.5" drive. The Appletalk built-in network was supposed to be a plus - and it was for printing - but using it for program sharing was a painfully slow process. I remember telling the Apple rep that I wasn't sure what the future would be, but it wouldn't be running at 2 MHz and it wouldn't be black and white (as the Macs were at that time). I taught BASIC and even Pascal on those old Apples until 88 when we bought Tandys. One lab had Apple cards in them to run the old software. When Apple introduced its color Macs (1990?), they were so much more expensive than the similarly powered DOS machines that it was no contest, we joined the Wintel world. Also, we installed our first Novell network which helped the decision. On the West Coast, I think Apple was much more heavily involved in providing hardware to schools through grants. There were several showcase "Classrooms of Tomorrow?" And once a district invested in Apple the tendency was to continue buying the same product. The introduction of Windows 95 also did a lot to change encourage education to change platforms. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com