PCs are cheaper but schools buy Apples

Hooksett Editor — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:02:00 GMT

BY LAUREN SAUSSER

Popular ad campaigns aside, if 13-year-old Aidan White had his pick, he said he would choose a Mac.

“I think it’s a little bit easier and quicker,” Aidan said, discussing the pros and cons of PCs and Macintosh computers as his seventh-grade French class at Cawley Middle School worked on multimedia presentations. “I actually like Macs because there are more programs on them. There are some pretty cool things.”

But for David Pearl, a member of the Hooksett Budget Committee and a technology volunteer at Underhill Elementary School, it comes down to dollars and cents.

That’s why Pearl has a hard time justifying a $10,000 price tag for 10 new MacBook laptops when PC laptops are currently on the market for about $400 each.

The school district purchase is particularly concerning, he said as he recently addressed the Hooksett School Board, considering the new MacBooks are being used solely by 6- and 7-year-olds at Underhill Elementary School.

“The issue that I have right now is they purchased 10 MacBooks to be used by first- and second-graders,” Pearl said. “I feel like (the computers) are being bought without any plan. I would feel more comfortable spending the money if there was some sort of plan.”

But Bailey Rigg, the technology director for the school district, insists there is a plan in place and the purchase of the 10 laptops in August for Underhill Elementary School is just a small part of the grand scheme.

The 10 MacBooks for Underhill were included in a $60,000- dollar Macintosh order that included 40 iMacs, the desktop equivalent of the MacBook, and 20 additional laptops spread throughout Hooksett’s two other schools. The recent purchase brings the district’s computer count up to about 500 computers or one computer for every five students. Rigg said 95 percent of those computers run on the Macintosh platform.

“Those 10 MacBooks that we put in Underhill this year are the best machines they have in that school,” Rigg said. “The kids are getting a wonderful amount of technology.”

The brand new computers were paid for using money from a leftover fund balance at the end of the 2007-08 school year. Hooksett voters approved the purchase through a warrant article last spring.

Pearl said he has no qualm with administrators integrating technology into the elementary school curriculum or spending money on new computers. In fact, he was part of a team that spearheaded a fundraising campaign to donate 30 PCs with new flat screen monitors to the school free of charge. Every Friday, he teaches students a keyboarding class at Underhill using the donated computers.

“There were some kids who were very computer literate and we realized there were some kids were getting absolutely nothing as far as instruction,” Pearl said. “We wanted to level the playing field.”

But, he said, there is no good reason the district needs to purchase such sophisticated Macintosh hardware when students at these very young ages are only just being exposed to computers and a PC laptop equivalent is available for less than half the amount spent on MacBooks.

Hooksett Superintendent Charles “Phil” Littlefield said there’s no argument PCs are less expensive that Macintosh computers.

But, he said, the School Board made a decision in 2001 that the district would adopt a predominantly Macintosh platform and, to that end, the administrators are sticking to the decision with the recent computer purchases.

“It’s not about the piece of hardware, it is about the extent we can enhance teaching and learning in the classroom with the technology,” Littlefield said. “My position on this is that it was a decision that was made long before I came on board. We’re going to make purchases that are consistent with that decision. We’re done fairly well striking deals with Apple to get favorable prices on hardware that supports and runs the software that our kids are using. That, to me, is cut and dry.”

Along with the Hooksett School District, Littlefield also oversees the Candia and Auburn school districts, both of which use Microsoft operating systems. He said it is useless to debate the pros and cons of Macintosh versus Microsoft but added that although the Apple platform is more expensive, it is generally considered more user-friendly.

“I’m not going to get into the debate over which is better,” he said. “Myself, I’m a PC person. When I came here, I didn’t really know the state of New Hampshire was so Apple-oriented. I grabbed an Apple, put it here in my office and tried to see what people were so impressed with. The next morning, I went to the store and bought one for myself.”

The software that comes pre-installed on the computers is another reason Amy Gillam, the integration technology specialist at Cawley Middle School, says the Macintosh platform is preferred in an educational environment, even for students in the first and second grades.

“When the students are doing a multimedia piece, all the applications on the Macs really speak to each other,” Gillam said. “We’re not teaching operating systems, we’re teaching the software applications.”

Danette Noboa, a second-grade teacher at Underhill Elementary, used the 10 new Mac- Books computers to help her students research information about children’s book author Tomie DePaola.

“They love using these computers,” Noboa said. “Technology is their life. For them to succeed, they have to learn how to use this technology and how to gather the information.”

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PCs are cheaper but schools buy Apples