Re: Buggie Pro-A2 Paper

[wbdesnoy@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Obsbedia2 (obsbedia2@aol.com) wrote:
: Stephen asked for ideas for a pro Apple II paper that he was writing, oh,
: about a year or so ago (Y2K compliant, inexpensive, wealth of programs,
: [. . .]).  Sure could use some ammunition with the school district now
: issuing a policy of no repairs for any computers over five years old,
: unless the individual school sites pay for them.

Three good reasons are that Apple II directed courses are skill, rather than
software, based; many schools have a large collection of licenced educational
software which would be difficult to transfer to the PC or Mac environment;
and, in the early grades, it does not matter whether you learn on an Apple II
or the Pentium II because your skills are going to be equally obsolete by the
time the student graduates anyway -- so if the Apple II is cheaper to maintain
in the school environment (and it probably is :-), go with it!

Not to mention, any classroom populated with IIgs's should have free access
to HyperCard, making it easier for ambitious teachers to develop their own
programmes.

At any rate, this policy is probably the result of the prohibitive cost of
maintaining Macs and PCs over anything else.

: Don't worry.  [. . .]  I plan to keep at least one school site populated
: with Apple IIs throughout my teaching career!

:-)

: "Teachers ask me all the time what kind of computer is best for the classroom.
:  I tell them, 'One that is still there on Monday morning after the break in
: over the weekend.'"

It is just like on campus: public access dumb terminals can be left in the
halls, unattended, 24-hours a day.  Every other public access computer is
under guard, key, and hours of operation.

Byron.