Updated: Sad tales from a school system that went from Macs to Dells
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Sep 13, 2005 at 12:48am
I’ve discussed what I think will happen with the Henrcio County School System after their move from Macs to Wintel systems (in fact, it’s already happening). Recently, a teacher (who asked to remain nameless for job security reasons) from another school system (which will also remain anonymous) underlined my points.
In 1998 the teacher’s school system decided to purchase Mac systems for grades K-8. For the high school the default choice was also Macs, but in certain locations Windows would be selected “when it made sense” (personally, I’m not sure that’s ever the case, but I digress). One such decision was putting PCs in most of the vocational programs. Intensive professional development began the summer of 1998, and in the fall the school system got off to a running start.
The technology plan called for replacing groups of computers every year to avoid having to make massive purchases as the system had in 1998 with state technology funding. In 2002 the high school technology committee met to plan the replacement of two labs and the purchase of two additional mobile labs for the 2003-2004 school year, as well as the rest of the labs and teacher desktop computers for the 2004-2005 school year.
After extensive discussion and review of hardware and software they decided to stay the course, making just two changes. They decided to buy iBooks for teachers rather than desktops and to switch from AppleWorks to Office and Filemaker Pro as their “gold standard”—but to phase these changes in over a two-year period to give teachers plenty of time to shift their documents over.
Unfortunately, that plan was scuttled by the school board and in 2004 nearly every Mac in the high school was replaced by a Dell. And over the next two years all Macs throughout the district will be replaced by Windows boxes.
“The board, led by the board president, offered lots of excuses for the change but no substantiated reasons,” the educator told me. “The platitude that students should be taught on the computers they’ll use in the real world was offered as one reason. Lower costs was another. More timely technical response from the IT office? We never did get that one explained.”
The results from last year? IT service calls to the high school tripled from the year before. The IT office had to hire another full time tech and contract with an outside consultant to keep up with tech calls. After factoring in the cost of software to prevent virus, malware, and adware infection as well security software to prevent students from messing with the systems the Dell computers cost US$19 apiece less than the Macs the school system would have bought. That, of course, doesn’t count the extra personnel.
The week the new computers were delivered and set up coincided with the international outbreak of a virus that every new computer caught. The money spent to “de-virus” the computers was taken from the software budget so the school system had no software to convert AppleWorks documents into Office documents. Further, they also had to scuttle plans to buy a site license of FileMaker Pro. Teachers who had depended on AppleWorks had to buy their own copy from Apple and surreptitiously install it since they’re prohibited from installing software on their own desktop computers.
“But most amazing of all, the IT and professional development departments decided that this massive change required no additional professional development investment,” the teacher told me. “Teachers who had spent the last five years using AppleWorks were expected to switch to Office with no help. They were expected to figure out how to connect to a new network without any help. The result was chaos”
Such tales I fear aren’t uncommon. Chalk it up to another Dell of a mess in too many of our school systems.
Thoughts? Write me at dsellers@macsimumnews.com
And don’t forget this week’s Macsimum News poll. We’re asking, “Will you buy an iPod nano?” The iPod nano is the replacement for the iPod mini.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
