- 2003.02.21
This is an open letter to the members of the Antioch Unified School
District Board of Education - and any other district board considering
making a migration from Macs to Windows PCs. It will eventually be
posted online at Low End Mac. I would like
to ask Dan Knight, publisher of Low End Mac, not to include any email
addresses of board members or district staff in the posting, and
respectfully ask my readers to direct comments to me and not district
personnel. I am posting this message as an open letter hoping it may
assist others in similar situations.
Dear Board Members,
I found out a couple of days ago that our district is suddenly
making a unilateral switch to "single platform" from "dual platform."
This message is one of those "heartfelt and sincere" viewpoints you may
have heard about. My views on the Mac vs. PC debate are well documented
(http://www.lowendmac.com/lab/), but for
this letter I am going to present only a few of my best arguments for
keeping the district dual platform.
Let me be clear, however, that I believe sincerely that the proposal
being brought to you to go single-platform was written with the
district's best interests at heart, in a sincere attempt to improve
services and reduce expenses for information technology within the
district. However, I do not believe going to a single platform - Mac or
PC - is the best decision. Here are my reasons why.
- Curricular requirements
- Teacher Preferences
- Budgetary decisions driving curriculum design
- Basis for the decision
- Discarding our considerable investment in Macintosh computers and
expertise
- Technical merits
- Decision making process
- Unseen contributions to school technology infrastructure and
support
1. Curricular requirements
At least two programs I plan to use in my classes are Mac-only
programs. A change in curriculum would be required were I eventually
forced to switch to Windows. These programs are NIH Image from the
National Institutes of Health, and A-OK the Wings of Mercury. There is
a supposedly equivalent program for NIH Image called Scion Image
developed for Windows, which I learned at a conference last summer will
not run well on Windows 2000. A-OK the Wings of Mercury, a program I am
planning to purchase for simulating a space mission over a network
mimicking Mission Control for a Mercury Redstone flight, is a Mac only
product. Since this kind of thing is undoubtedly true in reverse, this
is an argument for dual platform rather than Mac-only platform.
In keeping with this point of view, I asked the DVHS Department
chairs to survey their staff and ask the following: Based on curricular
requirements (best platform for teaching a topic in your judgment) how
many teachers require Macs or PCs or don't care? The responses were 9
teachers said the Macintosh is essential to their curriculum (as
in #1 above). 22 teachers said the PC was critical, and
approximately 50 said platform didn't matter.
This isn't about voting for personal preference (see #3), but rather
about these teachers' professional judgment about the best way to
conduct their class. Other comments sent to me included mathematics,
music, art, and journalism software which is either Mac-only or has a
superior Mac version compared to the PC version. That means a
significant number of students would be impacted if forced to switch to
the PC platform. This once again supports cross-platform over
single-platform. And this is only a single school in the district.
This point alone is a necessary and sufficient reason to direct the
district staff to keep the district dual platform.
2. Teacher Preferences
In the same survey above, there was another question about simple
platform preference. In this question, 19 teachers preferred to use a
Mac at work, 32 chose PC, and 19 didn't care. Once again, cross
platform preferences are clearly more desirable than single platform.
No one is suggesting we make the district all Mac; despite the many
advantages that would present (not the least of which is near freedom
of attack from viruses), I am writing this in support of letting
teachers make the best professional judgment of what tools they need to
teach with.
3. Budgetary decisions driving curriculum design
Are we allowing the IT department's slice of the budget drive our
curricular decisions? Wouldn't this be equivalent to making the math
department all only inch-based rulers because they are cheaper than
metric? Given that choice, I'd vote for fewer metric rulers, not more
inch-based rulers.
Personally, I'd trade a dozen PCs for one good Mac. Really. Maybe
the answer is fewer machines, not identical machines. Maybe there are
other solutions as well.
We make these kind of difficult decisions all the time when we opt
to buy classroom sets of books instead of buying an alternative (but
inappropriate) book for everyone simply because it is cheaper. If it
works for books, why not computers?
The critical question which must be asked is: Do we have a policy of
Educational Technology or a policy of Technological Education?
4. Basis for the decision
We are told that it will be cheaper to operate a single-platform
district than a dual-platform district. Without seeing the precise
calculations involved, it is difficult to judge alternative methods of
cutting expenses. What is the total cost of ownership over the life of
the machines in question? Although Macs are more expensive to purchase
- sometimes - how long is their useful life?
I have machines in my classroom which are six years old (and older)
still fulfilling a useful purpose. How many classrooms are still doing
useful work with six year old PC computers?
You should ask for a specific breakdown of exactly where the
expenses will be saved. There are a number of papers posted on the
mechanics of TCO calculation at the following website: http://www.macvspc.info. This is an
independent website created by a concerned citizen of a school district
back east when his district suddenly decided to switch to all-PC
computers despite the fact that most of the computers in the district
were Macs.
5. Discarding our considerable investment in Macintosh computers
and expertise
We have hundreds of Macs on our campus, and to gradually withdraw
support for them will effectively waste hundreds of thousands of
dollars we worked diligently to obtain through grant sources for this
districts - not to mention the many hardware sensors that only work
with Macs and site licenses we have for Mac versions of software. The
discarding of so much effort cannot be ignored by the hard working
teachers who completed the applications for Digital High School, for
example. This has the effect of devaluing the work done on these
projects. Good technology-savvy teachers are hard to find.
6. Technical merits
New machines running OS X can function just fine on the school
network; I have been piloting the use of an OS X machine for
nearly a year. The only application which does not "behave" properly is
ClassXP, which I understand is being ported to OS X this spring. I
could write a long message on this point alone, but again I refer you
to the archive of over 100 articles I have written on this topic posted
at http://www.lowendmac.com/lab/ and the
excellent independent web site http://www.macvspc.info .
One point I will make: Just because a Mac (like any computer)
can be infected with a virus doesn't mean it's likely to
be infected. There are over 35,000 known viruses for PCs, and just 50
or so for Macs. None have so far been reported for the new Mac
OS X as far as I am aware. The payoff for virus writers to wreak
havoc is clearly drawing them to the dominant platform.
Last summer, I attended a workshop at the University of Arizona
where users were asked which platform they would like to use to connect
to the University network for file sharing and printing. 10 teachers
chose Macs, and 20 teachers chose PCs. When we arrived at the computer
lab, all 10 Macs connected to the network and were able to print within
15 minutes. Connecting my own machine took less than 2 minutes.
It took the better part of three hours for three instructors and a
technician to connect the PCs to the network and select the printer
properly for all of them; computers running Windows Me never could
connect, and a couple of users running Windows 2000 were unable to run
the main piece of software chosen for the workshop. The problem
repeated twice as we moved to Kitt Peak National Observatory for
further work and then returned again to the original lab to finish.
The reason I am relating this story? I was the one who figured out
how to configure the PCs to surf and print.
I am not a programmer and not trained in networking. I am just an
experienced user. I can use a Mac, and I can use a PC. It may or may
not be easier to network with the all-Microsoft infrastructure we have
established over the past several years. That question is better left
to technicians better trained than I am. However, the Internet
functionality and LAN access beyond my classroom is not terribly
critical to my curriculum, as I am asking my students to create content
more often than they look it up somewhere else.
Letting the networking requirements drive my curricular decisions
represents misplaced priorities. I choose the Mac because it is the
better platform. However, I am not unaware that the PC has its merits
as well, such as the larger number of choices for software.
There is also the somewhat questionable argument that students
should be trained on the platform they will use in business in later
life. Given that schools always lag behind the latest version of
software, it's highly unlikely that by the time they reach the work
site they will see an operating system that looks the same as what they
used in public school. Do you think that the training they received on
Windows 3.1 in the 5th grade has relevance to the world of work they
enter after the 12th?
Students need to understand what the computer does in general, know
what is possible, and be brave enough to go figure it out in an
unfamiliar environment on demand.
I have students who regularly ask "Where is the Internet on this
computer?" and "How do you get to the typing thing?" These students are
victims of the one-platform mentality that prevents them from
understanding how a computer works in general. That is why I am an
advocate of dual platform over single platform. It's better for the
kids.
7. Decision making process
I have not yet seen any specific details of the transition plan.
Logic suggests certain characteristics must be included. Given that any
transition plan would have to be long-term, because there certainly is
no money to suddenly replace all the Macs in use on campus, why is
there a sudden urgency to bring this decision to a conclusion? While it
is true that input was solicited from the various departments downtown
at the district office, technology teachers and others, according to
your briefing memo these meetings were not about if we would
switch, they were about how and when to switch. (Do I
count as a technology teacher? I don't teach technology per se - I and
my students just use it when necessary. Isn't that the point of
educational technology?) For the record, I knew about the meeting for
technology teachers mentioned in your briefing paper, but I could not
attend on short notice.
When I was in college, I was involved in exactly one protest. I
reported on it for the college paper. It was, believe it or not, about
the sudden announcement of the administration to reduce library hours
on Sunday nights. Students held a sit-in on the library steps, the news
media showed up, the administration came and asked for students to
disperse, the whole nine yards. What I came to find out as I
interviewed the protesters was that the issue wasn't with the library
hours themselves, but the fact that the administration has switched
them without talking to all the stakeholders involved - in this case,
student government.
It seems to me that the recently disbanded Technology Council might
have been the appropriate venue for this sort of decision.
8. Unseen contributions to school technology infrastructure and
support
Many teachers have invested training time, effort, and money in
purchasing software and equipment for their home computers - which are
often Macs. When I was hired in the district, frankly, one of the
things that attracted me was that Macs were prevalent and Mac users
were welcomed. It was a selling point in my recruitment.
It is also true that a number of us have donated many hours of
volunteer effort to assist other teachers in setting up labs of
computers, troubleshooting, piloting various combinations of software
and operating systems, refurbishing older machines and configuring
newer ones to work on the various network configurations that have been
adopted over the past several years. For example, I and my TA's
converted over 100 computers from the old proxy servers with fixed IP
addresses to the new DHCP networking protocol. A switch from dual
platform to single platform will convert all of these donated services
into IT expenses.
There are many other points which could be made - such as the old
standard about Macs being made from a sole-source vendor instead of PCs
being made from many different vendors (a specious argument, because no
one is suggesting that the entire district go all Macintosh, therefore
they cannot be a sole-source vendor) - but I will leave you with this.
We understand that cost cutting measures are necessary in these tight
budgetary times. We understand that hard and unpopular decisions may
have to be made. From my perspective, this is not a question about
popularity or personal preference or even just being comfortable with
what you are familiar with.
All that we ask is that you direct District staff to find other ways
of reducing IT expenses besides converting the district to a single
platform, and at the very least provide more time for the discussion to
be scheduled with all stakeholders. One of those groups are the
non-technology teachers who use technology every day.
Disclaimer. You should also know that I am not employed in any way
by Apple Computer; my role at Low End Mac is as an independent
columnist, free to express my opinion on any matter related to
educational technology.
Thanks for your time,
Jeff Adkins
Science Department Chair
Deer Valley High School
Antioch, CA 94509
http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
