SCOOP!--Maine expands Apple 'Book Program to High School Teachers and Administrators using MacBooks

Macs Only! once again brings you breaking news of a huge Apple contract with the State of Maine.

According to Macs Only!'s sources, the Maine Department of Education (MDE) has just announced internally an expansion of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), the program that brought 30,000+ Apple iBooks and AirPort wireless internet networks to all seventh and eighth graders in the state, including their teachers, and to many others in higher and lower grades. This new expansion will include all teachers and administrators in high schools (grades 9-12) and career and technical education centers throughout the State. They will receive professional development, equipment, and support beginning with the coming 2007-2008 school year.

And the equipment? Apple MacBooks, of course!

According to MDE,

"[T]his initiative is a critical next step in supporting Maine educators in preparing all secondary students for college, career, and citizenship in the 21st Century. While there are many subject-specific skills that are essential in making a successful transition from high school to college, there are three cross-disciplinary skills that are particularly important in this transition: autonomous reading/thinking/analysis, broad information literacy, and comfort in the use of electronic social networks. These skills reflect the rapidly changing structure of colleges and careers today, and will be emphasized in the materials and support provided by the MLTI."

The MLTI project has had many successes at the middle school level with Apple iBooks and AirPort wireless internet networking. Students participating in the MLTI project have excitedly told MDE about their increased motivation and engagement in academic work because of the infusion of Apple's technology in their school.

Therefore this new initiative is "ultimately about recognizing and embracing the need for high school reform, enabling teachers in grades 9-12 to use [Apple's] technology as an effective tool for ongoing professional development and helping them prepare their students to enter and successfully compete in the high-tech global marketplace."

Maine's high schools signed up for the expanded program and ordered equipment last Friday. MDE posted these future key dates:

• Late September, 2007 - MLTI device delivery at each school
• Late September to early October - Regional leadership training, Technical Lead training
• October and ongoing - Educator training

The following hardware details were extracted from MLTI documents.

Hardware

The Apple MacBook is the laptop that will be distributed to all teachers. Powered by a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip and loaded with 1 GB of system memory the laptop will run Apple’s award winning operating system, Mac OS 10.4 Tiger.

The MacBook has a variety of ports for connecting to peripheral devices, and will come with an 80GB hard drive, large enough to store all of your school work. It will have enough space to create and edit an iMovie, complete with music from your iTunes library, and photos from your iPhoto collection.

The built-in wireless networking capabilities have been upgraded to Airport Extreme, 801.11b/g/n. Airport Extreme wireless networking will allow teachers to connect to any standard wireless network.

The optical drive is a slot-loading CDRW-DVD Combo drive. This means you can burn CDs, and watch DVD movies. The MacBook also includes a built in iSight camera for instant video conferencing with up to 3 other teachers and audio conferences with up to 9 other teachers.

Support

Apple's MLTI support plan will continue in same fashion as today's Middle School 1:1 program. Each school will be provided with 2% or at least one MacBook as a spare device in case a laptop needs to be sent out for repair. Online tools include the MLTI Asset Manager, DepotWorks, and GSX to help track, manage, and keep the laptops in good repair. Batteries that lose their ability to hold a reasonable charge will be replaced at no cost.

The MLTI Local Depot will provide both warranty and nonwarranty repairs. All costs related to non-warranty repairs will be the responsibility of the local school.

Each school will be issued an administrative copy of Apple Remote Desktop to allow technicians to push software updates or make configuration changes. Apple Remote Desktop can also be used to remotely manage computers or gather reports about system configurations and software loads. Remote management tasks can be saved and reused or scheduled so they are performed at off-peak times, or whenever MacBooks are available on the network.

For every 30 MacBooks at your school, you will be provided with a firewire hard drive that includes a custom solution to reimage and restore the device's software to the standard pre-loaded software image. Schools may also install additional software to the device provided it has license to do so.

Buffer Pool

The Buffer Pool will provide schools with replacement devices for accidentally damaged or stolen laptops. Each school will be assigned a specific number of devices from the pool, based on size (1% of deployment in year 1). The Buffer Pool will be housed at the MLTI Local Depot, so as replacements are needed, schools will be able to ship the broken device to the depot in exchange for a working device.

The software provided by the MLTI is also pretty impressive:

• Mac OS 10.4 Tiger Apple's latest operating system. Each year as available, the MLTI solution will be upgraded to utilize the latest version of the Mac OS.
  
• AppleWorks productivity suite that includes word processor, spreadsheet, database, drawing, painting, and presentation tools.
  
• CyberDuck is an open source, fully featured FTP/SFTP client. Users may use it to upload web pages to web servers and perform other file transfer needs. Offered to MLTI by the David Kocher, the creator of CyberDuck.
  
• Firefox the popular open source web browser.
  
• Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. Offered to MLTI by Google Inc.
  
• GNU Image Manipulation Program an open source image editing program. Similar to Adobe Photoshop.
  
• iLife including iMovie HD, iPhoto, iTunes and GarageBand
• iWork including Keynote and Pages
  
• Journler a daily journal software package.
• NeoOffice an open source productivity suite. Create, open, edit, and save Microsoft office formatted files (.doc, .xls, .ppt).
  
• NetLogo is a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. It is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time. Offered to MLTI by Uri Wilensky, the creator of NetLogo, Director of the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling.
  
• NoteShare a multimedia digital notebook to create, organize, share and publish.
  
• Other Apple or Apple provided software including Safari, Mail, iChat, iCal, Address Book, iSync, QuickTime, Grapher, etc.
  
• PASCO DataStudio provides data analysis, graphing calculator.
  
• PASCO MyWorld GIS is a Geographic Information System for Inquiry-Based Learning. Query, plot and analyze geographic data such as climate, geology, biodiversity, population and more.
  
• SketchUp Pro is 3D design software. Offered to MLTI by Google Inc.

Macs Only! was the very first Mac Web site to break the news of Apple's original contract with Maine's Learning Technology Initiative several years ago. We will continue to bring you breaking news about this terrific educational program in the most Mac-centric State in the Union. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]