It’s been a bit over a week since my original blog post and it certainly has been a wild ride. The post generated 2 front page articles in The Age newspaper in Victoria, news coverage on ABC radio, Macworld magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald and Herald-Sun websites, and even an education news site from the UK. I also received literally hundreds of very supportive tweets, emails, and comments on my blog from teachers all over Victoria. This issue is clearly one that many feel passionate about.
More importantly, after my post was written, the Department put a hold on their order of white Macbooks for the teacher lease program and called Apple in to renegotiate. Unfortunately, it seems the negotiations quickly descended into somewhat of a farce. My understanding is that the Department insisted that Apple upgrade the RAM on all the Macbooks to 4GB before they were shipped for no extra cost. This was seen by Apple as highly unreasonable, especially considering the RAM on the white Macbooks comes in the form of two 1GB chips, meaning each computer would need two new chips to upgrade it to 4GB – a costly exercise.
Instead, as was reported in the Age today, Apple once again offered the Department the Macbook Pro for only $2.30 extra a fortnight. They also had a tech on-hand to confirm what I argued in my original post: the Mac Pros would could run the exact same image as the white Macbooks. Therefore the original excuse not to offer them to teachers (it would take too long to create a new image for them) was not valid.
The offer was again rejected. Why? Well, I thought it pertinent here to post a comment on The Age website from a worker ‘within the Education Department’ that refused to release his/her name as a bit of an indication of what we are dealing with:
“Working within the education department i really don’t see the issue here once you know ALL the facts.
Teachers can still choose the cheaper and better lenovo machine, teachers get this a ridiculously cheap price and 90% of teachers i’ve worked with use their laptops for family things and pass them off too kids. These laptops are also covered for ANY damage (including dropping them out a window…).
The majority of schools i have been in also provide teachers with access to staff desktop computers that they can also use, hence why alot of them do not even bring their “work” laptop to the workplace.
I wish that this program was extended to all education staff and not just the teachers as i’d jump at the chance for a cheap notebook with full support it’s entire duration!
Can some news sites please INVESTIGATE the full story before jumping on one assistant principals whiny rant?”
Personally, the most disappointing part is the assertion that alot of ‘them’ “do not even bring their work laptop to the workplace”. (closely followed by the bit where he/she calls my blog post a whiny rant). Insulting and condescending.
This sort of comment displays an attitude that perhaps sheds light on why we have this predicament in the first place.
Read the article and more comments here: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/computers/apples-dunked-for-just-115-20110906-1jvzs.html?comments=156#comments
Speechless at that quote by a DEECD employee! Are they living in 1995? A time before computers were seen as an optional extra (and maybe punctuation was also optional?).
As I’ve said, I’m a BYO laptop girl and have never used a Mac however I know how serious this issue is and I commend you for fighting for us! What a shame a teacher has to lead the charge and the AEU can’t do something about it.
I look forward to hearing how it develops!
Kathleen
Interesting the poor spelling and use or lack of capital letters in this education department worker’s post. One thing that annoys me is alot being written as one word. It is a lot not alot.
As for the laptop debacle I am buying my own of my own choice. I will pay far more but have a laptop that will be able serve me for the next two years. Yes two years is the maximum time I will keep a laptop.
Interesting stance re the ‘better laptop’ but moreso re the time frame.
Most school based student 1:1 laptop programs have their machines on a 2 year or at most 3 year lease cycle, so the students are always close to the current model of device for thier need.
Makes sense that teachers should be in the same boat.
Wow-no words!!!! Any wonder they weren’t prepared to use their name!! I agree with Kathleen -what century are they living in? I couldnt survive without my laptop, and cringe at the thought of a desktop. Reality check needed….Keep up the great blogging!
Erin
Well Done! I still can’t believe this DEECD is doing this, I myself am not a teacher, actually I’m 13 and very heavily involved with technology. My mum is the teacher in our family and I finally convinced her to lease a Mac this her, she was really excited as the change to an iPhone benefited her a great deal and she was hoping this would be the same. I had thought the DEECD would be moving to either MB Airs or Pro’s after Apple announced the discontinueing of the white unibody MacBook. Unfortunately this was not the case and as I read the contract for the lease the more I was disappointed. How is a $800 Mac pushed out at $11 a fortnight for 4 years! It equates to a markup of over $300! Then when you want to keep the Mac after the lease it’s another $200 at least. No wonder why Apple were ferious, their product had been hugely disadvantaged. I still can’t understand why the DEECD disagreed with Apple’s offers on the MBA and MBP. From my view this seems quite anti-competitive and I think the Department should be watching their backs, Apple has a pretty good Legal counsel. From some of the comments in The Age yesterday I was able to come to the conclusion that many of the population have no clue how much work teachers put in, my mum stays back until 5 nearly every day, marks work on the weekend then has to write reports in her own time. Some of the view in the commenters suggest that they think the teachers only what the Apple Macbook Pro as a fashion accessory and they don’t need this and that and should deal with an outdated model because they don’t do anything intensive. This isn’t the argument. These teachers have to pay for the laptop, they should at least have a choice in what one they want, and have those choices be up-to-date and fair. They have to keep this laptop for 4 years, so it needs to be good. All the commenters could see was teachers wanting something “shiny shiny”. These things make me really angry, hopefully mum will end up with a good laptop. Thanks for what your doing Richard.
Rant Over
just called the deecd. They said no macbook pros anytime soon. Damn
Not wanting to argue with your main points here, as I agree with everything you’ve written and think it’s a disgusting situation that we’re in. However, in the interest of fair reporting, the ‘member of the Education Department’ that you’ve quoted is a school tech, no doubt a contracted part-timer, and can hardly be represented as speaking on behalf of the Education Department. Unfortunately, though, this is still representative of the views of a lot of contracted part-time school technicians and that is a big part of the reason we’re in this situation.
Hmm, just shows you that perhaps this DEECD employee (school tech or not) does not understand that taking someone on who has their own respectable blog and an informed reading audience, is not very wise. Does he/she truly believe that making one literacy- riddled comment to a newspaper will be sufficient to stop the whole social media machine from operating? You know what? Teachers have blogs, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, IM, and word of mouth. Since teachers are obviously capable of using these tools, perhaps it is reasonable to understand that teachers should also have the opportunity to choose the laptop they prefer for the same price (PC or Mac)…and remember, teachers are preparing the next generation for the future – or has everyone forgotten it is about giving the kids the best possible education we can?
Hi all, I know this post is from a while ago now, but just wondering how those that got these new MacBooks in the latest roll out are finding them? I’m very disappointed with mine, to the extent that I’m wondering if I should have switched back to using a PC, particularly as we are now running Windows 7 which seems to be a lot nicer than XP and Vista. Anyway, the Macbook I got has all the latest software which is fantastic, but myself and others in my school are finding them problematic. Starting programs is very slow (even basics like system preferences), particularly if more than one other program is already running. Word 2011 has had issues keeping up with my typing and has had error messages saying there is not enough memory to display images. Outlook 2011 has crashed a number of times. The coloured spinning wheel is constantly appearing, much more so than on my old Macbook. If music is playing and I start a new program the music cuts out – this rarely happened on my old machine. Others have had similar and sometimes more serious issues. I had heard that upgrading the RAM to 4 or 8GB can help (which according to the article the department asked Apple to do for free and understandably, they wouldn’t) as Lion needs 2GB RAM as a minimum and this is all the computer has. Has anyone done this and if so, has it helped? Does the lease agreement even allow us to upgrade hardware?
I am a teacher who has been given one of these Mac’s. Yes, I could have gone for a Lenovo, but all of my teaching is done on a Mac. I love Mac’s, and it is all I use, but unfortunately, this one is unusable. It takes approximately 5 minutes to write an email in outlook. When I am writing the with sentence, it is still writing the first. I timed it at over one second per letter.
When the department were contacted, they told me that I can pay to have more RAM put in, but as they have given us computers with 2 x 1 gig of Ram, I would have to purchase 2 x 2 Gig.
I can’t believe that they have given us a computer that we pay more for, and that won’t run the image that they have supplied us.
Just curious – will the department finally realise how crazy their decision is now that Apple has upgraded with iBooks 2 – allowing for textbooks to become an interactive i- experience ? Will that software even be capable of running on the old white dinosaurs ?
I just logged into Apple’s education store as I needed to get quote for a couple of new laptops and noticed that the white iBook is no longer available for purchase by schools. Should be interesting to see what teachers are offered next round.
whoops….should be white MacBook not iBook!
Well the inevitable has happened. With the MacBook not being made any more, DEECD had been forced to offer Victorian teachers in this year’s round of leasing the MacBook Pro. They have price it at $15 a fortnight. This is almost the exact deal that Apple offered them 12 months ago and that teachers around Victoria almost begged to be given the option to take up. It strikes me as being terribly short sighted that the department stuck with the really crappy deal on the white MacBook, a model that had already ceased production, even though they knew they would have to offer the Pro less than 12 months later. Now we have the astonishing situation of some teachers having the white MacBook at $7 a fortnight, some leasing almost the exact same machine for $11.50 a fortnight, and some leasing a MacBook Pro for only $1.50 a week more at $15 a fortnight. What a crazy mess.
Meanwhile, last year’s rollout Macs are so under spec in RAM that we’ve all had to fork out for extra RAM just to get them to function at even the most basic level. They can’t even run their native OS that they were shipped with, let alone run Windows 7 in Virtual Box in order for teachers to use the pre-historic Victorian reporting software. Let’s be clear, Apple are to blame here as well. What were they doing even offering machines with 2 GB of RAM when they knew they wouldn’t cope with the latest OS? The old white MacBook shouldn’t even have been on the table as an option for the Department to choose from. They also offered the Air which would probably have ended up even worse as it had a smaller hard drive and the same amount of RAM.
Anyway, at least teachers finally get a MacBook Pro option. But that doesn’t help all those poor souls who started a new 4 year lease last year…