It looks like the New Brunswick public education sector is slowly advancing into the 21st century. The government announced today that, “About 2,900 grades 7, 8 and 9 students at 27 New Brunswick schools will have a notebook computer in the fall of 2006 …”. On a personal note, this is not that positive, because only one school in our district, and no schools in our town are on the list. Oh well, we get to continue enjoying the 20th century and the industrial era for a while longer.
Update: After a little more digging and a few conversations, I think that a few factors in this school laptop initiative have to be raised.
All of the computers in the school will be loaded with Microsoft Windows and MS Office. This may seem like a real deal for our education system but it is really creating a continuing market for MS products. The students get used to using the Win/Office combination so that’s what they’ll use at home or after graduation. MS has even offered this great deal:
Partners in Learning School Agreement – offers upgrades for Microsoft® Windows® operating system for free and Office software for no more than $4.00 per year, per desktop to Canadian schools considered disadvantaged.
Given that the initial laptop program had 500 computers, and this initiative has an additional 2,900 plus the 6,000 notebooks provided to all NB teachers, there are at least 9,400 new computers in the system. Paying $4 per year per computer for Microsoft products costs – $37,600. Had the government decided to use a basic Linux system, complete with ALL the necessary applications, such as the free and open source UNESCO Young Digital Creators CD, the cost would be $0.00 (zero). It would also be free to copy and put on home computers and it would be free forever.
Even my own public education district, financed by Canadian taxpayers, is using paid staff to train teachers on American produced proprietary software applications. This is not a rant against our US neighbours, but I would rather have seen the money go to developing some “made-in-New Brunswick” capacities.
Isn’t Microsoft a partner in this program, supplying either technology (hardware and/or software) or money or both? If so, then I believe it’s a given that the computers would come pre-installed with Microsoft software. I doubt Bill Gates would fund such a program and then offer Linux-based machines running Open Office, Opera and iTunes.
Further, $4 per upgrade per computer is still a lot cheaper than having to pay the retail amounts, per licenced machine, for Windows and Office upgrades, which can run to several hundred dollars per product. Unless Microsoft has changed their tune lately, multi-user licences, under normal circumstances and even for educational or institutional applications, still cost a heck of a lot more than $4 per machine.
Personally, Microsoft or otherwise, I believe that if NB students (hopefully including my own children) can get computers and software for pennies per taxpayer, it’s a good deal.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Do you want your children to be eaters of fish or fishermen? Pennies per day add up to a lot of money over a lifetime.
Give a man a computer and he’ll watch porn all day. At least, that was the gist of Aldous Huxley’s thought. Teach a man to think and he’ll learn to learn.
i go to a nb school and only the teachers have laptops and if we even touch them ikes