Build for Classic

[Jeff Reynolds]

nope, a lot of schools wont do this unless folks like you with the  
savvy to figure out how to do this go in and volunteer to do it, you  
donate the money for the  the copies of osx for their computers, then  
you will have to come in and train the teachers how to use the osx,  
then you will have to support the new systems, then you will have to  
probably donate copies of the osx versions of newer software for them  
to use since they dont have the tech personnel or money to do any of  
this in many cases.

I dont worry at all about being osx only in the home market its the  
school market that is still holding on to os9. k-6 will be the last  
hold ons here as they usually get the lowest tech budgets and have  
the least tech savvy staffing to attempt rolling their own upgrades.

I know you would want to believe that most schools are in the 21st  
century with their technology, but lots of them are still twencen.  
the schools that need them most help educationally are usually in the  
worst shape technology wise also, but even some more affluent  
districts have slashed tech budgets since getting rid of a tech  
person is way more desirable than loosing an administrator type in  
the district. you can guess my feelings on that matter...

I know that as one of the richest countries in the world we want to  
believe we hold education in high regard, but you will find that in  
terms of what you pay the folks that actually educate (teachers,  
lesson writers, educational programmers, etc) its actually pretty low  
on the professional pay scales. I know i have been doing educational  
multimedia since 87 and except for the few years in the hay days of  
cdroms in the mid 90s Its pretty much the lowest money in the field  
and the poorest clients..

A small side story that illustrates the point:
I presented years ago at the baby bell's annual technology conference  
for all the big wigs of all the telcos when they were just starting  
to see the light that they could move data into the households and  
make some $$ on it. they thought that folks would spend huge $ to  
bring educational materials into their house holds and the could make  
huge profits. after showing them all sorts of cool and fun  
educational multimedia stuff (they were practically foaming at the  
mouth at this point) i decided to do some letting air out of the  
tires. I asked if everyone in the room was making above $200K (there  
were like 100 top execs there so i assume that they would laugh at  
this paltry sum and i was correct in the assumption), all hands went  
up (except for a few engineers there from the labs that were also  
presenting). i then asked those that had kids and about 90% of the  
hands went up. then asked them to total all the money they spent in a  
year on educational materials for their kids. i said it could be  
books, subscriptions, music, videos, software, trips to museums or  
other even semi educational events. i asked how many of them thought  
they spent over $1000, a few hands went up, then $500 a few more then  
$250 most of the hands were up, then surprisingly i asked under $100  
and probably 10 hands went up -- i was shocked they were willing to  
admit that. I then asked them what the average household income was  
that they would target to sell ed materials to and they said $40-80k.  
Then said so if most of you are willing to spend less than half a  
percent of your large salaries with lots of discretionary cash on  
software you might think that it would be a smaller percentage for  
the ave customer and they agreed. then said ok how about half what  
you do, ok then that works out to 0.25% or less of $40-80K or  
$100-200/year for the ave target family. Silence in the room. None of  
them had bothered to think this through. i was horrified. i asked if  
they thought the target families would be able and/or willing to  
transfer any more money out of other spending to pay for more cool  
new educational materials via their new (and expensive at that time)  
connections.

went on into a discussion of what this would then require is a  
rewiring of how much money we will spend on educational materials in  
our society if they wanted the pie to get bigger to take a slice  
from. Needless to say for the next two days i was was the target of  
very concerned discussions at every free moment in the conference. To  
their credit they really came around fast in realizing the missing  
step, but only to not go into the area, not to even think about  
trying to change things.

sorry for the rant, but this is the world i live in and the rest of  
the world has a very different impression of the education world and  
just asks why cant we do things like business does...

best thing i can say is go in and volunteer in a school and see what  
it takes to do education, its an eye opener!

cheers,

Jeffrey Reynolds


On May 18, 2007, at 7:47 PM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com  
wrote:

> However - I can run Panther on the G3 Wallstreet.   A little  
> shareware tool
> called AlPosto Facto (or some similar silly name) allows one to  
> install it.
> With OS9 running you install this tool  and then boot into a Jaguar  
> install
> CD, install Jaguar and then install Panther over the top.  So my  
> little G3
> runs Panther happily.  I admit I don't use it all the time but it  
> is quite
> responsive and great for doing simple stuff on  (like testing) even  
> though I
> generally tend to use my Mac Mini.  My point is maybe this is an  
> option OS9
> based schools could consider?