[thelist] targeting K-12 effectively

Keith cache at dowebscentral.com
Mon Mar 25 20:42:01 CST 2002


Quote taken from the earlier thread

>Let's also not forget about the 50,000
>K-12 school districts in the US that got most of their hardware donated from
>companies scrapping their old computers or from big price breaks from Apple.
>Netscape 4 owns the education market and that is a whole fucking lot of
>people.

I used to think that too, until today. We're re-working a project that was
built by others, targeting K-12 schools. As part of our "getting to know
who your target is" I talked with a state Curriculum Director today. I
mentioned that we are reworking it to be compatible with Mac. He hummed and
hawwed and then asked why. So I quoted the same folk-wisdom expressed
above. His responses were - the state has roughly the same ratio of
Mac/Windows computers that society has - schools don't play favorites,
parents/legislators/courts don't let them - the job of the school is to
prepare students for the world they live in - Apple computers are not less
expensive than the deals from Compaq, IBM, etc. - 80% of the classroom and
library computers in his state's schools are less than 3 years old - they
quit installing Netscape4 on new computers last year because it was
"obsolete". His state is in the bottom 20% of states for expenditure per
student.

His response began with, "Where the hell do you people come up with this
nonsense". Unbelieving, I then contacted two teachers in that state, they
basically confirmed what he'd said. So that's my question, "Where the hell
DO we come up with this nonsense?". Does anyone have any real, current,
nationwide statistics? The state I'm talking with is in the top 20% for
lunatics per capita too... (just from personal observation ya understand...)


keith

cache at dowebscentral.com




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