February 2012 - The Edge of Tomorrow - Standing on the verge of a technologically educational revolution.

I’m frustrated.

For many years the MacBook has been a workhorse for students and staff in many school districts. In January of 2011, the MacBook was still Apple’s second-best selling laptop. Then, over the summer, they discontinued the model for consumers. That was very concerning.

However, they still offered the model for education. I met with our Apple reps in December to begin discussing the refresh of our teacher laptops, all of which are MacBooks. I expressed my concern about the MacBook going away, and they assured me that there was no indication that was going to take place. If it did, they promised, there would still be plenty of stock remaining once an announcement was made to purchase the units we needed for our refresh.

This past week, I received the email I knew was coming. The MacBook was dead. As our reps promised, there was an end of life inventory left, but those units were going to go quickly, so anybody who wanted/needed any had to act immediately. Which, for anyone trying to work outside of a budget purchase cycle, is impossible. I asked if they could reserve the necessary units for our purchase, and they said they could not do that. They needed a PO immediately, which we simply weren’t in a position to do. As I was frantically trying to work out the means for us to make the purchase, I got a second email. All of the end of life stock was gone.

So too might be their focus on education.

Here’s where things get infuriating. The new solution for schools is an “education-priced” MacBook Air. For $999 when purchased in bulk.

The MacBook Air comes with a 64 GB hard drive (welcome to 2001), 2 GB of RAM (non-upgradeable), 1.6 GHz processor, no ethernet port (to connect to ethernet costs an additional $29 for a USB dongle), and no optical drive. All of these are significant steps down from the MacBook specs. And, we could get the MacBooks in bulk for $849.

So, we get to pay $150 more per unit for a whole lot less. Awesome.

The MacBook Air is an excellent computer for road warriors. Which, our teachers are not. We are now expected to pay a premium for the portability of a device that we don’t need to be ultraportable. Our reality is that we need much more than 64 GB given all of the multimedia work our staff has now started engaging in. We also need an optical drive as our staff use theirs literally every day. We need the ethernet port as that helps us balance the load on our wireless given that we are 1:1 in grades 5-8 and are looking to add grades 3+4 next year.

When I expressed this to our Apple rep, he explained that while he understood, the position of Apple has recently been to encourage schools who don’t favor the Air to look at the MacBook Pro. Awesome, again. So, we now have to spend $250 more per unit. Yes, those units would have the functionality we need, but we’re not in a position to spend $1,100 per device for all our staff members. That would be $62,500 more for the purchase. That’s significant.

What are you doing, Apple? Because by all rights, it looks like you’ve worked very hard to force us away from using you in our institution.

We’re starting a focused effort in my district to get our teachers connected on Twitter. The effort is more than just getting people to superficially use social media, but rather, it’s to help our staff see how powerful the experience of connected learning can be. This isn’t new, I know. Learning happens largely through connections.

The difference is in the way it scales.

I’ve been on Twitter for almost three years now. Looking back over that time, I simply can’t believe how much I’ve gained from the connections that Twitter helped facilitate. I look over the list of people whom I now connect with regularly on Twitter and easily 98% of those individuals I never knew prior to utilizing the medium. Many of the ideas we are implementing in my district have come from the ideas of those whom I’ve had excellent discussions with on Twitter. Even some of those I’ve had not so excellent discussions with.

I believe our staff can find the great value in the connections found within the medium. Because it’s the people that comprise the tool. That’s the value. The people. The ideas. The connections. The conversations.

So, if you see any of our people stumbling their way through that disorienting first stage of adoption on Twitter, please offer them a hello. A condolence for having to associate with me. And, a thought or two to keep them coming back.

And, hopefully, you can bring along a few of your people as well. Because it’s the testing and interrogating and discussing and negotiating of our ideas that help us all become better at the craft we ply. And for that, the more, the merrier.

Share. Connect. Learn. I wish that on you all.

*If you have any resources, links, ideas, etc. that might help us along our way, please feel free to leave them the comments below. Also feel free to add your Twitter name and what you do as that will help us compile a list of people on Twitter outside of our district.

**Special thanks to @pegkeiner and @LFedtech for all the great ideas, input and patience with the project.