Feature: How do you like them Apples?

There are many differences between the Isle of Man and the rest of the UK - even in ICT. Jack Kenny discovers why the island's schools prefer Apple Macs to PCs

There are not many secondary schools in the UK where Apple computers vastly outnumber PCs. ICT at St Ninians in Douglas, Isle of Man, is one such school powered by Apple computers. The overall impression you get at the school is of ICT being used confidently and creatively: blogs, music creation, teachers integrating ICT into their work, podcasts (video and audio).

In his role as Head of ICT at the school, Jim Hunter is keen to ensure that students acquire a basic competence of the subject which crosses over into many other subject areas: "We don’t see ourselves as training students to learn a particular piece of software. We are teaching them to apply a set of principles to any situation," he explains.

Jim Hunter points to the work. “The standards and the quality that students achieve are answers to why we use Apple computers. When you look at the strategies and see what the students are expected to learn, the Mac interface is the best to meet those requirements."

Maff Long, who is responsible for ICT in the lower school, is keen to exploit the creative side of ICT: "We are not constrained by the National Curriculum as schools are in the rest of the UK. Eventually though, our students will be judged against others when they do their GCSE’s. We will move to DIDA and we are already teaching how to keep their work in an eportfolio."

Students have been making video podcasts using iMovie and Garage Band. An interview with Apple UK chief Mark Rogers can be found on the lower school's website. “The great thing is that the kids can produce work that looks as though it comes from a media company and they can do that with ease. They get instant pleasure from it. It’s friendly, the programs are integrated together, and they link in a very satisfying way. They are also easier to teach,” adds Mr Long.

“Recently we made a pop video from scratch in collaboration with the music department. We spent two days on that looking at how you can market music to particular audiences."

All this does not happen by chance. There has to be confidence to back the creativity. Graham Kinrade, school improvement adviser at the Isle of Man Department of Education, is responsible for technical issues across the island.

“To be honest our technical issues are limited. The hardware is very reliable and general failure rates are very low. The hardware failures I see are down to wear and tear. My personal view is that it's down to good build quality and the tight integration of hardware and software. Each computer is robust and well designed for its purpose. We have a very high percentage of machines that have been in the field for 2 or 3 years and never had to be repaired by an engineer! This says it all. We never have compatibility issues with hardware and software.”

In total Graham is responsible for 3,900 client computers (desktop and laptop). As well as 115 servers, 40 networks, 300 wireless access points (Apple Base Stations) and numerous other pieces of equipment. This is all done with just two technicians. I talked to a head [school IT director - Swordmaker] recently who boasted that she ran the PCs at her school with three technicians!

Graham argues: “This is possible because of the tight systems we run. All the networks are the same, both kit and configuration wise. Apple Remote Desktop enables access to any computer on any of our networks at any time. This means a large amount of support can be offered directly to users without any engineers having to attend site.

"Finally, we are now managing all our client computers with a piece of software called Filewave. This is an excellent software package that allows me to manage all the clients remotely! I can install or remove any software or apply system upgrades on either individual machines or our entire stock.”

In total Graham is responsible for 3,900 client computers (desktop and laptop). As well as 115 servers, 40 networks, 300 wireless access points (Apple Base Stations) and numerous other pieces of equipment. This is all done with just two technicians. I talked to a head recently who boasted that she ran the PCs at her school with three technicians!

More proof that OS X Macs have a much lower Total Cost of Ownership.

3900 computers and 115 servers, 300 wireless access points, all of which is run by a single IT director and TWO (2) iTechnicians... contrasted with a single school with PCs that required THREE (3) Techs.

Total Cost of Ownership... Isle of Man Schools choose Macs...PING!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

I talked to a head [school IT director - Swordmaker] recently who boasted that she ran the PCs at her school with three technicians!

Your secret is out!

I know what you mean. Twelve years ago my company was strictly Mac, except for the systems we were delivering to Govt. customers. We were Apple's largest corporate customer.

My location alone had over 2,000 Macs and less than 400 PCs. Even then, in Apples worst days in 1994, we had about 5 techs to take care of the Mac's and about 40 techs to look after the PCs. To be fair, though, most of the PCs were running SUN software, and taking over from the VAX mainframes.

The Pod cast the students created about Apple's visit to one of their schools in March:

http://www.sch.im/snhs/podcasts/applevisit.html

I just emailed the article to one of our tech people at school. We have approximately 250 PC's in the entire district and the two people responsible for IT can't even pretend to keep up (and this doesn't count the person on staff for each of three labs).

This year marked the third time in 6 years the High School computer lab has had all new machines put in. IN these 6 years, I have NEVER seen the lab with all 30 workstations fully functional. Even when the machines were set up, at least one would give them fits getting everything working.

Also keep in mind that the High School lab gets what I consider moderate to light use (for a school computer lab).

My companies present standard is two IT folks per 150 PCs, one person for the hardware and one for the network. 150 machines is about all they can handle in a reasonable business time frame.

We buy only upper-tier Dell machines, at that. The servers get only the best UPS systems and supplemental air conditioning.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.