Digital Divide No Longer Geographic
Nearly two years ago we wrote about the massive difference in the cost of educational site licenses (iWork, iLife etc) between the US and the UK. Read the article here. In 2007 the US could buy a site license of up to 500 seats for $249.
The equivalent package wasn’t available in the UK leaving schools to purchase a license for each computer.
The good news for Schools throughout the UK is that last year Apple introduced the education site license to the Europe market.
In Europe, a qualifying school is defined as being any public or privately funded institution that delivers education to the 4 to 18/19 age group, prior to starting university.
These can include:
Nursery Schools, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Further Education and Vocational schools.
This means allows schools to put iWork on to each Mac in their institute for less than £200+vat. Institutions can purchase a School Site License for up to 500 seats. School Site Licenses also permit the installation of the product on up to 50 additional faculty computers, for the specific purpose of creating and revising lessons for their classrooms.
A number of educationalists I have spoken to frequently cite cost as a reason not to install Apple networks in their schools. I fear this is based on a glance at the retail price of an iMac and little or no research into the overall cost of CALS, software and general maintenance.
Site licenses are available for both iWork and iLife and a joint purchase of both licenses costs less than a reasonable desktop computer yet offers :
iLife
iPhoto
Garageband (idea for GCSE and Alevel music, Journalism, and any other subject wanting to create podcasts).
iMovie (Useful for Moving Image Arts along with Final Cut Express).
iDVD
iWeb (An ever improving Web design application that I know a number of primary schools have used to create their main website).
iWork
Pages (A fully featured word-processor and DTP application compatible with Office).
KeyNote (We have written about the power of Keynote v PowerPoint here).
Numbers (A great spreadsheet application).
Like Pages, Keynote and Numbers are fully Microsoft Office compatible although it should be noted that some of the advanced formula and features of Excel are not replicated in Numbers (yet) but it is ideal for most classroom situations. Numbers may not be powerful enough for A Level ICT or Computing.
For me it is hard to come with a better package for education than a suite of iMacs, iLife, iWork, Comic Life and iStopMotion.
It should be noted that Media Sets for Volume Licensing are not included in the Site License fee and can be purchased separately. For more information visit the Apple Education Site.
