The Digital Divide : Geographic
We don’t tend to be controversial or tackle big issues on DigMo! but the last couple of weeks frustration has lead to this post. Having falling in love the with Apple Mac it is easy to see their instant value to education.
With each Mac shipping with iLife, Comic life, bluetooth file sharing and iSight teachers are coming up with new ways to teach and better new ways for their students to learn.
One massive addition to this portfolio of educational tools is the excellent and affordable iWork suite. For under £60 in the UK users have a set of applications that rival the full office suite. Pages and Keynote and worthy opponents to Word and PowerPoint actually the range of output options in Keynote have seen me convert (with ease) my Powerpoint applications to keynote.
Imagine the delight of one teacher who found an offer on Apple.com for a site license of either iWork or iLife 08 for amazing $249. In the UK at present that would equate to around £130 just over 2 full price licenses.
Purchasing a K-12 School Site License
- K-12 institutions can purchase school site licenses of either iLife ’08 or iWork ’08 for up to 500 seats at just $249 for either suite.
- iLife ’08 and iWork ’08 school site licenses also permit the installation of iLife ’08 and iWork ’08 on up to 50 additional faculty computers, for the specific purpose of creating and revising lessons for their classrooms.
- iLife ’08 and iWork ’08 school site licenses are available starting August 7, 2007. Contact your Apple Sales Representative today for more information.
Source : Apple US
The bad news is this offer (covering 500 seats) is not available in the UK and the best deal is volume licensing which we can assure you is no where near comparable. We are assured by Apple UK they are aware of the issue and are trying to get a similar deal over the UK but until then we are stuck with a considerably higher price.
Apple computers are ideal for education. Their tidy footprint, range of excellent software and creative application is unrivaled. If Apple want to take the UK Education market by storm and have the next generation using (loving) their computers at an early age then closing the Geographic Digital Divide is essential. Even offering iWork or iLife at 2-300 pounds for a site license would be celebrated in playgrounds around the country 
If anyone has any tips on software licensing for education please post them here. A number of teacher who entered in the discussions of late have received conflicting advice
Points for clarification :
1. One teacher claimed they were told that if you buy iWork you can put it on your desktop Mac and on a portable Mac ?
2. One teacher was told they could purchase family packs.
It is our advice to err on the side of caution 1 full license per computer. If anyone had any definitive information on these two issues I have of a few teachers who would love to hear from you.
[...] 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 [...]