I finally got one!!!

Here it is!  I finally gave in and purchased a Mac--my first real Mac in over a decade.  This was supposed to be a gift to myself after 3+ years in the District Intern program.  And what do you know--the brown box arrives on the very night that I had my last meeting with my advisors.  No joke.

What led me to make this particular purchase was threefold: Leopard, iWork 08, and a new upgrade involving the Intel Santa Rosa chip.  But I think the deal breaker for me was the fact that shared graphics was bumped up to 144MB from 64MB.  I wanted something to play around with.  I know it still does not have the dedicated graphics card support of the MacBook Pros, but 144MB shared is good enough for a light wannabe gamer like me.

I also dropped an additional several hundred dollars buying VMWare's Fusion for virtualization, Windows XP (for BootCamp), a 320 GB Seagate external hard drive for Time Machine backups, Airport Extreme for N-wireless and gigabit ethernet connectivity, and Microsoft Office 2004 (which comes with a free upgrade to 2008 next year).  Where's the money for all this?  I don't know, but I don't regret my spending spree one bit.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

So my next Mac will be...

Since Leopard won't be out until October, I will wait until then to make my purchase. I don't mind waiting, as the newer products from Apple will be undoubtedly be faster and cheaper by then.
The dual-boot feature of Boot Camp is worth the price differential between Macs and PCs. It's like having two computers in one. A friend of mine told me yesterday that with Parallels (which allows the user to use the Windows environment within the Mac OS), he doesn't have to install two separate copies of Windows on his MacBook; the program simply uses the Boot Camp install files. I will have to check up on this, but if this is true, then it's all the more reason to use Macs for all my computing needs.
I still haven't decided on which Mac to choose. There are different things I like about each one: the MacBook for its portability, the iMac for its value, and the MacPro for its scalability. I'm leaning towards the MacPro because it looks sturdy and fast enough to last me a decade.
I have created this blog in partial fulfillment of a professional development course and have enjoyed sharing my thoughts with my colleagues. I now intend on keeping it updated with posts that further describe this melding between my profession and my favorite hobby. Thanks for reading.

Apples in Education

From watching Steve Job's keynote speech earlier this week at the World Wide Developers Conference, I was reminded of the fact that technology is changing the way we teach. As boring as traditional keynote speeches can be, Apple has turned keynotes into world-changing, cataclysmic events that command the attention of millions. As I watched the webcast, my interest in Apple's new operating system (due out in October) grew, while at the same time I was learning how to use it.

That's how education must work--teachers need to demonstrate how to apply new skills and simultaneously raise the interest level of their students. No one does this better than Apple. If we can get students on the edge of their seats (as I was straining to watch the fuzzy Quicktime feed on my laptop), we can raise test scores, close the achievement gap, and adequately prepare students for college.

This past week, I reviewed a few podcasts and educational video streaming sites that do just that. One in particular that I found interesting was from the Educational Podcast Network: "English idioms and slang." Students at a lower reading level may be turned off by reading plain black and white text. But put that same information on a podcast and they are hooked. I know I was.

Wiki's in Education

I have decided to reward myself with a new computer when I complete my District Intern program. I feel that I deserve it, since I had to put up with 3 years of night school (usually on weeknights after a full day of teaching). Needless to say, it will be a Mac. And yes, I will benefit from the education discount. (I was about to insert a large imaginary grin here, but could not find one big enough).
Speaking of education, I am excited about the potential that wikis offer to the classroom. Students these days go directly to Wikipedia for their first primer on any subject. Heck, that's what I do. Anyway, I am also concerned about the pitfalls. Wikis are already turning into a medium whereby information is not simply accessed, but commented on. If I want to learn about a historical figure on Wikipedia, I may end up reading propaganda instead of facts. Open source education is messy. Wikis have given a voice to the silent majority--for better or worse.
I look forward to contributing to the conversation--on a new Mac!

My Pseudo-Mac

Actually, I do own a Mac, but this one doesn't count. It's an iMac. No, not one of the new 24" C2D ones, nor the previous generation "lamplight-from-Pixar" that still seems to look pretty sleek. It's a graphite (circa ~2000) DV+ SE, which means that it has a loud 30 mb hard drive and a DVD-ROM. I found it on the street in the way home. In our neighborhood, if anything is left on the curb--be it a sofa, mattress, or computer--it's free game. I looked to my left, and then to my right, and no one was around. I even yelled, "Hey, is this anyone's computer?" Before long, I was hauling that anvil of a device into the backseat of my car.

I have upgraded the memory to 640mb, installed Tiger 10.4 and added an older version of iLife (the latest version won't install all programs). Even though I have all the functionality of the latest Apple operating system, I still don't consider this to be a full-fledged Mac. It's not merely because it's only worth $70 on craigslist. Nor is it because it still utilizes a CRT monitor. It's because I can't write to a DVD (which is the ultimate goal of most of iLife '06) and because I can't upgrade the graphics card. I can't even burn to a DVD through firewire (or at least iDVD won't work that way). I think the graphics megabytes are still in the single digit range. If you can't do any graphics intensive work, you might as well throw out iMovie, iDVD, and maybe even iPhoto (to say nothing of the Pro-apps from Apple).

Nevertheless, I like tinkering around with it. One thing in particular that I enjoy is the RSS feeds feature in Safari. In fact, if it weren't for Safari, I would have never experimented with feed aggregators. We're already on RSS 2.0. I didn't even know there was a RSS 1.0.

But until I reward myself some day with a new MacBook, or even go for broke with a MacPro, I will continue dreaming, and playing with my pseudo-mac.

Macs in my imagination

You may be wondering what my title is all about. I am a wannabe Mac Geek. I have been into Apple computers ever since the Apple IIe. You know what I'm talking about. Those big, lovely cardboard boxes that beeped when you hit Control-Reset to stop the hard dr--- excuse me, disk drive. And then the Macintosh came out. The 80s-era Apple community was awe-struck by it--much like the MacWorld audiences are today whenever Steve Jobs releases his "one more thing." And so the love affair began.

As much as I am a die-hard Mac fan, I do not own or use a Macintosh. I haven't had one since the year 2000. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. So I have resorted to carrying on this love affair in my mind. And now, I'd like to share with my readers these virtual escapes.