You think it's cruel to give a poor 5 year-old a classic Mac and a stack of educational software?
The next time you're in Best Buy, walk into the educational software section. You'll find two categories of early education software. One is the new stuff - laden with absurd features designed to engage, but in reality only succeeding in distracting the students from the learning objectives. The other category is the software that is essentially a port of the same thing they've been selling since System 7. So I'm not convinced that the classic Mac is grossly outdated for the purposes I am describing (the ones you are ignoring).
Academic learning objectives are the purpose to which I'm referring - no one is saying "here's a Performa 577, now go to college and do your research." I'm not even saying they will learn computing skills at all, but those skills aren't the point (they will get rudimentary computing skills later in school) The goal here is to eliminate the inherent disadvantages associated with young low-income kids as they enter the school environment (mostly attributable to parents failing to read to children). My point is that classic educational software is more effective than modern educational software when it comes to young children - so why not run it on classic Macs and keep them out of the landfill?
OT hijacking over - adios amigos. :beige:
The next time you're in Best Buy, walk into the educational software section. You'll find two categories of early education software. One is the new stuff - laden with absurd features designed to engage, but in reality only succeeding in distracting the students from the learning objectives. The other category is the software that is essentially a port of the same thing they've been selling since System 7. So I'm not convinced that the classic Mac is grossly outdated for the purposes I am describing (the ones you are ignoring).
Academic learning objectives are the purpose to which I'm referring - no one is saying "here's a Performa 577, now go to college and do your research." I'm not even saying they will learn computing skills at all, but those skills aren't the point (they will get rudimentary computing skills later in school) The goal here is to eliminate the inherent disadvantages associated with young low-income kids as they enter the school environment (mostly attributable to parents failing to read to children). My point is that classic educational software is more effective than modern educational software when it comes to young children - so why not run it on classic Macs and keep them out of the landfill?
OT hijacking over - adios amigos. :beige: