Swimming in the Pensieve

I forgot to mention that, back on Thursday, after we got home from signing contracts on the new house, Phillip’s CAliVA computer arrived via FedEx. In case you’re wondering, it’s a new HP chassis (AMD Sempron-based, looks to be a loose version of the BTX form-factor) that isn’t all that shabby in its performance stats. The front panel headphone and microphone jacks are definitely handy for his daily, interactive classroom sessions.

We added Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Thunderbird and Star Office, so he can get his work done properly. (Too bad the darn thing has windoze installed :::snert:::.) I guess I’ll need to install ZoneAlarm to keep this thing from being back-ended in a heartbeat.

Here’s a peek at the system unit:

Consider something for a moment…if your child attends school in LBUSD, he or she will be lucky to lay hands on a computer keyboard even once a week; and, at that, most kids will be forced to use a Macintosh of one sort or another. (So much for public school preparing our children for the real world.) Our experience with Jackie Robinson Academy was one wherein the presence of the computers on campus was trotted-out like sleazy ad copy, the firm implication being that there was some sort of organized computer time for the kids. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Except for a very few and limited situations, the children weren’t even allowed to touch the computers–lest they “break them.”

CAliVA, without any fanfare, has already sent us two computer systems, two color printers, and has a multifunction scanner/printer/fax machine on the way here now. Now…while I muse over how they could probably double their computer system population by simply dumping windoze and using Open Source Operating Systems and applications; I have to laugh at the fact that LBUSD is literally throwing their money away on Macs, and policing the classrooms to keep the kids’ hands off the equipment.

In our school, the kids must use their provided computers every day, as well as their workbooks, texts, novels, manipulatives, etcetera. In our school, the kids actually receive an education.