Apple eNews for Education: June 2007


	Apple’s new Back to School promo is available to teachers and staff of K-12 organizations. From now until September 16th, if you purchase a new MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, or Mac Pro, and an iPod nano, you’ll receive up to $199 back after a mail-in rebate. It’s like getting the iPod nano for free.


	If you’d like to use iPod in the classroom but don’t know how, the new “Getting Started: A Guide for iPod and iTunes for Teaching and Learning,” can answer your questions. Written by experienced educators, the guide includes information about setting up and using iPod, finding and creating content, management tips for student accounts, lessons plans, and more.


	To learn more about the Mac, and to learn it fast, consider the new One to One personal training sessions at your local Apple store. Apple trainers will create a personalized program, covering everything from getting started on a Mac to making movies, building a website, podcasting, and digital photography. These individualized training sessions are designed to move at your pace and provide the support you need. A yearlong One to One membership has special education pricing of $79.
	More news...

If you’re heading to the National Educational Computing Conference next month in Atlanta please stop by the Apple booth where you can get hands-on access to innovative tools that you and your students can use to express your creativity. For those of you who can’t make it, you can still have access to a range of content from this year’s conference sessions and general keynotes, as Apple will host podcasts on a variety of topics.

This month’s featured product in the Apple Digital Learning Series is ProScope HR CSI Lab by Bodelin Technologies. It’s a complete handheld digital microscope kit that enables you and your students to get a closer look at the world around us. The kit includes a variety of lenses at different magnifications, as well as adaptors, a stand, and a carrying case. And with a single click you can capture stills, video, or time-lapse images or simply view images in real-time with the entire class.

Just can’t get enough of school? Check out the six courses offered by Apple Professional Development this summer. These two- and four-day courses are geared towards educators who want to integrate the latest technology into the classroom. There’s a class for Mac newcomers, specialized courses for podcasting, moviemaking, and teaching students with special needs, and courses on secondary math and secondary science. Courses are scheduled at locations across the country, so look for one in your area.

Apple eNews for Education
June 2007
Volume 6, Issue 6

We hope you enjoyed reading the June issue of Apple eNews for Education. Apple eNews for Education will be on summer vacation for the months of July and August. But the newsletter will return on September 20 with more news and information for educators. Have a wonderful summer.

Apple eNews for Education is a free, monthly email publication.

Event dates are subject to change. Some products, programs, or promotions are not available outside the U.S. Visit your local Apple site or call your local authorized Apple reseller for more information. Prices are estimated retail prices and are listed in U.S. dollars. Product specifications are subject to change.

The two best computers for education, the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, have just been updated with faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors, more memory, next-generation 802.11n wireless networking¹, and other must-have enhancements.

MacBook Pro now supports up to 4GB of memory and features the new NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics controller for stunning graphics performance, all in a beautiful aluminum enclosure that’s a modest one-inch thin. MacBook Pro is available in 15-inch models with a new mercury-free, power-efficient LED-backlit display and a 17-inch model with an optional high-resolution display. The MacBook is equally slim, and sports an 80GB hard drive and 1GB of memory with speeds revving up to 2.16GHz and a glossy 13-inch wide screen display.

Both MacBook and MacBook Pro come with a built-in iSight camera for video conferencing, a MagSafe Power Adapter that safely disconnects under strain, and iLife ‘06, Apple’s award-winning suite of digital authoring applications.

^{1. Based on an IEEE 802.11n draft specification}

Everyone knows that the right tool for the right job is essential for success. But what if you don’t know what the right tool is? We’ve taken the guesswork out of your technology purchasing plans with the Educator Toolkit, which contains all the technology you need — and nothing that you don’t.

The toolkit includes the sleek and sturdy MacBook, with built-in wireless connectivity, iSight, Mac OS X Tiger, and the iLife suite of digital authoring software. Also included is iWork ’06 — featuring Keynote 3 for creating slick, engaging presentations with a minimum of work and a maximum of impact; and Pages 2, a feature-rich, easy-to-use word processor.

The kit comes with a one-year subscription to .Mac, giving you 1GB of online storage for easy file transfer from work to home, one-click web publishing with iWeb, an email account, and more. You’ll also receive a Canon Pixma IP90 printer, the AirPort Express base station, and a backpack to carry everything in the Educator Toolkit from school to home and back, with room to spare.

As an added bonus, you can take advantage of two promotions running at this time.¹ The Canon printer is eligible for a $100 rebate (when purchased with a Mac before July 23rd) and if you act before September 16th you can get a free iPod nano with the purchase of the MacBook in this toolkit.

^{1. Terms and conditions apply.}

Now there’s no such thing as “off campus.” iTunes U, a new area within the iTunes Store, offers more than 10,000 educational “tracks,” including course lectures, symposia, speeches, sports video clips, and campus tours, plus other materials.

Content on iTunes U is absolutely free and comes from some of America’s leading universities, including Stanford, MIT, Penn State, UC Berkeley, Texas A&M, and Duke University. And there’s a full “course catalogue” of topics, ranging from elementary Greek to physics, from American literature to world geography.

There are also tracks specifically for K-12 educators, such as Tech-Ease from the University of South Florida’s College of Education. Tech-Ease is a collection of short how-to videos designed to help teachers integrate technology into their classrooms.

The Secondary Science Solution in the Apple Digital Learning Series is designed to connect students to real world and real-time science phenomena. It supports the multidisciplinary nature of science and promotes scientific inquiry and problem-solving skills. In short, it makes science come alive.

Among the included tools is "EarthBrowser," which enables students to conduct real-time investigations into the Earth and its atmosphere, including tracking hurricanes and icebergs. For a close-up view of the natural world there’s "ProScope HR" — a high resolution, handheld USB microscope. If your curriculum is more space-bound than earth-bound, check out Starry Night High School, which includes simulated travel to distant stars and planets.

"ClassTools: Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Physical Science" offers wide-ranging, innovative online courseware that helps students think like scientists; while the PASCO Secondary Science Classroom Bundle enables your class to gather and explore data in a variety of ways. And since no one has ever really enjoyed dissecting the poor frog, there’s Froguts, a comprehensive virtual dissection tool that integrates anatomy, physiology, and ecology, all without that nasty formaldehyde smell.