Mac Mini Pilot: A Short-Lived but Valuable Experiment

Mike Pelleteir asked me to pilot the use of a Mac Mini in my classroom.

A brief description of a Mac Mini: Apple's innovative Mac mini desktop is a great choice for home computing tasks and creating a digital media hub. It fits everything that makes a Mac a Mac inside an elegant 2-inch-tall, 6.5-inch square--just add your own keyboard, mouse, and display. The Mac mini also includes excellent video processing power from the integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip, an ultra-fast FireWire 800 port, and dual video outputs--a Mini DisplayPort and a Mini-DVI port.

The idea was to have the Mac Mini at my desk as a central hub, and for connecting to my projector to, thus freeing up my lap top for me to use around the room to record students participation, show them how to access material, take pictures/video of them at work, etc. After two weeks of using this set-up, Mike and I debriefed. The following were our take-aways:

1) The Mac Mini takes computing back to a fixed teacher work station -- a.k.a. a desk. This is what we have recently moved away from by switching to IBM Tablets and MacBook Pros.

2) MacBook Pros can do everything that the Mac Mini can do, but this doesn't work in reverse.

3) This is not a cost effective model going forward. Any upside, does not justify the expense of having two teacher dedicated computers in a classroom.

4) Some teachers will find a keyboard with a number pad and a mouse/track pad useful tools to bundle with a laptop. When inputting grades, a number pad allows for much quicker data entry. A mouse/track pad allows the user to work more efficiently when the laptop is being used at the teacher's desk.

We agreed to end the experiment, but also agreed that we were able to learn a lot quickly by doing this on a micro (single classroom) scale. This model seems an efficient, cost effective way to test new ideas, technological and otherwise.

Today, "my" MacMini was removed and will have a new lease on life as part of a conference room work station. I felt a pang of regret when I saw it leave, but know we made the right decision.