As a follow-up to my Manila Bulletin TechNews article today, I am urging educators to veer away from “technology-centric learning”, for lack of a better term. I know for a fact that majority of colleges and universities offering Computer Science and other IT-related degree courses use Microsoft-only technologies. Whilst this is not entirely a bad thing but if that is the only thing that you teach your students, e.g. Visual Basic, .Net or worse, Microsoft Office, then I assure you that you are contributing to what IT companies often clamour about — having thousands of under-qualified IT graduates!
Our Java Education & Development Initiative (JEDI) helps by exposing students to OS-independent development platform – hopefully increasing their marketability, should they take on the entire JEDI suite, of course. Unfortunately, the number of qualified teachers to handle the higher level JEDI courses are only a handful. As part of the JEDI proponent, I am actually thinking of what can be done to increase the number of teachers who can teach the courses. However, we (JEDI) are guilty for pushing for Java technology only – but hey, the curriculum is intact, we just give examples and exercises using Java. 
POSITIVE is also doing its share by providing a suite of alternative courseware based on Open Source technologies. Although Java is not exactly Open Source (yet), it is not against Open Source either so both can co-exist within a college or university curriculum. Since I am not using POSITIVE’s courseware, I am not sure as to the extent of their ‘reach’ in as far as CS/IT education is concerned.
I know that Microsoft has a similar project hoping to combat JEDI and POSITIVE in the Philippines. However, the bottom-line here is, you need to be, at least, a paying MSDN Academic Alliance member to take advantage of their courseware. Otherwise, there is no point in getting their materials if you do not have the platform to develop, test and run it on, right?
Where does Apple come in? Apple supports Java. Apple runs Open Source applications such as OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice, PHP, mySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, Tomcat, etc. Apple’s ICBMs run Windows XP (and Vista) for .Net application development, too. Did I say that Apple also does C, C++ and Objective C? Ruby on Rails, too! Although I have not googled it but I bet there is Fortran, Cobol, LISP for Apple as well.
With Apple’s benefits brought by its new ICBM line, students have access to practically all major technologies available today! The question is – would you deprive them of these advantages because you were deprived access to them when you were students?
