Apple on Thursday announced the winners of the 2003 “Apple iLife Educator Awards,” which recognizes innovative uses of the iLife applications (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD) in the classroom. A list of winners and their lesson plans will be posted later today on the iLife Web site.
“Today’s students are digital kids who learn and communicate differently than students did just five years ago, and teachers need new tools to keep these students engaged in learning,” said John Couch, Apple’s vice president of Education. “With the iLife Awards, we’re recognizing and rewarding the educators that have best integrated this powerful, yet easy to use set of tools for digital kids into their curriculum.”
The “Apple iLife Educator Awards” contest was open to all K-12 district or school level educators, or pre-service teachers and faculty or staff of accredited colleges of education located in the U.S. or Canada (excluding Quebec). Jon Hand, an 8th grade science teacher at Mansfield Middle School in Connecticut, is the grand prize winner for his “Grass Born to be Stepped On” project.
“The real winners are the eighth-grade students that created this incredible work on the eMac using iLife,” said Jon Hand. “The students had been working with an analog VHS editing system for a few weeks, and were getting frustrated because the technology kept getting in the way of what they were trying to say. So they found me and the Mac in our lab and in two days created a powerful documentary.”