Apple Announces Winner Of 2003 Apple iLife Educator Awards

A pple has announced the winners of the 2003 Apple iLife Educator Awards. Announced in April, the Apple iLife Awards contest, the Grand Prize was as follows: The winning teacher receives an Apple 12-inch PowerBook G4 with a 867 MHz PowerPC processor and a slot-loading SuperDrive for playing and burning both CDs and DVDs, a Canon ZR60 Camcorder and a Canon PowerShot A60 digital camera. The winning teacheris school gets a fully-equipped Apple Mobile Digital Media Studio with eight Apple iBook notebook computers with Combo-drives for watching DVDs and burning CDs, AirPort, Canon digital video camcorders, printers and other peripherals.

Apple has awarded the Grand Prize to Jon Hand of the Mansfield Middle School in Connecticut. Mr. Hand [Editoris Note: We originally reported Mr. Handis name as "Han" - Editor] is an 8th grade teacher, and his project was called "Grass Born to be Stepped On." From Apple:

Apple today announced the winners of the "Apple iLife Educator Awards" for 2003, recognizing the most innovative uses of iLife, an integrated suite of Appleis award-winning software for digital photography, moviemaking, digital music and DVD creation, in the classroom.

"Todayis 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, Appleis vice president of Education. "With the iLife Awards, weire 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 Grand Prize winner is Jon Hand, an 8th grade science teacher at Mansfield Middle School in Connecticut, 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."

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 US or Canada (excluding Quebec).

The press release said that a complete list of winning entries and lesson plans was available at the iLife Web site. As of this writing, that information had not yet been added.