Apple Offers 12" PowerBook, iBook Mobile Lab To Winners Of New iLife Contest For Educators [Cor

[ 4/15/2003 Correction: As originally published, the following story said that Appleis press release claimed 400,000 teachers had taken advantage of the Jaguar and iLife education bundle. In reality, the press release referred to Appleis X for Teachers program, in which 400,000 teachers have participated. The story below contains the corrected information. - Editor]

Apple has announced a new awards program for educators called "Apple iLife Educator Awards." The awards program is designed to recognize outstanding lesson plans educators put together with Appleis iLife suite of apps, including iTunes 3, iPhoto 2, and iMovie 3.

Apple is offering a First Prize that is for both the winning teacher and that teacheris school. 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.

In addition, Apple is offering a second place prize of A 12" Apple PowerBook with SuperDrive, a Canon ZR60 DV camera, and a Canon PowerShot A60 digital still camera. There are 5 third place prizes of 10 GB iPods, and 50 honorable mentions of AppleT-shirts. The press release from Apple:

Apple today announced the "Apple iLife Educator Awards" to recognize the most innovative uses of iLife, an integrated suite of Appleis award-winning software for digital music, photography, moviemaking and DVD creation, in the classroom. Teachers that are creatively using iLife applications to enhance lessons, exceed instructional standards and meet the needs of todayis students are encouraged to submit their lesson plans for consideration.

The "Apple iLife Educator Awards" contest is 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 United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). Educators can submit curriculum-based projects and lesson plans for consideration beginning today through June 13, 2003. Interested educators can see examples of existing lesson plans, download an entry packet, view a complete listing of the official contest rules, prizes and eligibility requirements and free downloads iTunes 3, iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 at www.apple.com/education/ilifeawards.

The teacher that submits the lesson plan selected for the First Prize will receive 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 school of the teacher who wins First Prize will receive 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. Prizes will also be awarded for second and third place and honorable mention.

iLife requires Mac OS X version 10.1.5 or later and a Macintosh with a PowerPC G3 or G4 processor; 256MB RAM is recommended. A built-in USB port is required for importing photos to iPhoto from a digital camera and a built-in FireWire port is required to input digital video from a camcorder. DVD burning from iDVD requires a Macintosh equipped with an Apple SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW), and DVD archiving from iPhoto requires Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" or later. iMovie requires a display supporting a pixel resolution of 1024-by-768 or higher.

In one of the fluff quotes we removed, it was noted that some 400,000 teachers have taken advantage of Appleis offer of X for Teachers.

You can get more information from the awards program Web page set up at Appleis Web site. You can also download the entry form and rules in the form of a PDF.