The Spring CUE (Computer Using Educators) 2002 Conference was held at the Anaheim Convention Center May 9-11. The Convention Center sits adjacent to Disneyland, between a colorful mix of 50s era motels and eateries and modern-day strip malls, hotels and restaurants that surround the popular theme park. If the Magic Kingdom really is "The Happiest Place on Earth," this year’s Spring CUE conference would have been a close second on any Mac educator’s list of happy places to visit.
Apple’s education specialists and product experts were out in full force at the convention center, making presentations in the pop-up sessions and working one-on-one with educators in the exhibit area on the convention floor. A quick visual count of the laptops in use by people attending the conference evidenced strong support for the Mac among educators.
iBooks were available for loan to attendees, but the number of Titanium PowerBooks and vintage PowerBooks in use during the conference outnumbered the iBooks either brought to the conference by educators or provided on site.
The conference attracted attendees not only from California, but also from the east coast and other areas of the country. The long list of exhibitors included nationally recognized names such as Scholastic and Houghton Mifflin and smaller companies such as FableVision with education-related technology products.
The conference schedule included workshops, seminars and presentations for both school administrators and educators. Most of the attendees with whom I spoke were not technology educators per se, but educators seeking to use technology to enhance and compliment existing curriculum programs in different areas of academic study such as math, English and science.
The conference opened Thursday morning and one of the first sessions of the day featured Apple systems engineer Sandy Brenner offering educators a tutorial on using Apple’s "iApps" (iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes) in creating student projects. Within the one-hour session, Sandy combined video clips shot in the room with stills in iPhoto and blended the work with a music clip in iTunes to create an entertaining iMovie. Sandy also demonstrated the use of an iPod as not only a device for music storage and playback, but as a small and convenient FireWire drive for transporting education-related materials from classroom-to-classroom or from school-to-school.
On Friday morning Apple systems engineer Dave Douglas offered a session on Mac OS X, its UNIX pedigree and the modern features built into Apple’s new operating system. Dave demonstrated the differences between Mac OS 9 and OS X by working between operating systems and displaying how Mac OS X’s UNIX core made file management easier, access to system preferences more convenient and improved the Mac’s stability.
Many of the presenters were using Macs in their demonstrations and Macs were the predominant platform used by exhibitors on the convention floor. Apple provided free e-mail service to educators via two rows of new and older iMacs at the center of the exhibit area. The eMac was on full display and drew line of visitors from the crowd.
The Apple exhibit looked like a mobile Apple retail store. The one conspicuous difference was a lone Sony Vaio on a display stand used by the PowerSchool reps to demonstrate the cross-platform compatibility of Apple’s Web-based Student Information System.
Gateway also had an exhibit at the conference with a significant amount of floor space. However, Apple’s exhibit was "King of the Show." Noticeably absent from the conference were exhibits from HP-Compaq and Dell, two hardware companies that claim a presence in the education market.
The overriding themes of the Apple presentations were OS X as a modern, UNIX-based operating system, Apple’s iApps and hardware as classroom solutions and PowerSchool as a cross-platform school and student information management system.
Apple’s significant presence at the conference highlighted the company’s leadership position in the education market and its important role in the integration of technology into America’s classrooms. For Mac educators, the Magic Kingdom could wait. The happiest place this weekend was watching Apple reps at work supporting educators in their efforts to improve education through technology in schools.
Special thanks to the Apple reps on hand for taking the time to discuss Apple’s efforts today to build the wired classrooms of tomorrow.
Check out our new "An Apple A Day: Macs In Education" forum, our brand new forum intended for educators, students, and administrators working in an education environment.
Photos of the conference are featured below:
Click on the thumbnails to see a larger version
 Apple Exhibit Area |  The New eMac (Front) |  The New eMac (Side) |
 iMac E-mail Station |  G4 On Display |  The New iMac |
Some of Apple’s staff on hand
 Dale Love and Tiger Leonard |  Dave Douglas |
 Sandy Brenner | |