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Minnesota School Issues iPad 2 To Every Student
tripleevenfall writes "Thanks to a federally-funded grant for magnet schools, every student at Heritage Middle School in West Saint Paul, Minnesota, now has an iPad 2." Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators — in the snow, both ways, uphill!
Maybe it works better at middle schools than research has shown it doesn't work in higher education.
http://chronicle.com/article/iPads-for-College-Classrooms-/126681/
Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators — in the snow, both ways, uphill!
Why in my day, graphing calculators had not yet been developed. We had to buy our own abacus for a few month's pay.
And row our little pirogue through marshland 5 miles to school every day in the rain, upstream, both ways!
This will be a lively discussion. I think it's a great move. Should get the backpack mass down.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Used to be that teachers got apples.
Unfortunate for all those non-magnetic kids though.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I for one welcome our Apple over... OOOOOOH it has Angry Birds!
Aw Frell this
I suspect there are stricter privacy laws regarding minors. So if these are the 3G versions which end up tracking the user...who's responsible? Apple, the school or...? Just curious. For example, if the iPads sync with school computers but are free to go with the student when school's not in (no, I didn't RTFA...), then there could be very personal data on the computers which may not have encrypted home partitions. Makes a whole lotta minors' personal data relatively easy to collect.
Just wondering out loud.
I'm all for 'technology in the class room' but I'm not sure if this is a good use of a federal grant.
I know you can get a keyboard for them but all things considered I think a netbook would be more suited to classwork and homework. You can do an essay on an iPad but I don't think they are optimal for that.
Completely unrelated to the question of which technology should/does support education is the proximity of Minnesota to Wisconsin.
yet another distraction.
You want kids to learn mathematics, proper grammar, etc., then assign the homework. For those students who falter because of too busy / too uncaring parents, offer after school support with the money wasted on subsidizing Apple Inc.
On graphic calculators we played tetris. On laptops we played on snes emulators. Neither of those had any real in-class use. Calculators didn't even help with the math (if anything it was used to cheat or to not actually learn the math). iPads? Seems look the same thing all over again.
Heritage is distributing 685 iPads to students this school year, with plans to boost that figure to 730 by next school year. It is installing more than 100 educational apps on the iPads, and tying the devices to facility-wide Wi-Fi and Google-branded Internet services such as Gmail.
More consumers for Apple and Google I suppose. Would not the money spent on 685 iPads be more productively spent by hiring teachers, even if it were just one additional teacher? One good teacher can make a world of difference to child's education. A difference that I feel confident eclipses anything that either Apple or Google have to offer.
Make the students give the iPads back, return them for a full refund, and then transfer the money to buy equipment and pay for better teachers at an underprivileged school. There is absolutely nothing ab iPad can do for students that computer in the existing computer lab/library can't. At best, it's a shiny feel good toy and at worst it's squandered money that could be better spent elsewhere.
I went to a magnet high school. Ours was math, science and technology. All our science classes were in rooms with lab tables and computers at each spot. Guess what we did all day? Yep. Internet games(pool, miniature golf, etc). All they're going to do is use these things to play games in class.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
With public school issued ipads? Are these bone stock ipads? Or are they loaded with some sort of locked down ios that prevents 12 year olds from using the thing to play Angry Birds when they're in class?
If they're somehow locked down to make them only useful for the curriculum, I get it. If they're just off the shelf ipads, I don't get it. They're just giving out toys with our tax dollars.
All of the issues in it are easily overcome of course. My favorite bit was right at the end. They offered the paticipating students to buy the iPads used for half of retail. NOT ONE declined.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They're the Facebook generation. They really don't care.
and it has cameras.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The improvement starts at one textbook replaced. I can't recall many texts that weighed so little as an iPad.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Some one needs to explain to me how this is going to benefit the kids, the schools, and the country by buying closed hardware from one of the most evil companies in the nation. Apple is the enemy of the open source community and does their very best to control any media they come into contact with. School books are not available in digital format in any great numbers as far as I have heard. You see, DRM is not in place to assure that the publishers are able to properly rape the schools yet. Of course Apple will be at the center of this as well. The country is going to hell in a hand bag because we have stopped expecting our students to perform and deliver excellence. We gave away our technological edge and export it to the east in the form of a cheap and good education system. We then cry about the loss of good paying jobs to the same countries that we educate the citizens of. These are not going to provide anything but another way for the kids to get on face book and play games. America owned the world in the 40's through the early 70's and our parents and grand parents didn't do it with fancy feel good hardware and nice thoughts.
Because we don't already have gigantic budget short falls in pretty much every level of government...
The schools could gotten laptops for less with a bigger screen, more ram , more hdd space and more software.
If we just throw more money at the problem we can fix it. Giving an iPad 2 to every student is just that kind of a "solution". Until our culture and our parenting change, we will continue to produce kids who aren't interested in school and learning.
Successful immigrants show us what is really important. I can think of 2 Chinese women who I know very well. They came to New York City at age 7 and age 12. Parents were dirt poor, didn't speak English, could only afford the rent in the worst part of town or a housing project. Never had a computer or a fancy graphing calculator. Parents worked upwards of 100 hours a week to put food on the table. But what these parents did was fairly simple, they actually looked at their children's homework every night and made them correct their mistakes. And if the essay had sloppy penmanship, it was torn up and they had to re-write it. The parents kept track of when tests were and made sure their kids studied for them. They were involved, they cared, and their kids both made it into the Ivy League and eventually graduate school.
I know this is a bit of rambling post, but I hope you get my point. No magic gadget is going to fix the problems our culture faces. No bag of money is either.
Stuart Eichert
The important lesson to be imparted is the student's increased sense of entitlement and acceptance of redistribution.
99% probability the law of unintended consquences end up with most being lost or stolen within the first year. I live in one of the best public school districts (by ratings) in the US, my kids are above average across the board, and they have a love of learning ... but school sucks so badly they have lost all enthusiasm and I spend my off hours building a lab and teaching them what they are lacking. Of course I live in CA where text books are bought based upon how pro-union they are and the teachers are working for retirement first.
Why the hell can we gets unionize, push forward an aggressive agenda of using our technology for the betterment of our society, starting with future generations. Afraid of a Frank Herbert future?
The Technology Party in US Gov't anyone? or maybe the "Not Drunk, Stupid, or Insane" party?
I a sure the mainframe guys said the same thing about PC's. Don't let the schools use PC's they have a Mini or a Mainframe and is secure and robust. So the windows warheads come out and say the same thing about the iPad, u know what, I do not care anymore. If microsoft's empire crumbles maybe the replacement is better. Any thing to get rid of that ass Mr. Balmer and Michael Dell.
Your Average Joe
"Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators - in the snow, both ways, uphill!"
And we liked it that way! http://graphjam.memebase.com/2011/03/04/funny-graphs-and-we-liked-it-that-way/
make no mistake whois doing the giving & getting it back here (our tax money to steve), & in minnesota, as well as in the refugee camps of the transitional southern hillarians, where they like to listen to the mormormonics new cd, made from controversially acquired recycled hymens, in mebotuh, formerly utah. now we're looking right at our pomposterious rewards, again, as it was written, & re-written (adjusted for cause, effect, inflation, vaccines etc...). hard to believe (isn't everything) now, but after all the weapons, & holycosters, are long gone, things will start to make even more sense immediately, & for a long time to come. the proven to be unrepresented babys will be sure to have undying graciousitude in helping us re-learn to survive ourselves, from our real history, & presence.
Having sat on a couple committees for primary (meaning K-12) schools back when my mom was a teacher I can tell you that many of them have a shitty technology process. They don't hire a competent IT department or anything to oversee it, it is just kinda whatever teacher or administrator likes to play with tech gets promoted in to it.
So what happened here is the school tech person is an Apple head. They love their shiny Apple toys and think they are just great. The school gets a grant, and the grant probably specifies it has to be used on something like "Technology directly supporting the education of students." So the district goes to their tech person, who is in fact just an administrator who likes Apple toys and says "We got this grant, what should we get?" and the person says "iPads for everyone!"
Sadly, it really is how it often works. Even more often when you deal with people who are fanboys of a particular technology, as Apple people are known to be.
We've actually seen that at the university where I work. Our department charges differential tuition, meaning you pay more for our major so we can use the money to support your education better. The only real restrictions on it is it has to be spent on things for the students. So we can't go and buy office furniture with it or something.
Well, we have a few Mac zealot type professors and they were pushing to use it to give "free" Macbooks to the honors students. We don't charge enough to give it to everyone and of course it isn't really free since they pay more tuition but they thought it would be a great idea. They claimed it would attract better students and help with education. I claim they just like Macs and haven't though it through (like for example the fact that much of our software is Windows only).
In our case wisdom prevailed and it has been used for things like upgrading computers in a lab, that ALL students can use and that can run all our software (not all software is licensed for personal laptops, unfortunately) and for new measurement and test equipment (oscilloscopes and such) however the push was there to go for the toys for students and it was a knee-jerk "This is nifty," thing rather than a well reasoned "This is what would be the most effective use of the money," thing.
When I went to school, we had a dead sun, and boy it was cold. My brother and I had to share the fingers to count on.
Its a good thing I had 7 toes, it made the more advanced math easier.
Fight Spammers!
In my day, 20 years before your day, we had pretty much the exact same damn graphing calculators! (xkcd #768 could have gone back to the TI-81 in 1990 had only display res and overall capabilities mentioned)
With the speed in which ebooks are taking off, it's perfect. To quote Rage Against The Machine, "They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove'em!"
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
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Don't get me wrong--I'm all for spending money on the education of our youth and I'd love to see the government spend a LOT more on it (maybe shave a couple hundred billion off the military budget or something...). But their parents are already getting paid $2,000+ per year per child (Federal Rabbit-Like Breeding Subsidy) and get a higher amount of deductions to boot--and my property taxes largely go toward the local schools as well. I would like to buy an iPad 2, but apparently I already did. It just wasn't mine.
Bravo!
I sincerely hope the keys and owner documentations to the Corvette ZR1 for each each kids are in transit.
Being an early 30-something, I am very tied to technology, this is somewhat difficult to say.
The students (at least one of them) think they are saving the environment by going 'paperless' or 'least paper'. Trees, if well managed - well, they grow on trees. The metal and hydrocarbons used to make the plastics are more finite. As much as I like my computer, and as much as I hate 'paperwork',
Technology does not save everything.
I have never tied myself to any party. I do find this to be a irresponsible way to spend my tax dollars. I am talking as a 10$/hour working person. Your opinion may vary.
In some ways I think the "metalessons" I learned in school are almost as important as the lessons. Metalessons are what I call the stuff they teach you by accident.
I learned: 1. Teachers will follow trends and the trends suck. In our case, it was new math. 2. Private schools are better at enforcing discipline. 3. Private schools are more likely to be run by religious wackos. 4. Even in one of the wealthiest counties in the country (Fairfax County, VA) there were still drug problems in Jr. High. By highschool, the druggies were actually less noticeable. 5. Nothing really matters except passing to the next grade, until you get to HS. Everybody knows that, and teachers will freak when you tell them that in elementary school. 6. Teachers will force you to confess to stuff you didn't do, and keep ratcheting up the punishment until you confess. The easiest way to get by in life is to just not bother with authority. 7. People in positions of authority often crave respect. Placate them; but never surrender inside. 8. School is a survival test, as well as an academic test. 9. Despite what they tell you, you never totally get out of highschool. 10. Don't dwell on all the stuff that happened in school. You'll just give yourself PTSD (I actually worked with a woman who was still pissed off about how sports are more important than classical music in society. Sheesh! Give it a rest. You're a middle-aged manager, not a band geek in HS anymore).
A Kindle with wifi and 3G is only $189 and is a much better tool for....
Consumption.
That's what the Kindle is better at.
Meanwhile the iPad has probably a thousand different note taking apps, garage band, and a slew of drawing applications.
WHat are you trying to do to the kids anyway? We should be giving them tools they can use for creative expression, whatever form that might take. The iPad is at this point, by far, the single best tool we could give them because of the flexibility - yes even for writing they are better because of the portability, and if you need a keyboard for extending deep writing you can add one. You can't take away the keyboard for a Netbook for drawing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think we should raise taxes to support this wonderful idea.
You know a real, portable, computer that's not only for consumption but also for creation.
I can draw a lot better on an iPad than any laptop.
I can create music easier on an iPad alone than with a laptop.
I can even creation movies a lot easier on an iPad than any netbook, or almost I daresay a normal laptop.
The only thing that is somewhat slower is writing, but I can touch type pretty fast on the screen keyboard (since it's rather large) or just use any old bluetooth keyboard if I must have a keyboard (or course it's only older settled people like you and I that need one, the younger generation has learned to work with touch devices at full speed).
The whole "creation" myth was busted with the first iPad, and with the introduction of Garage Band the advocates of that dead philosophy laid to rest on a bed of fiery wrongness.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. desktop os's have a limitless supply of applications compared with consumption devices like the ipad.
A) We aren't talking about desktops, but the iPad vs. a netbook. The Netbook does not have a limitless base of software that runs well.
B) There is more usable education software for the iPad now than the PC. Really.
. if an education suite in place means that extra software becomes unavailable, why tell us about all the apparently 'amazing' options ios devices have ?
If that made any sense I'd respond.
3. exact resolution? are you even aware how fonts and widget sizing are accomplished? this is a red herring anyway. all modern systems have this down. if anything things like the ipad abuse them by placing asthetics ahead of usability.
Your error is thinking usability can be had without consideration of aesthetics. In fact usability *is* aesthetics.
4. ALL computers fail under the abuse of children. apples included. how much you want to bet that the costs of repairing cracked screens from dropped/abused pads will kill this thing off?
I'll bet a hundred billion dollars thanks, because I have seen the iPad in the hands of real children. The truth is that with even a halfway decent case they will not break when dropped, even without a case they are really sturdy. Now I wouldn't give a kid an iPad with a smart cover, but there are many alternative case options that also feature smart covers (which BTW kids "get" instantly).
Kids can hold onto stuff better than you seem to think they can.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure, why decline when you can accept their offer and flip them on eBay legally and make money on the deal?
For a better deal, say that they can have their required materials sold in electronic format for half the cost, but they're only tied to the registered account of the device? (Skipping for a moment the whole thought of broken hardware). At least then, the students would actually have to use the devices.
Bye!
See, this is all still so Old School, pun intended.
Not counting the courses with hands on and special equipment, consider all these lecture courses. Hello PodCast!
Education needs to be $500 per course including both books and lectures and say 5 hours total personal questions/office hours/emails/etc.
Then you can buy a course and ponder it no matter how long it takes you, rather than "start a clock" and risk un-erasable F's. Then when you think you're ready you sit for the test.
$40,000 Ivy fees are all smoke and mirrors. But amazingly we're still griping about music and movies, and we're missing the golden goose of info.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yes. Shiny new ipads are obviously going to increase test scores. Much more than hiring competent teachers, or funding academic programs that foster learning.
No, They got a government budget surplus, and they blew it on something shiny that makes them look technologically savvy. Kinda like useless people in suits blow money on a shiny sports cars and other status symbols. "Look at our school! We have all this awesome technology! [of course, none of our staff knows how to properly manage it anyway, and we will sue you when your children demonstrate superior control over our shiny status symbols than we do-- But pay no attention to the incompetent people behind the administration desks!]
This is why dumping money on the public school system wont work. Public schools lack integrity, and as such, cannot be trusted with public funds, really. Unless there is accountability, there will be no integrity, and as long as teachers are treated like martyrs even when they fail their students by continually failing to ensure that they gain basic literacy (AND basic math, AND basic science) at an alarming statistical rate, that accountability will never come.
In terms of school administrators, there is more incentive in looking like they know what they are doing, than in actually investing the time and resources into actually gaining competence. This is especially true when there is flagrant incompetence and other serious shennanigans going on courtesy of the teacher's unions, and liberal arts majors trying to create education policies.
This money would have been much better spent on refurbishing the school's science labs, or on funding extracurricular academic activities. (no, not fucking sports activities. Those get enough money and time already. They dont need more. What needs more time and money are things like physics clubs, engineering workshops, and the like. Things that get kids interested in learning, rather than interested in kicking balls around.)
Are you kidding? Graphing Calculators? I had graph paper, number 2 pencils and a sliderule.
Cosines, sines, tangents were tables in the back of the book.
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why would middle school children need ipads? i was that age once! i would just waste time on it? how would an IPAD help?
This story smells of the 'covert' marketing techniques of Apple. Lose an iPhone prototype, have a pep rally for the iPad2... ugh. I mean, am I the only one who sees this as sort of obvious?
I mean, it's genius really.
I think, though, that federal money could have been used for much suitable technology tools (like a full laptop/computer). Very limited things you can do with an iPad in an educational context. Ciriculums don't change, there is still a lot of writing requirements - things that would be much better suited for a normal computer. And they're FRAGILE. I mean, I bet a quarter of them won't last the first 2 weeks.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
A few years ago, the school I went to gave out tablet computers to every student (not portable tablets, but laptop PCs with touch-screens to be used with styluses). Not only did I use one on a daily basis as a student, but I also voluntarily helped out with the "tech director" (or whatever his position was) of the school, doing things like troubleshooting computers and helping to set computers up. As someone who has worked with this kind of program before, let me just say that there's a VERY, VERY, VERY SMALL CHANCE that this could work well. The tablets that we used were expensive, about a thousand dollars per student and teacher. We'd have to ship out pile after pile of busted tablets every week to get replacements, and we used CloneZilla and Deep Freeze to make sure that all of them were the same. Kids fooled around on them in class (I even participated in a school-wide Halo deathmatch during Biology class), and it was very poorly managed. The tech, while the teachers found the technology useful, never added more than the students would get by simply using pencil and paper (they even had digital whiteboards with a projector in every classroom, called "Smart Boards" or something like that).
For iPads to work in a school environment, they would have to be very locked down and very well-managed. What can you possibly do with an iPad, besides use the internet or a specialized research application, that you can't do with pencil and paper? It's a huge cost to support, it doesn't add much, it's more complicated than simple pencil-and-paper, and, unless it can be well-integrated into the curriculum, would be totally useless. Take it from me, as someone who has dealt with this before. Schools just seem to think that, by adding random technology, grades and learning will somehow improve. It doesn't work like that; not one bit. I know this from real-life experience.
PS: Yes, I know that Deep Freeze isn't exactly a very good solution for computers that students keep with them all the time. If I was them, I'd use Linux with limited user permissions, and the "tech director" there agreed with me. Management wanted Windows and that's what we got. Sigh...
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
From the article: "The cash transformed Heritage into a magnet school emphasizing science, technology, engineering, the environment and mathematics."
So, why did they drop there cash on iPads, which are not oriented to any of those things, but rather to media consumption? I could understand if these devices were set up to be used as general purpose computers, but iPads are not, so I view this as somebody's vanity project at best.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Considering how much money a student can save by pirating e-books it's almost moronic for him/her not to keep some form of tablet around. $250, even $500 is chump change compared to what you would save.
It's actually really hard to find most textbooks in digital format, legally OR illegally. I mean there are torrent sites that specialize in them, but I'd say that even the majority of textbooks aren't available.
When I went to school, we had a dead sun, and boy it was cold.
When I was a lad, the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
It all kinda sorta went tits up after that . . .
Its a good thing I had 7 toes, it made the more advanced math easier.
I have eleven toes . . . most only go up to ten . . . but mine go up to eleven . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If all you want to do is learn, you can check out iTunes U. They have many lectures recorded in both, video and audio only forms for many topics, from Business, Engineering, and Science to Literature and Fine Arts. You wont be able to walk into an institution and take a test that will qualify for a degree that employers will ask for, but it will get you as much as most lectures would do had you tossed out the big bucks to test your attention span on a clock. If you are sitting in your computer, or any internet connected device, you can pause at any time and look up any terms or concepts you want in google.
I am not sure why iTunes U does not get more spotlight.
MIT has OpenCourseWare.
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
Then there is the Khan Academy.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
And Wikipedia, and One Laptop Per Child. People are already working to put all human knowledge online where it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the globe.
It depends where you are, but I think degrees mean less when college kids with startups become billionaires. Come up with a good product. Market it well. That is what matters.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
For a better deal, say that they can have their required materials sold in electronic format for half the cost, but they're only tied to the registered account of the device?
For an even better deal, put all the material on it, up to and including some college level stuff, for free. Keep them learning when the teacher is boring.
Isn't that what school is supposed to be about?
Maybe the money could be spent on, uhh, you know... teachers?
A couple of days ago I heard (might have been a Detroit channel, not sure) word of classes of 60 students per teacher. That's insane.
iPads - Captcha = gimmick
Disclaimer: I own various Macs and I work a lot with Microsoft products, so I am very far from being a fanboy in any direction.
Now while I am relatively scared by the idea of students not learning on an actual PC where you can code and experiment freely with stuff, I like the idea of ensuring a good technological plateau for all students rather than leaving it to the families.
The first question that pops into my mind is this: before spending so much money did anyone make a study? Did they compare different tools to see which are the best? Do they have a particular problem in mind that the iPad solves better than the other tablets out there?
Why not eBook readers? As a teacher my job of keeping a classroom of university students is constantly made harder by the distractions afforded them by notebooks and similar. I have come to forbid the use of these unless I am sure the student is following the lesson. A student who is playing also distracts those right next to him who are curious to see what he is doing.
After all it seems more like an initiative to attract students attention: "tell mom and dad to come to our school: you get an iPad!!!"...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
The quintessential billionaire college kid is a sort of idiot; he holds very few practical skills and has not even learned the technical end of his business very well (facebook being a horrible, horrible example of web design or architecture).
I'm gonna say that he's not a great example of why college is unnecessary.
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no hidden comments and I only mod UP
I learned math on an abacus. I don't remember if they gave one to everybody. I do remember it was viewable in portrait or landscape.
Jobs said the iPad was his greatest achievement. What did he mean by that? He meant that his tablet vision would go forth upon the land and destroy the textbook. And that this would be a good thing. * the textbook, the magazine, the newspaper, laptops, gps's inter alia.
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I'd like to know how the schools can get such grants. The university i am attending is looking at a 60% increase in tuition costs due to federal and state cuts amounting to just under 200mil over the next two years. Yet they can afford to buy new computers so that every middle school student can play around during class? And I thought I was privileged to attend schools that received grants to equip the math classes with T8-82's. (Note: this was one per math class seat, not one per student.) We had to leave them at the school when not in class, but still at the time it was advanced technology. I'd like to know exactly why the government thinks it's better to give this funding to the lower education while dramatically raising costs for the higher education?
Easy iPad 2s to be had at Heritage Middle School. Seriously what a fucking stupid idea.
Really: Expensive devices are bought by the State and given to children for free.
So in Soviet America, government-sponsored healthcare is communism, while government-sponsored Ipads are a great idea. Because who needs health when we have shiny gadgets?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Despite the fact that this is a frivolous purchase, why the ipad, of all things? Surely there must be better options.
You make it sound as if all they had to do was get lucky and buy a ticket with the winning numbers.
If a "billionaire college kid" is sort of an idiot for getting rich before they've had a chance to fully develop their craft, how would they compare to a normal college kid who did not strike it rich before they've had a chance to full develop their craft?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
$7 million FEDERAL dollars to give these kids iPad 2s, while some inner-city schools in Detroit can't even afford teachers. Ridiculous.
"Thanks to a federally-funded grant for magnet schools ... "
Uhm, you probably shouldn't use devices with electronics or ferromagnetic materials in them there, just a heads up. ;P
Carbon based humanoid in training.
School's not what it used to be *sigh*
We had a lecturer who would tell people it was easier on a mac to any question.
Another lecturer needed something done and asked "easier on a mac" lecturer how to do it.
He did not know as his job was to be a "professional?" fanboi at UK taxpayers expense. Hope this is not hapening in this case.
WORST.....FANBOI......EVER!
This sounds like someone on the school board trying to be "hip" rather than a sensible use of funds. Ipad's are all nice and shiny sure, but there is nothing they can do that a average laptop cannot do for less money. Actually the average laptop with any OS can do a hell of a lot more
I work in a K-12 environment as one of those "not competent" IT techs and can completely agree with your observations, at least in my district. There are no technology processes and upgrades and are at the mercy of whatever a teacher or administrator wants "today". As a private tax paying citizen, to see the amount of waste and inefficiency with tech purchases, such as Ipads for everyone, is truly a frustrating experience.
Well said Sycraft!
>in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators â" in the snow, both ways, uphill!
You forgot the part about fighting off dinosaurs. Ah the good old days.
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
It's obvious these 'educators' have never read the timeless work 'Silicon Snake Oil' by Clifford Stoll. Due to my reading of this book years ago; I've learned to limit my online time; and frankly don't own an 'internet connected device'. My cell phone is a phone and while it has a camera; I never use it. I don't text, I don't IM (except at work) and because I don't do these things, I can see the results of living the 'connected' life in generations younger than I am. They are completely unable to conduct themselves properly--they're terse, unconsciously rude and have no clue how to handle live interpersonal interaction. 'Instant' connection leaves them believing that everything happens at light speed; ergo they lack patience.
My favorite quote from Silicon Snake Oil:
I'll leave you with another quote from a favorite author, Robert A Heinlein. This quote is prophetic, I feel, because the Human Race is becoming like hive insects--each of us specialized at one task.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators
Tho we didn't have fancy ones like that available on the market back when i was in middle school and only had 'scientific' ones, the same principle applied: If i wanted one, either i cut grass to pay for it or conned my parents in to it. i wasn't 'given' one by the 'state' ( tax payers ). We also rented our books, for a small fee. If this isn't shades of socialism, i don't know what is.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Pension and health-care benefits. Good luck hiring a teacher without incurring those expenses.
-ted
That is why some clever bastards join forces and split the cost of ONE textbook between 8-10 people, slit the back off it and feed it through a scanner with a hopper....
I'm all for quality textbooks, but 200 dollars is too much to demand for a mediocre one....
I manage a few thousand MacBooks in a school district which issues one to every student, fourth through twelfth grade. Simply put, it's not about the hardware, it's about changing education. If all a district does is provide hardware, without building curriculum to go with it, it *is* throwing money away. On the other hand, if the staff development is there, and the curriculum is brought into the 21st century, it is worth every cent. In fact, my district currently ranks in the bottom twenty percent for per-pupil spending, and in the top ten for performance - we spend less per student than most, with incredible results. Yes, there are distractions, just as students have found distractions throughout history. Yes, there is misuse, just as students have misused every other item they've had available throughout history. In a world driven by computing devices, where the overwhelming majority of students are involved with smart phones, game consoles, digital entertainment (we're a long way from TV), etc., if you believe your child will take an education lacking these tools seriously, you're kidding yourself. I have personally witnessed elementary students (4-6) creating data my generation could not have considered until college. Give students all the tools, the hardware, software, and curriculum, and they will do amazing things.
I am a private school teacher and we explored the use of iPads in high school and middle school. We basically concluded that the cost exceeds the utility of the device. We want to teach students to be content creators, not simply consumers. And the iPad isn't nearly as suitable to this function as an equivalently priced laptop. Instead, we're moving to model of standardization of software for ease of exchange of files and setting standards for student computers that will connect to the network. We're trying to look at software that is licensed to allow all students to run it on personal laptops since, being a private school, many of the laptops on campus are not school-owned. This is moving in the direction where we would expect all students to have their laptop with them every day. Of course, one real sticking point is that very few rooms have the power outlets to let an entire class of students run plugged in and most laptops don't have battery for a full day of classes (which is one of the few things that was really attractive about the iPad).
My wife is a teacher at a high school, and next year all the kids are getting laptops, which they can take home. The IT guys had nothing to do with this, but the elected board did. And the teachers are going to be asked to use them all the time in the room.
Now, there has not been any increase in IT support, nor any changes in the classroom to make sure 30 students can all charge their laptops in the classroom at the same time. Most classrooms are set up so the teachers won't been able to see any of the screens, so the teachers will have no idea what the kids are actually doing.
I would have thought the best idea would have been to give a few class sets to each department, so the teachers can use them when needed, and have a few for loaning out. This way you control the laptops, making sure none of them end up on EBay, you can keep them updated, and it would be cheaper. But that doesn't sound as good for the Board.
One of my wifes pupils asked her the other day "What do you think would improve education". Her answer: "Talk to the teachers. They are the only people who are never consulted when decisions are made, yet they are the people who know what happens in the classroom."
As a business person, you're conflating a one time purchase with a long term commitment. I understand your idea, and it has certain merit, but as sibling posts point out, a one time $350k would not do much for staff. First, you need facility. You might presume there is an extra classroom to use for the instructor, otherwise you're looking at a 700SF chunk of real estate at about $150-200/SF plus 30% for FFE (yes, I do that stuff for a living) so there goes $140k off the top. If you hire a new teacher, you're likely in for about $40k in direct salary and about the same in benefits and retirement setasides. So you can fund a teacher for 2.5 years. And then what will you do? Fire the teacher? Raise local taxes to keep them on? It's true that these iPads may only last 4-5 years - maybe less - but they don't have a family to support, and you're not going to drop and entire class when they leave.
Also, it looks like they're going to affect nearly 700 kids with this. A teacher might affect 25 (or, if you spread it out over a whole grade, maybe 150 with incrementally smaller class sizes). This iPad thing may not work - it may be a waste of money. Or, it may take a dozen or more kids who are "on the edge" and give them a tool that helps them really excel. Maybe it will allow the existing teachers more one-on-one time with kids who need help because the interactive nature of the software they're using reduces the need for help with some students. Maybe computers, in general, are just a waste of time and are only being used to pirate games (which was what they said about the two they bought for my math class back in 1982). Best thing to do is to let these vanguards try it out and see what works and if it's worth the money. Then the rest of us can decide whether it's something that can add to the educational experience, or just a waste.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
We're buying Chinese made device, financed with credits from the Chinese, but test scores keep indicating we are falling further behind Chinese pupils...am I missing something here?
What's wrong with a cheap Android from the east, save the taxpayer some money.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This does put a smile on my face, new game customers.
Got Code?
We want to teach students to be content creators, not simply consumers.
Can't have used an iPad for very long if that is the impression you were left with.
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Because there's more to life than striking it rich?
I remember school bags getting constantly thrown, kicked and dropped, Sure the textbooks could take it but will an ipad in a schoolbag. Also an ipad is a more desirable object to be stolen than a textbook.
A couple of things up front: I have both a B.S. and a M.S. in Computer Science, and I have a kid starting kindergarten this year, so I have more than a passing interest in technology in the classroom.
While shopping around for schools (we've chosen to go the private school route for a number of reasons) we had a discussion with one school that used iPads starting in Kindergarten. I asked what the value-added was, as I have a couple of ideas for the tech. What I was looking for was:
* We are minimizing the use of textbooks/workbooks by giving each child an e-reader that can do more.
* We have killer apps that we bought/created that can do (fill in the subject here)
* We have found through research that the use of this technology improves the learning experience by n letter grades (or a comparable metric)
What I got was a blank stare. Then I had some fun by whipping out my iPhone, giving it to my kid, and telling her to go to town on one of the educational apps that we'd downloaded. After she configured her preferences and started working on the reading exercises, I asked if they'd like to see her on a laptop while we were at it. Another blank stare. Even better, she can't quite read yet, but we're using tech around the house to help with that. She thinks its a game.
I guess when I see that schools are wholesale adopting the technology, I have to ask whether this is just a marketing gimmick, not for Apple or Google as was stated somewhere in the thread, but rather for the school to say "hey, we're cool, we have iPads." I just haven't seen tech a smooth tech adoption strategy that impresses me, yet. The tools are there, but I don't see the curriculum development that justifies either the cost or the hoopla.
"Hey, I know what we're gonna do today." -- Phineas Flynn
Uhhh, actually, 200 bucks seems far to much for even a quality book. There are a few books for which I've paid ~100 dollars. Precious few. Wonder how much an entire set of Encyclopedia Brittanica costs today? Hmmmm - lemme google that: http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-42711-Encyclopedia-Deluxe/dp/1615354379
Awesome. Now, there are better encyclopedia, I guess, and there are worse. But, that one is rather dear to me. My Grandma bought me the 1973 edition, because I was her favorite nerdy grandson. (She had a favorite jock grandson, a favorite motorhead grandson, a favorite redheaded granddaughter - etc) If I recall correctly, that set cost about $1200. And, I used the thing extensively. Great source of information, at the time.
Of course, today, one can use the internet to find everything that the Brittanica has, without ever looking at an encyclopedia.
I have never seen a textbook that was intrinsically worth more than the good old Brittanica.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So Indian schools are no better at teaching English than American schools?
> Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators â" in the snow, both ways, uphill!
Luxury! In my day we could only dream of graphing calculators. We had to make do with 8 digit, 4 function calculators. Only the rich, hoity toity kids had a square root button. Don't even get me started about what we had to do for transcendental functions!
Schools already remotely watch students through their webcams on school issued computers.
http://boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/19/earlyshow/leisure/gamesgadgetsgizmos/main6223044.shtml
As well as in school bathrooms.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/perversion-is-fine-so-long-as-youre-in-a-position-of-authority.html
Believe it or not children are protected by the constitution just like us "grown ups". Well at least by the Bill of Rights. But schools violate these natural born rights, all the time, in the name of safety a security. And nothing happens to make it stop. Good old Ben Franklin said it best, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.".
V for Victory
Pitch Forks: check Torches: check Angry People: check - A. LaChasse V for Victory
Oh yea, I can do it much easier. iPad doesn't have flash and this can make endless variations if done properly.
Of course so can garage band, and garage band has a far huger range of instruments and tracks.
But the really funny thing here is that you did not read your own link - an iPad version of otomata is coming soon.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the truth whether it's a shiny Mac or a local off-brand PC - the way it works in education is you can get funding for buying everyone new computers, but you get zero funding for IT, setup, support.
All of the teachers I know are still using 5-year-old iBook labs that some whiz-bang paid for. With the original batteries, and no one servicing them for the entire time. No computers are going to work well in that environment.
There are have been studies proving practically every different thing about which computer company or OS has lower total cost of ownership for a large group - and of course the standard is for the school board to ignore all of them and go with whichever member has a stronger opinion. The real problem is that there is no funding for dedicated computer people to teach their use or keep them running.
Unlike a textbook which only has the content, and iPad has Angry birds and Internet access. Sorry, but this is a stupid idea. There is a reason why some CEO's don't allow Smartphones or laptops in meetings. It's a distraction to take your attention away from what matters.
Now, if the school locks down the iPad so it only has one icon dead center, I'll stand corrected. But I doubt it.
The "extra control" includes locking down features and remote wipes. That is not something you would ordinarily want on your device, unless you're an enterprise and you want to run a bunch of administrative software... which Apple licenses for $500/yr. (And yes that's per organization you fucking twat.)
Fucking slashtards.
I didn't even buy an iPad 2 for myself, let alone for my kids.. our iPad 1 works fine and they're rather expensive (and fragile, and rapidly obsoleted) pieces of equipment. It'd irritate the crap out of me to know that I was paying three thousand in school taxes per year just to buy some ipads. Gimme a break.
I guess that's the priorities of a Rust Belt state (I'm originally from NY, but moved to Texas ten years ago.) Meanwhile, Texas created more jobs every one of the last three years than EVERY OTHER STATE put together... they didn't do it by taxing me to death. SO glad I moved here where there are no personal or corporate taxes. (I pay $3k in property/school taxes per year on my $150k house, which strikes me as a bit high, until I remember that I used to live in NY and California, both of which have 10-15% personal income taxes alone... and I can't think of a single thing they gave me for those taxes that Texas doesn't give me to.) Stupid liberals and their spend-spend-spend. Let ME determine what I'm going to buy my kids to get them eddikated. Instead of $500-800 for an iPAD, I could hire an individual French tutor for the entire school year and have them actually learn something instead of playing with Facebook.
toys?
There is a compact adapter, probes, etc. along with an iPad app that turns the iPad into a nifty digital storage oscilloscope.
What is a magnet school?
Great, now instead of paying attention in class, we'll have a generation of young students who are experts at playing Angry Birds.
Wouldn't something like the Intel Classmate PC's been a better choice? Not as flashy, but at least the software is built with schools in mind. For example, being able to lock out the kid's screens so they pay attention is a feature I bet a teacher would enjoy. Also being able to push material/content to all of the devices, or view what's being done on the devices, etc ...
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