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L.A. School District's 30,000 iPads May Come With Free Lock-In
lpress writes "The Los Angeles Unified School District will spend $30 million over the next two years on iPads for 30,000 students. Coverage of the announcement has focused on Apple winning over other tablets, but that is not the key point. The top three proposals each included an app to deliver Pearson's K-12 Common Core System of Courses along with other third-party educational apps. The Common Core curriculum is not yet established, but many states are committed to it, starting next year. The new tablets and the new commitment to the Common Core curriculum will arrive around the same time, and busy faculty (and those hired to train them) will adopt the Pearson material. The tablets will be obsolete in a few years and the hardware platform may change, but lock-in to Pearson's default curriculum may last for generations."
Who said anything about programming. These are textbook replacements. The only thing they have to do is have all curriculum loaded, accept updated periodically and integrate with the schools provisioning system.
They can still give out the paper workbooks where the kids write stuff. There will still be wide rule notebooks filled with scribbled examples off the whiteboard and doodles galore.
Anything else is a bonus.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
what the fuck are you talking about?
Designed for entertainment?
Have you even used a tablet before? iBooks has educational content, the iPad has a lot of text editors and word processors. I've written many screeds on /. ON an iPad.
The thing about iPads in non-consumer contexts is that large entities like businesses, schools and NGOs can restrict what apps go on these devices and if you get the extra enterprise deployment gear, you actually CAN side load custom software on them.
Stop smoking crack. It's bad for you.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.