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How One School District Handled Rolling Out 20,000 iPads

Posted by samzenpus on from the accident-waiting-to-happen dept.

First time accepted submitter Gamoid writes This past school year, the Coachella Valley Unified School District gave out iPads to every single student. The good news is that kids love them, and only 6 of them got stolen or went missing. The bad news is, these iPads are sucking so much bandwidth that it's keeping neighboring school districts from getting online. Here's why the CVUSD is considering becoming its own ISP.

7 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, students will use bandwidth by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You would have gotten the same results giving them each their own smartphone or computer.

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    1. Re:Yeah, students will use bandwidth by schnell · · Score: 4, Insightful

      yet the most important people in society -- teachers barely make a decent salary??

      I went to public school and had some great teachers who were worth their weight in gold. I also had other teachers who weren't worth a nickel and did a great amount of harm to their students.

      If teachers' unions ever agree to let teachers be paid based on how good they are - rather than just by seniority - you might actually see more attractive salaries for good teachers. You might also see more bright people interested in taking up the profession if they knew they could make a better living doing so.

      With that being said, my only experience in this is with US public schools and their teachers' unions. I'm curious if anyone else knows of examples where teachers are paid purely on merit and the effect (or lack thereof) it has had on educational outcomes.

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  2. Mission creep. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, the kids love them and yes, they probably do have educational value... but look at the mission creep. The district becoming its own ISP next? Can of worms.

    Public funding for education going into internet bandwidth for widgets... well, it takes a bridging argument to say that's a good thing.

    1. Re:Mission creep. by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

      but look at the mission creep. The district becoming its own ISP next? Can of worms.

      On the other hand, it's a can of worms that probably wouldn't have needed to be opened if we had some kind of a plan to develop public internet infrastructure that was free/cheap for people without a lot of money.

      I only bring this up because I would imagine some people looking at this and saying, "A public school system should not be intruding into the area of being an ISP, which has traditionally been an area for private business." I would respond by pointing out that the Internet really should be considered public telecommunications infrastructure.

    2. Re:Mission creep. by pr0fessor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When I was in school I was always excited to go to my science class because we did experiments.... unfortunately my kids never got to experience that due to, possible danger, funding, and insurance considerations all they did was read about it. {but they still have football}

      I would rather they bring back science to science classes...

  3. Re:We shall see. by BoberFett · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You don't actually think digital text books are free, do you?

  4. Re:Apple has platform for content development by dk20 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Didn't apple just recently agree to pay like $400 million as a settlement for price fixing ebook prices?
    So on top of the price of the device, there is also the artificial ebook prices?

    Care to cite some examples of people actually creating content on the iPad in the real world? Most of the people i see with them are playing games or watching video's (consumption).