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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.

2 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. 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.