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How One School District Handled Rolling Out 20,000 iPads
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.
I read the article and it's scant on details about anything other than they're sucking bandwidth like crazy, taking the Internet down for the entire district, the IT guys were caught way off guard, and the kids and parents like them. The article doesn't talk about how the iPads (it also mentions some ChromeBooks) have improved or otherwise affected grades, education, or anything. Anyone that has actually done have insight on that? Yes, I've Googled it, but it'd be nice to hear from someone in the field. I'm looking at this for a school I volunteer at too. Bandwidth is definitely an issue.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
I think it's less mission creep and more the school district not foreseeing what they'd need to do to make their iPad initiative work. I don't know California very well, but the article makes it sound like it's in a pretty low-wealth district: the article itself mentions that many of the parents do not own personal computers or have an internet connection, and the Wikipedia page for the district states that it's 80% Hispanic. The iPads don't seem to be useful if they're not connected, at least not for what the school wants them for (kids being able to do school assignments, parents staying involved in their child's education). The school probably thought they had enough bandwidth to serve all of their students and their families, probably never called in a network admin to see if they could support connecting anyone who lives near the school, and went through with it anyway.
figure out why they are doing this in schools... everywhere...
Why do educators and parents think that just *having* these devices will be some sort of educational silver bullet?
It is much more important to figure out where they have the best value educationally and how to then integrate those benefits into the curriculum.
They always seem to have the cart before the horse.
Once the student understands the conceptual basis behind a particular mathematical operation
But they never do get that understanding.
there is often immense value in gaining fluency by memorization.
I disagree. It only seeks to waste people's time on useless busywork. I couldn't stand doing 40 problems telling me to find the missing side of a triangle, so I simply didn't. It was a waste of my time, and so was school in general.
By coming to understand how and why something works, you usually memorize it naturally, anyway. This is what rote memorization drones just don't understand; drill and kill is extremely inefficient, harmful to education, and unnecessary 99% of the time.
Memorization, particularly in elementary mathematics, paves the way for more rapid and accurate mental computation
I guarantee you that the study of mathematics is not about quickly and accurately performing random calculations in your head. I also guarantee you that you do nothing but degrade education when you waste time handing out pointless busywork trying to test for exactly this to people who are either already capable of doing it, or do not need to do it. We have computers and calculators for that, and no, using a tool does not mean they don't understand anything, which is what the focus should be on anyway.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Actually, rote memorization has its place
99.999% of the time, it simply doesn't.
especially in math.
I disagree.
There was a paper a while back
There's a random paper for everything, including for me. The fact that some papers exist that come to some conclusion means nothing, since they're likely just coming to arbitrary conclusions based on flawed tests. Our way of measuring proficiency is flawed to begin with, which is why I reject current tests.
that found that kids you memorized things like their multiplication tables performed better at higher level tasks.
Solving 40 multiplication problems that all ask you to do the same thing does nothing but waste your time on useless repetition. It won't magically make you understand the material any more than digging a giant hole in the ground with a spoon would; the information is simply not there.
By making low level steps reflexive, brain power was freed up to work on more complex parts of the problem.
Math is not about speed or memorizing facts, but about understanding. You're not just solving random, arbitrary problems, either. This is a poisonous mentality that is spread by awful educational systems all over the world.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The school my 9 year old son is at is pushing for parents to donate so they can buy iPads too.
Given iPads are like $400-500 each and a good Android tablet is maybe $150 (and also has access to a lot more useful free software than iPads do), this kind of crap makes it obvious that the education sector is at least very badly managed and more likely very corrupt. I'll bet that someone high up in the education department is getting a very nice fat kickback from Apple.
Just because of this locked-in pro-Apple money wasting mentality I refuse to donate or vote for the very populist local props in my area that want to raise our taxes to give more money to supposedly underfunded schools. Its already very clear that all they are all planning to do with any extra money is blow it on yet more overpriced Apple products.
I'm also having a hard time understanding why a 9 year old kid needs an ipad at school in the first place at all. After talking to the principal and class teachers at my sons school its very clear that they think that ipads in the classroom are somehow a self-evidently good thing, and have no solid justification other than "because tech===future". They are clearly just throwing iPads at kids and hoping something good will come of it, rather than the iPad actually being a necessary tool and part of a larger well-considered strategy with already tested/proven benefits.
I'm sure most kids would say they need an iPad too but if my 9 year old son is anything to go by, at least 99% of them secretly just want it only for gaming or as some kind of trendy fashion accessory.
See I've been there myself. I remember back in the 70's when I was a kid, the excuse/lie that a PC would help with homework was the standard and accepted way by me and all my friends.of getting a new gaming machine.
As such I believe that the onus still lies with the schools to show that iPads in the classroom are not actually just another distraction that comes between the student and the teacher. Assuming they can do that, then they still need to show some real justification why 3x $150 Android pads is worse than 1 $450 iPad with respect to actual benefit in the classroom.
Two things:
- Teachers (at least around these parts where they are all unionized) have a ridiculously steep slope to their salary curve. They make a pittance in the beginning, and are paid quite handsomely just before retirement. They have no one to blame for their crappy starting salary then their senior teachers - they negotiate this in. I would much rather flatten the curve.
- I'll get massacred for this, but the teachers aren't all that important. The kids in good districts would do fine even with mediocre teachers and the kids in horrid districts are pretty much doomed no matter how good the teachers are. You can see this in action right now. They have this absurd "everyday math" thing happening in the schools, and every parent that I know here in the burbs is re-teaching their kids math when they get home. That is not happening in a household where the single parent works 3 jobs. There is a reason teachers in those districts say things like "if I can get through to just one child..." They have realistic goals and they know that most of the classroom is doomed.
Don't get me wrong, when my kids have a good teacher it is really satisfying and makes the whole parenting thing much easier. But you know what? I don't fall into despair when they get the mediocre ones because my kids will be just fine. You could triple the pay and it wouldn't substantially improve the low-performing districts - there are systemic issues far deeper than the quality of the teachers.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.