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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.
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.
I know it's fun to hate on Apple but in this particular situation I actually believe they made the right choice going with Apple. Just to give my background, I'm an educator at university level but help manage the IT for a local high school so I appreciate the educational effects of the technology but also the management behind the scenes.
First off, students (and teachers) don't look after technology. Especially when it is not theirs personally (ie bought with their own cash). Our experience has shown the Apple products hold up much better to abuse over time than the $150 Android tablets you mention. There is also a larger (and in our opinion, better) selection of rugged cases available to further protect them. After a few years of abuse the iPad is still working (though covered in scratches), the Androids are largely broken messes.
Apple devices also have a good history of recieving OS updates. Sure they slow down over time but you don't have to apply the updates if you don't want. We find that applying updates for the first 2 years after purchase is beneficial but after that we test before deciding to update or not. With Android you have no idea how long (if at all) the vendor will support with updates.
So from a monetary point of view the total cost of owership (and experience) is actually better (for us in our opinion and situation) over many abused devices over a 3 year lifespan. We are keeping an eye on things though and Android/ Android vendors are definitely improving and closing the gap. If our opinion changes down the track we'll happily switch over.
In terms of software/ apps. Couldn't care less which has the largest app store etc. Only care which has the most useful apps/ software for our purposes and again Apple wins here (in our opinion).
In terms of educational value, again I believe this is a big picture, long term proposition. Like any technology, the value is not in it itself, it's in how it's used. And like any other technology, it's going to take a while for our understanding of it's best use to evolve and mature. Of course it's not going to have immediate and obvious benefits straight away but you have to go through this learning stage to get there. You can't just magically jump straight to the benefits stage. The normal teachers are just using them as glorified text books right now but they are also getting used to them and how they work and how to manage a class with them. The innovative teachers (and students) are experimenting and learning and doing fantastic things with them. Over time that will filter down to the rest.
Also, I hate it when people judge the value of something based on if it improves exam marks of not. Exam marks are worth didly squat once you get out into the real world and we're focusing way too much on them as opposed to the the skills you really need out in the real world. Technology, applied thoughtfully, can help students develop many skills such as problem solving and creativity and team work and understanding how and why to be socially responsible etc and these are skills which are hard to measure and we largely ignore as a result.
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