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FBI Seizes Los Angeles Schools' iPad Documents
An anonymous reader writes: The Los Angeles Unified School District had a bold (and expensive) plan to outfit its students with top-of-the-line technology: its 650,000 students will be given Apple iPads to use for school work. The cost? $1 billion. Unfortunately for them, the project has been plagued with problems. Now, the FBI has seized 20 boxes of documents regarding the district's procurement practices and confirmed an investigation. "Hundreds of students initially given the iPads last school year found ways to bypass security installations, downloading games and freely surfing the Web. Teachers complained they were not properly trained to instruct students with the new technology. And questions were raised after emails were disclosed showing that then-Superintendent John Deasy had been in communication with vendors Apple and Pearson before the contracts were put to bid."
Schools often tell us that they are lack of fund to give our children top flight education, so we give money and more money and some more money to the schools hoping that they will have enough $$$ to properly educating the children
But when schools get the money, where do they spend it on?
On iPADs !
Instead of spending more money paying high salaries to much better quality teachers, teachers who are more resourceful, more dedicated teachers, and so on, the schools waste money on iPADs !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Let's look at the premise:
1. Students usually know WAY more about technology than their teachers.
2. Students also have usually WAY more interest in it than their teachers.
3. They also know WAY better how to use the internet than their teachers.
4. Students have WAY more time to spend on breaking security than their teachers have time (and money) to spend on security.
5. Information flows VERY freely on the schoolyard, especially when being able to transmit that information ups your social status.
Am I really the only one who is not only not surprised that this happens, but who would have been SEVERELY disappointed if it hadn't?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't understand why schools are in such a massive rush to buy iPads before they've even figured out how to use them, and where they fit into the curriculum. ...and the fact they were hacked... but yeah. We all had fun doing that on the Apple IIs educational software and with game disks we brought to school back in the 80s. Probably more valuable education looking back. It was fun to strip the "mathbooster" mathematics space-invader game of the actual maths and then play it as Taito originally intended ;)
They all chase after the "new-shiny" and plop down a bucket of money before considering or testing the impact, much less training teachers.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
IPad is not a computer. It's a dumb appliance or toy. Just because the kids can use doesn't mean they know anything about real technology.
But we don't just give them money, we give them money dedicated to specific items. If there is grant money available for computer equipment then you have to write a proposal for computing equipment and you can't spend it on ordinary teachers salaries. If you turn down a grant because it is too specific then you get your budget cut because you obviously have enough already.
Good points. I'm a former classroom teacher whose job now is to help integrate technology into the classroom. We do it slowly, deliberately and with a lot of thinking and planning. We never roll out anything to every kid at once. We study, pilot, review, pilot again if needed and then implement. When I first heard about LA's plan, I was horrified. It was too big, too fast, and not well planned. It was doomed to fail, and at the time, I figured that the fix was in, probably with Pearson. They scare me. Technology in the classroom should be used to create, to collaborate, to innovate. Instead, Pearson and other companies like them want to use it to drill and kill while making a mint off of taxpayer dollars.
No, it's a small subset of black people, just the ones that Fox News loves to showcase. Most black people, like most white people, are decent people. There's a small group of black people, like the small group of white people you belong to, who are unmitigated assholes.
I think they meant the Fashion Industry, not the IT Industry. Their hardware sales far exceeds the revenue from, for instance, Coach handbag sales.
"It was a great idea"
Why and how?
"Organized Labor always wants training and work studies to be completed and approved before anything gets rolled out."
You prefer your children to be taught by untrained people using untested methods?
"I've dealt with this working with Airlines and trust me, you don't change work rules or add tools to the environment without Union buy-in. "
In other words, you don't get to change work rules on heavier-that-air flying machines without buy-in from those that operate said machines into the air? Nonsense, I claim, great nonsense!
"You've now given 10s of thousands of tablets to kids so they can watch youporn all day. Congratulations LA Unified School District."
And then again, how and why was this a great idea?