L.A. Unified takes back iPads as $1-billion plan hits hurdles

[bemildred]

School staff and students report that iPads were collected Friday at some schools. One official says only two-thirds of the $700 devices were turned in.

Los Angeles school officials have taken back iPads from students at Westchester and Roosevelt high schools and possibly other campuses as well until further notice, the latest fallout from student hacking of the devices.

The move is another complication in efforts to provide an iPad to every student as part of a $1-billion technology plan in the nation's second-largest school system.

The first devices are going to 47 schools, a process that has involved working out more kinks than expected.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-1001-lausd-ipads-20131001,0,270074.story

[Richard D]

1. Schools give iPads to students . . .

. . . within hours students hack iPads. No one ever could have foreseen that happening!

[bemildred]

3. Deasy is an idiot. The lack of clue here is stunning. How many are being re-sold on the street? nt

[Nevernose]

2. Our school district loaned a few thousand

Kids were watching porn before the school day was out.

Test scores didn't rise, either, because they only gave them out to schools in upper middle class neighborhoods. The ones who did lose them (or sold them for drugs and/or rent money) can't be charged for them.

Meanwhile, out of a 150 middle/high schools, I don't know of a single one that can buy novels for their English departments.

[bemildred]

5. And, unlike the books, they will all be obsolete junk in two years or less. nt

[dawg]

8. My 2010 iPad is still going strong.

But schools would be much better served by cheap, simple e-readers with no internet access or gaming capabilities.

[kentauros]

9. Exactly!

Why do they need Internet access at all?

[bemildred]

11. They will work longer than two years, but they will be obsolete by then.

The high-profit business model demands it. Must have new stuff to sell at premium prices to "early-adopters".

They might work for a long time even, like five years or more. I have some fifteen-year old boxes here, I built myself, they work fine.

[Xithras]

20. I doubt that very much

My sons high school has iPads in many of its classrooms. They don't get to take them home, but they can grab one at the beginning of the class and put it back on the charger at the end.

According to my son, many of them already have chips and cracks, and most have graffiti all over them ranging from juvenile drawings to full blown gang signs. Some particularly assholish trolls even taken to scratching messages into the glass itself recently...mostly tags and gang signs.

Their devices are only a year old, and will be lucky to last for two. There's no possible way that they'd last for five.

This kind of behavior could have been predicted by anyone who has picked up an old text book. Same behavior, new medium.

[bemildred]

21. Well, there you go, that's what I mean. nt

[Nevernose]

18. The teachers all said the same thing

Entry level Kindles could be loaded with dozens of books for the same price as iPads, but no one in authority gives a shit about reading: it's all about STEM to them, because that's where the pressure is coming from.

[pnwmom]

10. So the students in these upper middle class neighborhoods were selling them for rent money?

Uh-huh.

[Nevernose]

16. It's Vegas

The town doesn't break down along class and race lines as neatly as many other large cities do. One of the schools the iPads were given to has a parking lot full of student-driven Mercedes, yet still gives out groceries to about a hundred students on a weekly basis.

It can be a little surreal at times. I was helping two students after school last year (my new school). The first one is the little brother of a rock star, and was talking about flying with his family to a concert: apparently taking a private jet overseas was too expensive, so they were flying first class on the brother's dime (and surprisingly a very nice, fairly well adjusted kid). The second kid waited until the first one had left, then asked for a ride to the homeless shelter for teens.

[pnwmom]

19. Yeah, Nevada really got hit.

[enlightenment]

4. You could buy a lot of

pencils and pens and paper for a billion dollars - and still have enough left over to equip the schools with more computers for the students to use on-site.

[bemildred]

6. Hey, you could even buy food, or clothes. Health care. nt

[HappyMe]

7. What the hell did they think was going to happen?

Kids care more about tweets, FB, and YouTube than anything else.

[kiva]

12. I hope that school districts across the country look at these results

before they allot the money for this; the school district here has been trying this with pretty much the same result, except that many of ours ended up in pawn shops.

[bemildred]

13. Pawn shops is what I would expect.

My wife works as a sub in LA Unified, lots of them will go straight to the pawn shops. iPads is not what those kids need.

[hunter]

14. Back in the Apple IIc days the kids would take the balls out of the mice...

... big rubber coated metal ball bearings. The kids couldn't leave them alone.

Every Apple IIc lab had a bag of spare mouse balls.

[bemildred]

15. Yes, I remember those.

Ball mice, the balls would get filthy too.

[Lancero]

17. Shocking...

Kids managing to hack a piece of technology to unlock additional functions.

Not really. Kids > Adults when it comes to using technology.