Posted on 10/02/2013 1:39:32 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
EPIC FAIL: Los Angeles high schools now confiscate all free iPads they gave students
The Daily Caller 3 hours ago
Hilariously, officials at high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District are now taking back a couple thousand iPads a week or so after giving them to students as part of a 47-school pilot program.
The mass repossession is the latest in a series of responses by school officials to the fact that hundreds of students figured out almost immediately how to hack the security settings on their iPads. Another 71 kids ostensibly lost their iPads just as immediately. (RELATED: LA schools give every kid an iPad—what could go wrong?)
Each iPad cost the school district $700. School district officials have said that the eventual goal is to supply every kid with one of the devices as part of a technology plan that will cost $1 billion.
As of Friday, students at Westchester High School and Roosevelt High School are now bereft of their iPads, reports the Los Angeles Times. At least most of them are now bereft, anyway. A Roosevelt teacher told the Times that about one-third of the devices still remain unaccounted for.
“They carted them out of every classroom in sixth period,” Westchester senior Brian Young told The Times on Monday. “There has been no word of when they’ll be back.”
Other schools may soon follow suit and recall their students’ iPads as well.
The hacking was far from rocket science for the tech-savvy students. Bypassing the security settings imposed by school officials took no more than a few simple clicks.
Students had told the Times they were frustrated because they couldn’t surf the Internet freely or visit social media and music streaming websites.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
textbooks will last longer
Textbooks don't last very long, and the equivalent of hundreds of books can be viewed in digital format on an iPad. Easier for a kid to carry versus breaking their back carying heavy books.
However, those iPads will quickly depreciate and be worth maybe $25 in ten years (being generous here). The schools tend to waste money on tech purchases, and dump it for nothing in a few years. Just another way to waste taxpayer money; it's not their money so why care about it?
I type on mine without any problems. I occasionally use a wireless keyboard while camping in our Airstream and it works great.
However, I don’t believe my tax dollars should buy one for every brat in the country.
Before the draconian repossession, administrators had attempted to ban students from using the iPads off of school grounds, thus defeating the point of having the devices, which are intended as supplemental learning tools.
Duh!!! Isn't one of the main advantages of issuing iPads or similar devices to students enabling them to have their text books on those devices instead of having to cart the physical books around? Indeed one of the main savings to be generated by such devices is eliminating physical books and the costs associated wiht the physical books.
How in the holy friggin cow can you buy something in huge quantities AND STILL PAY MORE THAN TOP LINE RETAIL?
Thoughtful and well-designed learning software can make computers useful in education. The public school system, however, has often assumed that just their presence was a plus.
Our problem is just at our house. I desperately wish we could do everything with pencil and paper, like we did in the 1980s when we got much better test scores than they do today. I wish eternal boiling oil on the perpetrators of ArmorGames.com and similar ilk!
that is insane,... $700 IPADs?
textbooks will last longer
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You are thinking logically ,, you and I would say to ourselves ... HMMM ,, Math doesn’t change .. so I can expect a math text to last 20+ years ... History doesn’t change ,, so another 20+ years , English .. yup ,, 20+ years
In that scenario , textbooks win hands down ... they don’t need to be charged , don’t crash , are 100% portable .. they’re perfect... add to that the choice of Apple .. NO REPLACEABLE BATTERIES they’re a THEFT MAGNET and they’re ABUSABLE by punks who only want to crank rap on it and chill with their Nakamichi headphones..
Now think like a school board member ... where the life of a textbook is 2 years just because the publisher added a graphic in chapter 3 and deleted a sentence in chapter 7... and they need another sale at $89/book*100,000 books...
bump
how much does that publisher charge for the digital version?
I bet its still pricey
Generation Backspace Delete and Escape
shall I stop typing on my ipad. I didn’t know it was illegal.
Kinda bragging here ... my kids’ rural high school is one of the top rated in our state ... and some of the teachers still use blackboards and those film strips where the sound track goes “beep” when it’s time to go to the next picture.
There’s no way our school district would drop any kind of mega bucks on Ipads and such. And the kids seem to be learning just fine.
The kids also have a dress code — long pants for everybody, no underwear showing, and sleeves on everybody’s shirts or tops.
The kids also have multiple generations of family who expect them to act right.
how much does that publisher charge for the digital version?
I bet its still pricey
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Probably .. however aren’t there FREE .PDF versions of good texts from “way back” when History books had History in them and Math texts ?? surely they’re out there ...
What’s funny is that the same textbooks when sold in other countries ,, where the actual cost of printing and distribution is HIGHER! ,, often sell for a small fraction of the USA price ... There was a lawsuit not long ago where a (I believe) Korean was shipping genuine US textbooks , printed for the Korean market to the USA and selling them for a VERY LOW price..
I agree with you. I am an educator who uses an iPad in my classroom. For the last two years, I have had one student in each class who used an iPad provided by their parents because each has a learning disability. They know that the classroom and lockers are not secure and it is their responsibility to keep it safe. I will accept assignments via email.
In each case the iPad has demonstrated to be a good tool, like a pencil.
bump
I thouht it was Taiwan?
Could be ,,, doesn’t change the story ... it was some asian country that uses Engrish Ranguage textbooks for the upper grades .. same exact texts sold here but far cheaper.
technically English - Korean mashups are “Konglish”
still funny to Google pics
Whats truly ironic is that the iPads are to help the kids get computer savvy.....
Hey I know maybe they should give the school administrators iPads so they can figure them out......
I also teach. iPads have been a great asset to my lessons.
teachers like it - its a crutch. But are kids learning anything?
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