Posted on 06/25/2013 10:52:09 AM PDT by jacknhoo
At first blush, it seems crazy.
The perpetually destitute Los Angeles Unified School District will spend $30 million to purchase thousands of iPad tablets to give away to students at 47 LAUSD campuses.
At second blush, it seems crazier.
This purchase all but commits the nation's second largest school district to hundreds of million of dollars of additional spending with Apple over the next two years.
That's right, two years, hundreds of millions.
At third blush, it seems like a rip-off.
The LAUSD will pay $678 per iPad, even though you can belly up to the Genius Bar at the local mall and pick one up retail for around $500.
At fourth blush, it looks like a conflict of interest.
LAUSD Supt. John Deasy is not only an Apple stockholder, he has appeared in at least one Apple promotional video.
At fifth blush, it doesn't seem ethical.
The funds slated to buy the iPads come from a school construction bond approved by voters for brick and mortar construction and maintenance on existing structures. Would voters have said "Yes" if they knew hundreds of millions would end up in Apple's pocket?
And at sixth, seventh, eighth and
50th blush, it raises all kinds of unanswered questions.
Questions like what happens when kids lose them? What happens when kids drop them? What happens when kids steal them from other kids? What happens when kids view porn on them? What happens when kids download personal photos onto them? What happens when kids drop out of school? What happens when kids move out of the district, or out of state, and take their LAUSD iPad with them?
And what happens to a generation of kids who will go through life without ever having opened a book? I mean a real book with covers and pages and print?
In our increasingly semi-literate, short attention span world, do we really need to expunge the few remaining books from our kid's lives only to replace them with yet another digital device offering flashy images and slickly produced video.
I know I'm a quasi-Luddite and I might as well take a kitchen broom to Zuma and try to sweep the Pacific back to China. Still, actual textbooks and the physical act of reading a full-length book is an exercise in long form study and concentration that trains the eye and mind to think.
No doubt the iPad is an amazing device. The wife has one; so do each of the kids. It's a magical machine with remarkable capabilities to educate and amuse.
But it's not superior to books. A reminder to the digital generation, Steve Jobs didn't have an iPad when he went to school.
Superintendent Deasy defends the move as a necessary step for students living in an increasingly online world. He specifically cited state and national standardized tests that will soon be offered only in digital form as one of the many reasons this program is not only necessary, but visionary.
So a case can be made. But this massive investment has been sprung on the public with far too little input from the people paying the freight and far too many unanswered questions.
For the record, I do not believe Deasy pushed this plan for personal profit and he correctly recused himself during the debate and vote. And the superintendent argues the high cost per iPad is deceptive because it includes an educational software package that replaces expensive textbooks. Fair enough.
But I suspect what's really driving the bus is the ugly underbelly of Los Angeles, massive poverty.
As more and more of life's processes are converted to online operations, the disparity between the haves and have-nots has become a digital divide. With so many kids living below or hovering near the poverty line, the LAUSD is attempting to level the playing field by giving every kid a tablet, costs be damned.
And, when they get OUT of school; only having APPLE products will satisfy them!
I've seen the effect in RICH kids coming out of school!
Apple folks were no dummies; hooking the kids on THEIR products while malleable, and enticing the powers that be with...
Dumb?
I think not!
Smart as a FOX; iff'n ya ask ME!
Lol!!! Will the NSA ve snooping on kids doing their schoolwork now?
Heaven help the kid who shows a promising successful future, as opposed the the ones stuck in the liberal fantasyland of mediocrity. The NSA might hack in and shut down this/her access to ensure a level playing field.
Better not type any bad words on it....good thing Paula Deen didn’t have an IPad in High School.
So do little kids.
If they point their finger at someone and say, "BANG Bang!!"; HomeLand Security is on them in a FLASH!
Sorry, this dumb a** idea is alive and well in my little, rural, aggie county.
We just paid $1.3 million for iPads for all middle, high school students and then promptly had our taxes raised...
Am very mad about it...
Not to mention beat up other kids and steal theirs.
They’ll then come back to the trough for brick and mortar construction projects that they didn’t fund because they did this. Sort of like the stimulus that was supposed to rebuild the country’s infrastructure.
Two of my grandkids had identical Ipads, computers, whatever that the schools 'provided'.
When they got them the s.n. were written down and stored at school.
When school let out for the summer; they had to return them.
Now one is in high school and the other in grade school - different locations.
When the boy returned his to high school, they took the computer and power supply; checked them, and gave him an OK receipt for it.
When the girl took hers back to the grade school, they checked hers just a little bit better, noticing that the power supply was not the right SN.
(Did you hear me say earlier in this post they were IDENTICAL?)
You got it; the boy had to take her supply back to his school and exchange it!
Whatcha gonna DO about it?
So, the school was built. State of the art. LCD screens lining the hallways, classrooms and offices wired completely for LAN and wireless, high res ceiling mounted digital projectors, a brand new computer lab with 30 Macs, wireless printers and surveillance cameras inside and out. It actually has the look and feel of a minimum security prison, which in reality, is what it is. Just conditioning the up and coming generation for the brave new world.
The school was completed just as the school year ended. Most teachers were transferred from other schools, including my wife, to staff it at the end of the school year. New hires were too costly since the money was spent on the construction and gizmos. Other schools in the district suffered from teacher shortages as a result.
Three weeks prior to start of the new school year the district brought the new school staff in to sign for their individual Apple laptops and iPads. They conducted a day of training, which was nothing more than a glorified marketing event put on by the Apple reps.
So, now with two weeks left until go time, the untrained teaching staff had to build lesson plans using unfamiliar software on unfamiliar platforms and become up to speed enough to train kids on how to use their individually provided iPads for everyday classroom activity and study.
Predictably, chaos ensued when the kids showed up. Imagine 800 6-8th graders with iPads in their hands on a daily basis being supervised by teachers who had less technical knowledge and experience than they did.. Lots of game playing, texting, video recording...schoolwork, not so much. Many were broken, lost, stolen or misused by students or other family members. About 30% of the students were illegals from Mexico. Guess where their iPads ended up?
Of course, the district declared an unqualified success at the end of that first year, and another 1,000+ iPads were purchased to use at the high school. That is how you roll as a self validating empire known as a public school district.
The NSA stole my homework?..............
The “playing field” has never been ‘level’ and never will be. The more you try to level it, the more skewed it becomes. Human nature evolved to compete with nature, then with other humans with the same tendencies. Basically it’s the Law of the Jungle........or is it Rain forest now?..............
In San Diego Unified they had a plan. Give Chargers football tix to all the “poor” kids.
My friend, a teacher there, got lots of tix. I got to go to Chargers games for free with him and his teacher buddies.
I wonder how many teachers and their kids will end up with free ipads as well.
Not that the system is corrupt or anything...
Well put!
First thing I thought of.
Funny, Everyone knows about the unexpected consequences of this "great" idea (aside from the corrupt result of buying in wholesale amounts, and paying 36% the over retail.)
Our existing government at all levels now consists of makers and takers; taxpayers and indolent parasites almost in equal numbers.
That might explain why there isn't a loud scream of outrage. The taxes come largely from institutions and companies, which simply pass the invisible cost on to their oblivious customers.
The parasites couldn't care less what the cost is.
Same people who bought it.
Same people who pay full gas bills because they don’t qualify for a less expensive bill
Same people who pay full car inspection fees because they don’t qualify for a less expensive inspection.
Everything now is income (ie work effort) so if you don’t work you get free stuff if you do - you get nothing but your money taken from those not working.
I did omit a detail. Smart people with high incomes are selling their CA property and moving to another state with less onerous taxes. The legislature will be raising taxes again to cover the losses when a small number of high earners flee. Those remaining behind with lesser incomes will be bearing that burden. Enjoy!
The town of Shrewsbury, MA, tried this. Last year the town bought an iPad for every middle school student and staff. The results are in. Zero increase in academic achievement but a 400% increase in internet traffic, with many parts of the town unable to access the wireless internet during the peak use.
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