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First hand knowledge here. My wife's last year as a teacher was at a brand new 44 million dollar middle school built by city bonds that were voted down twice by taxpayers, then squeeked by after the school district and city hobnobs went on a phone call drive and teacher/staff PR campaign to get the bond passed.

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.

I just finished my first year of teaching, and already have seen some of the iPad initiative at two schools. The first was an inner city school which aggressively rolled out iPads to its freshman class. I hated having these devices in the classroom. The IT folks were supposed to block access to unapproved online sites via the school wifi. Within 24 hours the kids had figured out how to hot-spot off their O-phones and were on FB and watching football games during school hours. The students were told by admin to take notes on them, so I was not supposed to tell them to put away the iPads during class, lest I upset their educational use. Few were taking notes; most were watching ball games, checking FB, etc, etc. I caught a few of them and when the disciplinarian checked their iPads she found a lot of banned content and even student-generated porn with photos of classmates in compromising situations on school grounds. Very educational of course. It's just one more very expensive distraction. We were expected to create lessons for the iPads (with little to no training for many of us), but anything that required WIFI access usually failed for about 2/3 of the kids in my classroom and the only thing that worked was a few apps that made gee-whiz noises as the kids 'built' and destroyed atoms on their apps.

My next school was heading down the same path but hadn't distributed the devices yet. They'll go to next year's freshman class. Many of the teachers there have the same concerns that I expressed. There is a big drive toward Apple everything, but that doesn't work well with many of the current lessons, test banks, publisher ancillaries, etc. It will mean a lot of new equipment and re-thinking how many things are done that currently work just fine. There is a big issue with textbooks. Many of the textbooks in the building are too old to have an iPad app or to have eText available. Going digital is in conflict with efficient use of existing resources.

I'm starting at a third school next fall. Apparently they've been a little less gung-ho on the iPads, but are also heading in that general direction. I may have a little time to breathe and get oriented before I get hit over the head with it.

I will give credit to Apple. They have done an incredible job of marketing to the educational establishment. They have legions of administrators completely sold on the idea that kids need school-provided devices and that everything teachers are doing on current platforms is of no consequence and that any who resist are luddites. Some teachers support it, but many are skeptical of the benefits and concerned about distraction and the impact on lesson preparation. Schools that are forced to replace large numbers of text books with eText and iPad apps might find themselves spending a lot more than they expected and also subject to a lot of ongoing expense to renew their access codes every school year. As a teacher, I'd like stability, attentive students who can read, a building in good repair, a safe work environment, and reliable equipment for classroom use. I don't need iPads for any of that - just a solid desktop unit with projection capability.