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Apple Scores $30 Million iPad Contract from L.A. Unified School District [Updated]

Waste of Money!

What a stupid waste of money. When Public Schools are struggling to keep teachers and are always under the gun for money. THIS is what they spend it on?
 
so are we talking ibooks usage? Or apps?

Always wondered if industry use of e-textbooks were picking up adoption.

If its an ibook does child to also get the book on his/her personal ipad at home? (assuming the ipads stay in the class)

That would be a nice model.
 
Cisco_Kid said:
Back when I was a kid we used to walk uphill to school both ways, in the dark while it was snowing.

blah blah blah.... ;)
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Not even remotely close to the point I was making.

I understand that you're joking, but a joke is still making a point. If you thought that I was complaining about my childhood I can assure you that I was not.

I learned Photoshop and web design in high school. I'm incredibly grateful that I did, but a computer never helped me learn history or math or science. I think they can do that now, and I am saying that's a great thing, it's not a complaint about my own life.
 
Ryth said:
Yep. Some schools allow the children to take them home. Other schools only allow the iPads to stay in the classroom.

I think the later is better. Too much risk in being robbed/assaulted if you allow kids to take these home.
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It also means that they get to go out and buy one to use at home :cool:
 
Ryth said:
Yep. Some schools allow the children to take them home. Other schools only allow the iPads to stay in the classroom.

I think the later is better. Too much risk in being robbed/assaulted if you allow kids to take these home.
Click to expand...

i'd be more concerned about the pedophiles in LAUSD.
 
This puzzles me. We're broke over here in LA and their purchasing $30 million worth of iPads. What happened to paper-books? They seem to still work and don't require batteries.
The money should be spent on hiring more teachers.

Here's an idea, we should get rid of teachers and just have iPads teach our children.

Oh well. At least the money is being spent on our kids and not in some'one else's pocket.
 
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Small White Car said:
When I was a kid computers in school mostly just taught you how to use a computer. Anything more than that was stymied by the fact that:

1) They were too expensive for everyone to have their own.
2) The software available wasn't very robust, often just offering a single use.
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When I was in high school I wrote a version of the game hangman that was in Russian. It ran on the TRS-80 and took about an hour to load it off of cassette onto all the computers in the lab. :D

Ah the memories. (All 16KB of them. ;))
 
sweet now they can play angry birds on a school owned device! Or even better if another userland jailbreak comes out they can jailbreak them and do all sorts of fun things
 
LA School District is involved? That means more taxpayer money down the tubes, with no discernible benefit to kids' educations.
 
Great way to guarantee sales for macs, and iphones when these kids are older, 30 million is a bargain, to expose kids to certain brand of electronics, to guarantee future sales. Nice move apple cleverly disguising marketing as educational purpose. Brilliant.
 
Cisco_Kid said:
Back when I was a kid we used to walk uphill to school both ways, in the dark while it was snowing.

blah blah blah.... ;)
Click to expand...
As I was about to head out to high school one day, walking up and down several hills, about 1 mile, my dad told me his story: One year, he had to walk to the FAR end of his block to hop a bus.

He really should have tried embellishing a little bit.
 
Ingot said:
Probably not. They are kept at school. When a teachers wants to use them in the class, they are all there ready to go without having to worry about going through the trouble of having to book them out ahead of time, retrieving them for the time they are needed, and then finding out some other class has taken them which means wasting time tracking them down and getting them into the hands of the students. One per child, kept in the classroom.
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Not true. Having been part of a group that bid on this, there was a requirement that content was preloaded on the device so the kids could use them outside the school.
 
This infuriates me.

It's a long story, but LA Unified raided our local central coast school district budget when their funding dropped out from under them (Basically, LA Unified went with state-funding based on attendance, vs ours basing it off of tax revenue. When attendance dropped and their funding dropped out from underneath them, they took it to the state and got a decent cut of our district's funding). SLCUSD has had to cut summer school, bus service, and layoff lots of teachers and counselors, while incentivizing many more into retirement. Our students directly suffered loss of educational services as a result.

And LA buys $30m worth of iPads a year later. Classy. :mad: I'm sorry, but given how brittle our school system is and how much students are suffering from teacher and service cuts, they have no place to be purchasing bulk orders of computer tablets.
 
portishead said:
Do you know how much school districts spend on textbooks? Do some research for you spread your FUD.
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I used to manage the budget for a school system with > $1B operating budget. This is a huge waste of money. Schools do spend a lot of money on textbooks (you should see their IT budgets), but the fact of the matter is that most textbooks aren't ready to be "online" yet and their are fees, licenses, and many other items that need to be discussed before you can even replace textbooks with digital books.

This is a typical waste of taxpayers money, but then again look at the current budget status in California.
 
milbournosphere said:
This infuriates me.

It's a long story, but LA Unified raided our local central coast school district budget when their funding dropped out from under them (Basically, LA Unified went with state-funding based on attendance, vs ours basing it off of tax revenue. When attendance dropped and their funding dropped out from underneath them, they took it to the state and got a decent cut of our district's funding). SLCUSD has had to cut summer school, bus service, and layoff lots of teachers and counselors, while incentivizing many more into retirement. Our students directly suffered loss of educational services as a result.

And LA buys $30m worth of iPads a year later. Classy. :mad: I'm sorry, but given how brittle our school system is and how much students are suffering from teacher and service cuts, they have no place to be purchasing bulk orders of computer tablets.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying schools don't need to be innovative, but they need to do the basics first and innovate in the classroom not providing more expensive toys to this over privileged, add addled, coddled generation. I mean where I am they want to change the school start time so the little kiddies can sleep in (it's more so lazy Parents don't have to get up early to get their stupid kids ready on time). What a crock.

I would only accept this if the parents actually subsidized it somehow and the parents who absolutely couldn't afford was means tested. What do they do with parents who have 3 or 4 kids in a house? Everyone gets an iPad?
 
malexandria said:
...they need to do the basics first and innovate in the classroom not providing more expensive toys...
Click to expand...

My point exactly. I think iPads can be useful in the classroom, but let's face it, they're a luxury this state can't afford. They're up there with smart boards; flashy, but expensive and likely to be underutilized. Forcing another student population to undergo massive cuts in educational services so that we can use tablets instead of dead-tree books is asinine.
 
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