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

[malexandria]

How about Digital Marker Boards?

Instead of wasting $30 million dollars on the cool toy of the moment. How about getting a few teachers iPads and Electronic/Digital Chalk boards, you can probably do some really nice innovative teaching that way without giving every spoiled brat an iPad.

 

[Alumeenium]

teach kids

creative problem solving
engineering
computer programing
along with one of; german, chinese, hindi

stop making factory workers (our factories are all closed/offshore)

make critical thinkers who can meet the challenges of the 21st century!

 

[Squeak825]

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.

They can't use the money to hire more teachers. It comes from a bond issue that can only be used for infrastructure.

 

[Rocketman]

No child left behind?

 

[LagunaSol]

*insert trope about Microsoft Excel being an essential life skill here*

 

[Squeak825]

What might not be as obvious from the article is that this $30M is just for the pilot program. Assuming it works, LAUSD has a desire to buy one for every student, to the tune of around $550M.

 

[Rocketman]

What might not be as obvious from the article is that this $30M is just for the pilot program. Assuming it works, LAUSD has a desire to buy one for every student, to the tune of around $550M.

The pilot program is about 43k units.

 

[PracticalMac]

and how is this relevant to anything? You do know Electronic Textbooks are almost as much as printed versions??? I hope you know this.

e-Books:
Don't get lost
Don't get chewed by pets
Easy to update (and shame to companies that want full price for updates)
Include MOVIES, interactive tools kids LOVE.
Etc.

Look over the book you are reading.

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.

and iPad is cheaper then a desktop computer.
Hardware is about the same, BUT, desktops use about 10x more power, take space in classes, need people to set up and maintain, *and occasionally clean-out the virus someone installed on it.*

The simplicity of iPad makes it far cheaper to operate over time.

Cases will protect against most accidents (or lock it into desk stand).

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. 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.

Sorry to hear about adminstrative underhanded efforts, BUT

In the medium to long run iPad's will save money, read above.

 

[SockRolid]

... the district did test runs with multiple devices and the iPad "received the highest scoring by the students and the teachers."

Makes sense. The kids and teachers all use iPads at home already.
iPad is what they (and the current generation of kids in general) are used to.

 

[portishead]

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.

You pretty much have no idea what you're talking about, and your last sentence is unnecessary.

----------

and how is this relevant to anything? You do know Electronic Textbooks are almost as much as printed versions??? I hope you know this.

There's a lot of factors that play into the financial aspects of it, but you still admitted it's cheaper. It's fine, people comment on things here all the time that they no nothing about, I forgive you.

 

[Squeak825]

You pretty much have no idea what you're talking about, and your last sentence is unnecessary.

Actually, he is pretty right. Moving K-12 books to an iPad is not as easy as it sounds. Going forward, new books will be easier, but older books are near impossible to get permissioned for mobile use, and if you do it is very expensive.

And since most books get revised once every 6-7 years, the process is cumbersome.

 

[OLDCODGER]

Schools use marker boards now

Ah, the wonders of a modern society - must catch up on my education!

 

[malexandria]

teach kids

creative problem solving
engineering
computer programing
along with one of; german, chinese, hindi

stop making factory workers (our factories are all closed/offshore)

make critical thinkers who can meet the challenges of the 21st century!

Agree with everything except German. Where are you going to encounter a German in the tech world? More likely you'll have Russians...

 

[rellimie]

I am the IT director for a school district in Pennsylvania; while not nearly as large as LAUSD in May we committed millions of dollars to give ever teacher a 13" MacBook Air and an iPad as well as every student an iPad. We paid for the bulk of it by doing away with a majority of the textbooks and consumables and moving them digital.

 

[portishead]

e-Books:
Don't get lost
Don't get chewed by pets
Easy to update (and shame to companies that want full price for updates)
Include MOVIES, interactive tools kids LOVE.
Etc.

Look over the book you are reading.



and iPad is cheaper then a desktop computer.
Hardware is about the same, BUT, desktops use about 10x more power, take space in classes, need people to set up and maintain, and then have to fix people introduce a virus to it.

The simplicity of iPad makes it far cheaper to operate over time.

Cases will protect against most accidents (or lock it into desk stand).



Sorry to hear about adminstrative underhanded efforts, BUT

In the medium to long run iPad's will save money, read above.

Can we just sticky this post? Better yet, just leave this post, and delete everything else?

 

[cclloyd]

How does that work? Are iPads loaned out to kids like textbooks?

There are 3 cases in my area.

1. The kids are required to choose an ipad and pay for it themselves, but since they're ordered by the school, they get discounted prices. They own it, but require it for school.

2. The kids are allowed to take them home and treat it as their own, no jailbreaking, but they have to return it when they graduate. So they keep it for 4 years.

3. The kids have to keep them at school, and have to sign them out day-by-day that they want to bring them home. Max twice a week. They do not own it, and are not allowed to install apps on it.

 

[iSteve-O]

That 30 million should of been spent on hiring more teachers.

LAUSD classrooms have been overcrowded for a long time now.

 

[iMikeT]

You still wouldn't have done your work and just played Angry Birds.

Good one!

Speaking of, I hope the schools use the accessibility settings to limit students' use of non-productive apps during class.

 

[malexandria]

*insert trope about Microsoft Excel being an essential life skill here*

It pretty much is, if you plan on working in the "real" world of business.

 

[Squeak825]

That 30 million should of been spent on hiring more teachers.

LAUSD classrooms have been overcrowded for a long time now.

As said before, not allowed to. Money is coming from a bond issue for infrastructure.

 

[malexandria]

I just LOVE the idea that I'm buying your kids $600 tablets! Awesome! You want me to buy your kids cars next?

 

[IpadMania]

Looks like stock price down the toilet. This deal must not matter

 

[mytakeontech]

Get ready to buy used iPads from Cowboom/Bestbuy next year.

I heard that a lot of iPad 3 were sold used to Bestbuy by these Schools and Bestbuy sold them on Cowboom.

I bought one iPad 3 to replace my iPad 2.

No wonder CA in big financial mess.

 

[Tinmania]

e-Books:
Don't get lost
Don't get chewed by pets
Easy to update (and shame to companies that want full price for updates)
Include MOVIES, interactive tools kids LOVE.
Etc.

Look over the book you are reading.

I would also say that the current high-price of ebooks vs print is not sustainable. Publishers used to be able to enjoy the higher profits because printing hard-cover books was an expensive proposition (even though not a major cost of the finish product compared to selling price).

But as competition heats up, hopefully with some ebook-only publishers, the prices of ebooks will hopefully come down. They will still survive.

There is an entire industry built upon re-selling used textbooks. That is a market that needs to worry.



Michael

 

[globality]

As a H.S. teacher, I support this. However, the problem is that most teachers are not ready to go in terms of training/support. In fact the training that is available is not that great. Teacher grad programs are still behind the learning curve as well. At best, those in education are looking at blended learning as well as online learning. My district just installed wi-fi and it is still full of bugs. The IT guys cannot handle the increased workload as well. I suggested to our superintendent that they hire a couple more IT guys and he just stared at me in ignorance. Moreover, the textbook publishing companies, with the exception of Pearson, are not blended learning friendly. Now that Common Core is coming in (nation-wide), textbooks will have to be rewritten. That is, after all of the core subject areas are finalized (social science has yet to be reviewed). The idea of blended/online learning started in colleges/universities and now is being pushed on k-12. Finally, issues of theft/repair will come into play. This year in San Diego two schools had Ipads stolen. Once Ipads start appearing in schools, it won't be long before more thefts occur and these Ipads find their way to the swap meets.

Hoepfully with iOS7 theft will be less an issue because they simply cannot be activated after stolen.