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

[cirus]

My school district spends $800 / student, which my understanding is lower than the national average. Spending $678 / student for iPads, if it means not buying textbooks, notebooks, and other office supplies, doesn't seem like a bad choice... But I guess I'd have to see their actual numbers and see how much they'll actually be saving.

Its $678 for the IPAD, not the etextbooks.

Notebooks and office supplies will still be required for many things.

If the students can't bring the ipads home how can they be expected to study? Notes on paper are good but that requires paper and ignores the fact that a textbook is a more thorough study material than notes (for example it has practise questions). In younger grades penmanship is an issue so paper will still be required for certain tasks. Tests are obviously on paper, especially where there is a lot of writing. Longer typing exercises will be hell on a tablet.

Some classes such as math will be hard to adapt to an ipad, others such as geography will be significantly better with an ipad.

I don't doubt that ipads will improve the learning experience but the question is if the cost is worth it. Ipads can supplement the learning but cannot replace everything.

$678 is awfully expensive compared to competing tablets (nexus 7, surface RT at ~$200).
And does a student really need a retina display and a top of the line tablet for basic usage?

 

[PracticalMac]

Yeah because the vision of smart boards and other electronic fads in the classroom have turned out so well.

While we wait for your vision, why don't you show me an app that is currently usable in the classroom and we can discuss its merits.

I show you two.

Evernote
DropBox

(and smart boards are just simple input devices, completely different then iPad)

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Its $678 for the IPAD,

Show me where you see the $678 tag?

a iPad Mini WiFi is only $329 (and it may be tax free for school district, don't know)

 

[HenryDJP]

And no, you're not really teaching IT with an iPad. You're mostly teaching media consumption.

And please explain what's the difference between a teacher who preaches a soliloquy to students about our president, past presidents, history and the like, then tells them to turn to page such and such and read about this or that person? Oh, that's called media consumption!

And instead of kids accidentally ripping a page or even worse getting grimy chicken fingers left on the pages (and this is all very common) requiring a replacement of said book which takes time, there's a media device feeding them the same information which requires zero inventory relieving much precious space for other important things in the classrooms and it's easy to retrieve new electronic text books in the matter of seconds.

You're talking down on the iPad when you can't give a strong enough reason against tech products being used in the educational world for students.

Every generation has it better than the previous gens. You had it better in school than your parents or grandparents, be honest about it. It's not a waste of money, technology moves forward decade after decade. Unless you are you suggesting that we all should be still using old B/W Tube TV's with knobs to change the channels and flat screens are waste of money because after all we're still watching the same show no matter what we watch it on.

 

[LagunaSol]

If it's just a printer PDF, I don't see the advantage at of the iPad over the textbook.

Geez, have you ever used an iPad?

Here's are a few things you can get with an iPad-based textbook you can't get with a paper equivalent, even if it's just a simple PDF:

• Searchability
• Hyperlinking
• Highlighting/notes/annotation (unless you're a college student buying your own books, you often aren't allowed to make any marks in your book at all)
• Low-light reading
• Zoomable text
• Zoomable images
• Copy/paste (helpful for notetaking)
• A thousand books on a single device that is smaller and lighter than your smallest textbook
• The latest, most-up-to date revision of the text

I hope you're not an educator.

 

[PracticalMac]

i'd be more concerned about the pedophiles in LAUSD.

I am sorry, this is wayyyy of topic, but anyone else see the irony in this statement?

And I am not accusing you of anything, just the juxtaposition presented.

Again, just an observation of irony by me, nothing more.

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Every generation has it better than the previous gens. You had it better in school than your parents or grandparents, be honest about it. It's not a waste of money, technology moves forward decade after decade. Unless you are you suggesting that we all should be still using old B/W Tube TV's with knobs to change the channels and flat screens are waste of money because after all we're still watching the same show no matter what we watch it on.

DUDE!
That is too new for me! iconoclast!!

16mm film and slide shows for me, baby!
And flip boards!

Anything digital, verboten!!

 

[LagunaSol]

DUDE!
That is too new for me! iconoclast!!

16mm film and slide shows for me, baby!
And flip boards!

Anything digital, verboten!!

LOL! I get to turn the filmstrip! Now that's what I call learning!

Just make sure the air conditioning is running. First things first.

 

[Squeak825]

I am not saying make that one interactive.

Just make it an eBook as is, pass the saving from not printing it out.

Then make a version with special features/ interactive, and sell as upgrade (in App purchase?) or different version.


Don't treat eBooks as static paper objects, you gain endless ways to sell something with broader price range.

I am confused. You say it is easy because we already make it digital to send to the printers (which is a PDF), but then claim you want an "app" and upsells.

The cheapest way to make an "ebook" would be to take a printer PDF, reduce the size (probably down to about 200MB in one file) and post that. Customers no long want that. They expect significantly more features than that. Publishers don't want that because it makes it easier to copy and you have IP issues.

The next step up is to take the printer PDF, run it through a process to convert each page to a Flash object, wrap it in an nice shell that gives features (notes, highlighting, etc) and put it behind a paywall. Until the iPad came out, that was the defacto of "eBooks" for K-12.

With Flash being dead, we now either have to do the same as before, but do it to HTML5, or create a native iPad app and convert the printer PDF to some other format.

All of those steps costs money. Now, it is a one-time fee that reduces the UMC to almost nothing, but it is not free.

Throw in the extra money that the photographers want for digital rights, and it adds up.

Oh, at the end of the day, we do make it cheaper. Our typical Middle School Math book is $80 for the print and digital, or you can buy it for $74 for the digital only.

 

[donutbagel]

Nice try, but with the over 300,000 made for iPad apps I'm sure they'll find something educational for the students.

Let's find out. They still haven't done anything useful with the Smartboards they threw so much money at. And believe it or not, an iPad cannot do much to help a class with a bad teacher and/or students with bad attitudes. It's also pretty much useless if the teacher doesn't know how to use it effectively.

 

[Squeak825]

Then don't use it.

Make Apps.

Apps are expensive to make (relatively) and require constant maintenance. Schools pay one fee upfront, and then expect updates throughout the life of the adoption. Those costs have to be recouped in the price of the book.

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Its $678 for the IPAD, not the etextbooks.

No, for this RFP, LAUSD required K-12 Math and ELA to be included in the price.

 

[LagunaSol]

They still haven't done anything useful with the Smartboards they threw so much money at.

Why in the world are we comparing Smartboards to iPads???

 

[donutbagel]

Why in the world are we comparing Smartboards to iPads???

I'm not comparing them, just showing how stupid these school people are that they bought Smartboards. The iPad could definitely be useful, but I highly doubt that it will be useful in their hands. They still haven't gotten the PC system sorted out beyond computer science class.

 

[HenryDJP]

Let's find out. They still haven't done anything useful with the Smartboards they threw so much money at. And believe it or not, an iPad cannot do much to help a class with a bad teacher and/or students with bad attitudes. It's also pretty much useless if the teacher doesn't know how to use it effectively.

Well then the school has bigger issues than worrying what an iPad can do, right?

 

[sinsin07]

What's the demographic of LAUSD?

 

[sw1tcher]

We need to teach our children Information Technology skills.
iPad IS that IT, being rapidly adopted by industry as work tools.

iPads teaching IT. And to K-12 students? LMFAO.

You obviously don't live in or around LAUSD.

You have an incredibly narrow vision for tablet computing.

You give these K-12 students too much credit.

$329. Mini (16GB)
$459 with cellular (if they insist).
$499 / $529 for iPad 4 (16GB)

Cheapest Dell laptop:
$399 Inspiron 15, and THAT is ON SALE.

Cheapest HP laptop:
$449 HP Pavilion g6t-2000 Notebook PC

Cheapest Acer NETbook:
$248*

*Runs Windows 8, 1.1 Ghz Celeron CPU (a very, very low performing brand of CPU)
Windows 8 - 64-bit version - Intel® Celeron® 847 processor (1.1GHz) - 2GB DDR3 memory - 320GB hard drive - 11.6" HD widescreen CineCrystal™ LED-backlit display (1366 x 768) - Intel® HD graphics - Intel® NM70 Express chipset - webcam - stereo speakers - HD audio - multi-gesture touchpad - full-size Acer FineTip keyboard - Wi-Fi - HDMI® - card reader - 4-hour battery

Since the Dell and HP really are not as "cheap" as you claim, more like comparable to the iPad, that leave the Acer.
Get the Acer netbook I listed, try it for a week, let us know if it will work for a school better then an iPad.

They're not getting iPad mini's. They're getting iPads. iPads that retail for either $499 (16GB) or $599 (32GB). And if some of the previous posters are to be believed, it's the 32GB iPad.

Since a $399 Dell is < a $599 iPad, my previous statement of "you can buy a basic laptop PC for 1/2 or 2/3 of that" still stands.

Also, $449 isn't the lowest HP laptop. There's the HP 2000z-2d00 Notebook PC for $349.... HP Pavilion 14z-b100 Sleekbook for $379.... HP 2000t-2d00 for $399.... HP Pavilion 15z-b000 Sleekbook for $399....

Seems like you're cherry picking things to me.

Show me where you see the $678 tag?

Did you even RTF article?

The deal, which was approved in a 6–0 vote by the district's school board, will see Apple supplying about 35,000 iPads to 47 LAUSD schools at a cost of about $678 per device.

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What's the demographic of LAUSD?

From what I've seen, within a 15 mile radius of downtown L.A., it's mostly working class minorities (mostly Latinos, with some African Americans, and some Asians).

You can check ethnic breakdown here: http://search.lausd.k12.ca.us/cgi-bin/fccgi.exe?w3exec=cbeds

 

[anthony11]

The iPad can be an amazing tool in education, especially for those who have difficulties learning

The value of our iPad and iPhones for our autistic son truly is incalculable.

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We will just have to wait and see about breakage and theft. Likely it will be no worse than with textbooks

I'd think both would be much higher. No incentive really for a kid to steal a textbook, but an iPad is a high-value item, and one more fragile.

This is NOT a lot of money. Assuming a three year lifetime for the iPad it is just $100 per semester per kid. If they last 5 years on average then the price is less. and there will be some re-sale value left. They will be able to sell off used iPads at $100 each.

I'd think more like an average lifetime of one year, factoring in theft and breakage. I can't see many lasting for 5 years, though certainly the schools will hang onto them as long as they possibly can. Wrt selling used, I would think that by the time the bureaucracy would allow sale they'd have almost no value.

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LAUSD has a $7B annual operating budget. Carving out a little to demo this program really won't be missed at the end of the day.

http://budgetrealities.lausd.net/faq#t13n67

Note: LAUSD’s overall budget rises to nearly $12 billion when you include capital programs.

How much of that goes to the blowjobs-for-knuckledraggers^H^H^H^Hsports programs?

 

[greenmeanie]

Poor tax payers!

 

[greenmeanie]

So you think they give you digital copies of books for FREE? LOL
Those digital copies sometimes cost more!

My school district spends $800 / student, which my understanding is lower than the national average. Spending $678 / student for iPads, if it means not buying textbooks, notebooks, and other office supplies, doesn't seem like a bad choice... But I guess I'd have to see their actual numbers and see how much they'll actually be saving.

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Do you realize they use the text books for 3 to 10 years sometimes more?
Do you realize you have to license per student every digital copy of the books per year? Some of those books costing more then the paper back version.
I know people like to twist the BS to get their "FREE" items but work in a IT department in school before spewing crap like this.
Do you realize most teachers want to watch YOUTUBE on them and Facebook? That is the biggest complaint in my school system is that we block youtube and Facebook and require them to use teacher tube which they refuse to use because they can't screw off all day.

Do you know how much school districts spend on textbooks? Do some research for you spread your FUD.

 

[greenmeanie]

You do realize DROPBOX is Blocked in most properly run networks because of pirating/torrenting through it and firewall avoidance?

I show you two.

Evernote
DropBox

(and smart boards are just simple input devices, completely different then iPad)

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Show me where you see the $678 tag?

a iPad Mini WiFi is only $329 (and it may be tax free for school district, don't know)

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

So you think they give you digital copies of books for FREE? LOL
Those digital copies sometimes cost more!



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Do you realize they use the text books for 3 to 10 years sometimes more?
Do you realize you have to license per student every digital copy of the books per year? Some of those books costing more then the paper back version.

Apple iBook Textbooks are required to be $14 99 / license or less. My expectation is they'll give each student a voucher for each book they need, and students will redeem them on their own accounts.

This means the students can keep the books forever (they're associated with the student's Apple ID, not the device), schools can pay $15/student/book, and publishers don't have to worry about people reselling and so killing their sales. Everyone wins. I actually can't think of anyone who is negatively impacted by this... Maybe whoever makes the presses that physical books are printed on?

 

[greenmeanie]

Your assuming IBOOKS have all the books school's require which they don't.
Where do you get the info that McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — the publishers responsible for the majority of K-12 content in the US will be charging $14.99 a book? I need to see that.
I have been quoted $100.00 per student for one book required in the School system I work at. I am sure there may be books at $14.99 but not all what is needed.
And they require a student to keep that book it can't be shared/transferred. So every year/or when classes switch through out the year Tax Payers will have to buy those new students the books needed again instead of using the same printed book the school would have bought.

And the final say on this is try to get a TEACHER to use a book in IBOOKS only. They will file a grievance against you so quick your head will spin!

Apple iBook Textbooks are required to be $14 99 / license or less. My expectation is they'll give each student a voucher for each book they need, and students will redeem them on their own accounts.

This means the students can keep the books forever (they're associated with the student's Apple ID, not the device), schools can pay $15/student/book, and publishers don't have to worry about people reselling and so killing their sales. Everyone wins. I actually can't think of anyone who is negatively impacted by this... Maybe whoever makes the presses that physical books are printed on?

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Your assuming IBOOKS have all the books school's require which they don't.
Where do you get the info that McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — the publishers responsible for the majority of K-12 content in the US will be charging $14.99 a book? I need to see that.
I have been quoted $100.00 per student for one book required in the School system I work at. I am sure there may be books at $14.99 but not all what is needed.
And they require a student to keep that book it can't be shared/transferred. So every year/or when classes switch through out the year Tax Payers will have to buy those new students the books needed again instead of using the same printed book the school would have bought.

And the final say on this is try to get a TEACHER to use a book in IBOOKS only. They will file a grevance against you so quick your head will spin!

They can accept Apple's prices or take their books elsewhere. Having to spend $15/student/year isn't much different from spending $100/student/5 years - the difference is the book belongs to the student, not the school. This means the student will have an ever growing library of every book they ever needed in school. Tax payers won't balk because the price is the same, and because their children get to keep their books in addition to their notes between school years for looking back on.

As a student in college, I've had enough of this BS. I last bought a textbook from the traditional system a year ago. I've found a variety of ways of getting what I need for free or super cheap since (IE, visiting the teacher - who gets free copies of the books from the publisher - and scanning copies of the pages I need.)

 

[Michael CM1]

This is great news for the kids. We never had up-to-date textbooks in school, which can be OK for math but kind of insane for history or science. I mean if it was 2000 and you had an 8-year-old science book, it might say, "Only a fool would think there are planets in other solar systems." But in 1995, the first exoplanet was discovered. So any chapter about that is completely wrong, and you have to replace THE ENTIRE SET OF BOOKS to fix it.

So instead these can be digitized, which means a set of books will be insanely lighter, the school district can probably save money on paper if kids can take quizzes on an iPad, and assuming the publisher does it right the kids can get updated materials. I was born in 1978 and don't think I ever took a history class with a text on the Ford or Carter administrations. Hell, or even Reagan, Bush I or Clinton.

I just worry about the big school district next door subjecting kids to some non-Apple product because I've heard some key decision-makers don't like Apple.

 

[warschauer]

My school district spends $800 / student, which my understanding is lower than the national average. Spending $678 / student for iPads, if it means not buying textbooks, notebooks, and other office supplies, doesn't seem like a bad choice... But I guess I'd have to see their actual numbers and see how much they'll actually be saving.

No state in the country spends less than $7,000 per student per year. The national average is about $11,000. I sincerely doubt your district spends $800.

 

[maxosx]

Rumor has it one of the decision makers from the school board is a major Apple Shareholder. How convenient.

 

[lordofthereef]

I wonder how the rest of the IT budget looks like.

Could be they are saving on total IT budget by getting iPad instead of traditional computers.

That's possible, too. It's been ten years since I graduated high school, so I won't claim to know what they use desktops for these days, but "in my day" it was basically internet and word processing with some minor spreadsheeting and power points . The iPad is fine for internet, of course, but sorely lacking in the latter three areas I mentioned. That said, each student wouldn't need a computer anyway (didn't back then either).