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L.A. School District Cancels iPad Pearson Curriculum, Asks Apple for Refund
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Then people end up on Wikipedia getting a politically slanted version of 'history' as Wikipedia moderators are out of and inject their own personal political beliefs and ignore the rules of Wikipedia to serve their own purpose.
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Maybe Mr. Deasy should have focused on getting the abysmal HS graduation rates up instead of trying to turn the educational paradigm on its head.
If you can't get a student to graduate HS by using text books like the past several hundred years, throwing an expensive iPad at the idiot isn't going to change the outcome.
The reality is that some people are simply just stupid or have zero home involvement. Throwing tons of money at it isn't going to change the outcome.
This was mostly LAUSD's fault (and the fault of those responsible for planning/implementing the project), as was widely recognized when the stories of this debacle first broke.
Another problem was that LAUSD conveniently ignored the reality of their student demographics. Quite a few iPads magically disappeared shortly after getting into the student's hands. The idea of providing free iPads for each student may have been misguided in the first place. A similar program might actually work in districts where many of the students can afford their own iPads (and in fact already have one). And since these districts are much smaller in size, the project would be easier to manage and implement.
Apple may wish to help out here, but they were the least at fault of any of the three parties. And even if Pearson was inept in some ways, they're playing scapegoat for some truly inept employees within the government's bureaucracy (nothing new there - do they ever take responsibility??).
Another problem was that LAUSD conveniently ignored the reality of their student demographics. Quite a few iPads magically disappeared shortly after getting into the student's hands. The idea of providing free iPads for each student may have been misguided in the first place. A similar program might actually work in districts where many of the students can afford their own iPads (and in fact already have one). And since these districts are much smaller in size, the project would be easier to manage and implement.
Apple may wish to help out here, but they were the least at fault of any of the three parties. And even if Pearson was inept in some ways, they're playing scapegoat for some truly inept employees within the government's bureaucracy (nothing new there - do they ever take responsibility??).
Was the goal for the iPads to stay at school? I'd be surprised if the problem of theft was not brought up if students were expected to travel home with the iPads.
Wikipedia was the most objective and reliable before they implemented their "official" rules where only "qualified" people could moderate. It was amazing to see how well people (the whole world!) corrected inaccurate information when it was posted. Any wildly inaccurate post didn't last long - any that did were an anomaly. The whole idea that it was unreliable was a huge lie that was perpetrated by those who prefer the biased slants (and this lie was unwittingly repeated over and over by well-meaning, intelligent, scared people who were ignorant of how well Wikipedia worked in reality). When suddenly only a small, select group can moderate, corruption creeps in. Let everyone speak, and even those from oppressed regions bring the truth out. The world community threw out the lies, and the truths (regardless of whether or not they were pleasant or Politically Correct) remained.
It was amazing to see it in operation, and it's such a shame to see it slowly being brought down by those who suppress the truth.
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Freaking idiots. Everywhere. A lot of people had to screw up for this to happen. - L.A. citizen away from home
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I still use pen and paper; I find it the best way to learn, as do the professors and GSIs. And of course I need to use the PC for computer science, but that's different. Don't know anyone who uses a tablet.
We used iMac G3s in elementary school just to learn how to use PCs. Learned Word, web browsing, etc. That was more than good enough.
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I still use pen and paper; I find it the best way to learn, as do the professors and GSIs. And of course I need to use the PC for computer science, but that's different. Don't know anyone who uses a tablet.
We used iMac G3s in elementary school just to learn how to use PCs. Learned Word, web browsing, etc. That was more than good enough.
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This is why I would think a public school system should only use technology that's been tried and tested elsewhere, most likely in the private sector, instead of having something liked this commissioned for them. This goes for everything from laptops to projector-like equipment to software.
As a student, I can't agree more. Textbook companies make money on controlling supply and demand. I will gladly search high and low to find a Torrent of a textbook these days because I hate giving them my money. I thought that I'd make a company one day that would allow for textbook subscriptions, like Netflix for textbooks. But then I realized that textbook companies would never do that because they would no longer be able to control the demand as much.
F them.
Spot on. Wake up Apple, sack Cook and Ive and get back to being a good computer maker.
Be careful ArtOfWar. Websites are able to change their content (conceivably a good thing), but because information can change, and because there does not need to be any checks or balances or peer-review of the content, one must always treat the content with a degree of scepticism.
While I do use websites such as Wikipedia to give myself an overview of something that I know little about, it cannot and should not be considered an appropriate source of information that one may use for something consequential (like for example studying for your exams).
Whatever their flaws and apparent anachronistic nature, there are clear reasons why peer-reviewed, academically critiqued and approved sources exist.
While I do use websites such as Wikipedia to give myself an overview of something that I know little about, it cannot and should not be considered an appropriate source of information that one may use for something consequential (like for example studying for your exams).
Whatever their flaws and apparent anachronistic nature, there are clear reasons why peer-reviewed, academically critiqued and approved sources exist.
I have an idea....
...Apple, get a grip. You have more money than the countries Italy and Russia combined. How about you break down the barrier and do this:
Show the world that you really care about education, and begin to display that - by canceling your deal with that recycling firm.. you know, the one who handles your subsidized plan of "reuse and recycle". Next employ more Americans that need jobs to re-assemble the good necessities of the parts your dedicated customers hand off to you to "recycle", and re-create a refurbished education-ready iPads. Think of a catchy name to wow people like you are known for. I wont take that away from you.
Next, work with your minions in corporate and retail AND real LAUSD public teachers, not admins or even principals and come up with a iOS that has NOTHING on it. Giving the teachers iOS based admin templates that they will iBeacon, or "share" with the students. This foundation of the iOS is always improving, and never static (unless the subject is history) and is customized per subject to "engineer, upgrade, educate and reward"....in not that order persay
.. A template needs to be developed, kind of like your "apple steps of service," technique, which you have been using to train your minions in Apple Retail for your retail division since almost the beginning of your Retail Stores....
And finally - EVERY LAUSD student gets one of these Apple-Re-Imagined-iGuidance-iEducate-iPad for free. Yes, I said it, for free. And watch what happens....
Remember kids, there is no jail breaking, no unneeded apps to coheres your mind into thinking how you may or may not get away with something you are not supposed to be LEARNING... No restrictions.
So imagine that this iPad with basically nothing on it in the students hands...Now some would say they will just get mad and toss it, right?? Or something negative will invoke those young minds towards destructive behavior. I beg to differ, for I am assuming positive intent, How?? By holding the parents and even especially the educators; which after this project is deployed will be responsible utilizing Apples gift to harness this tool towards the success of the students creativity & learning. Relax Apple, its because of the brand you have created, I would imagine very little iPads would be rejected. Once the student learns code through the teachers they have teaching them about these subjects they start to enjoy this magic...
I believe you get the picture. Again this an idea, that I should hope comes to pass. It will help our future understand and embrace the foundation of technology, and how it is not meant to be bombarded with features and benefits, rather a starting point of technology understanding. Kids of the future WILL have to have another "language" on that resume - -and us old nerds like me know its gonna be some type of "code".
Why not start them on that path towards bilingual linguistics Apple - "Every Child, EVERY Student" - iPad......
P.S. Dont forget about those other minions you have working for you Apple in.....China.. Those employees are in villages, lacking family proactive education that needs to be made for free for them..... sooner than later....
Love Junglistic
...Apple, get a grip. You have more money than the countries Italy and Russia combined. How about you break down the barrier and do this:
Show the world that you really care about education, and begin to display that - by canceling your deal with that recycling firm.. you know, the one who handles your subsidized plan of "reuse and recycle". Next employ more Americans that need jobs to re-assemble the good necessities of the parts your dedicated customers hand off to you to "recycle", and re-create a refurbished education-ready iPads. Think of a catchy name to wow people like you are known for. I wont take that away from you.
Next, work with your minions in corporate and retail AND real LAUSD public teachers, not admins or even principals and come up with a iOS that has NOTHING on it. Giving the teachers iOS based admin templates that they will iBeacon, or "share" with the students. This foundation of the iOS is always improving, and never static (unless the subject is history) and is customized per subject to "engineer, upgrade, educate and reward"....in not that order persay
.. A template needs to be developed, kind of like your "apple steps of service," technique, which you have been using to train your minions in Apple Retail for your retail division since almost the beginning of your Retail Stores....And finally - EVERY LAUSD student gets one of these Apple-Re-Imagined-iGuidance-iEducate-iPad for free. Yes, I said it, for free. And watch what happens....
Remember kids, there is no jail breaking, no unneeded apps to coheres your mind into thinking how you may or may not get away with something you are not supposed to be LEARNING... No restrictions.
So imagine that this iPad with basically nothing on it in the students hands...Now some would say they will just get mad and toss it, right?? Or something negative will invoke those young minds towards destructive behavior. I beg to differ, for I am assuming positive intent, How?? By holding the parents and even especially the educators; which after this project is deployed will be responsible utilizing Apples gift to harness this tool towards the success of the students creativity & learning. Relax Apple, its because of the brand you have created, I would imagine very little iPads would be rejected. Once the student learns code through the teachers they have teaching them about these subjects they start to enjoy this magic...
I believe you get the picture. Again this an idea, that I should hope comes to pass. It will help our future understand and embrace the foundation of technology, and how it is not meant to be bombarded with features and benefits, rather a starting point of technology understanding. Kids of the future WILL have to have another "language" on that resume - -and us old nerds like me know its gonna be some type of "code".
Why not start them on that path towards bilingual linguistics Apple - "Every Child, EVERY Student" - iPad......
P.S. Dont forget about those other minions you have working for you Apple in.....China.. Those employees are in villages, lacking family proactive education that needs to be made for free for them..... sooner than later....
Love JunglisticIt's worth noting that Apple's iPad events used to be about iPad software as much as hardware. Like with iPad 3, they introduced iPhoto. Like iPad really was going to kill the laptop: with faster processors we saw more apps, and it felt like only a matter of time before Final Cut Pro, Logic, full Photoshop etc arrived on iPad.
The hardware is innovative. People forget that to make something thinner requires innovation. But lately it feels like Apple loves the iPad less, and the only reason I can think of is lack of software.
Oh yes, my mistake. I forgot that humans magically become faultless when putting things down in a book instead of on a website. If only I had written a letter to the editor instead of a forum post here it might have been faultless.
apple will try to give them a gift card or store credit instead. LA will most likely accept that offer
This is really interesting to me.
Our school district uses iPads extensively, without the Pearson software. In fact, our town was featured in a film on the Apple website about iPads in Education.
https://www.apple.com/education/real-stories/burlington/
The first year (2011 I think), we had a limited roll out - high school kids and a few grades in elementary. The next year, a bigger roll out to middle school. Now every kid in our town has a dedicated iPad at school. The high school kids get to take them home, and the other kids store them at school in charging carts.
The first year was really rocky to be honest. My kids were in elementary at the time. Most teachers didn't know what to use them for or how to use them. There were a lot of technical glitches with the network. But there were still some neat projects done with the iPads. The kids made movies and presentations with them, and used some of the math games to learn math facts. Was it necessary? Not at all. But the kids enjoyed using them and it provided a level of learning engagement that they didn't have before.
My daughter is in middle school now and uses hers mostly for taking notes and looking up stuff on the internet. Each school now has a dedicated IT person to handle everything, which makes things smoother and I haven't heard much about any problems or issues in a long time.
They are still using paper textbooks for some reason (at least in elementary and middle school), maybe because the software is just not up to par yet.
It sounds like the LA situation was a case of too much too soon with an unrealistic expectation of how the launch of this type of technology would go. If they had done it in stages, like our school did, they would have had a chance to iron out the wrinkles and perhaps things would not have gone so catastrophically wrong.
Tl;dr: iPads can definitely be a great educational tool, and are really the right form factor for schools if implemented properly.
Our school district uses iPads extensively, without the Pearson software. In fact, our town was featured in a film on the Apple website about iPads in Education.
https://www.apple.com/education/real-stories/burlington/
The first year (2011 I think), we had a limited roll out - high school kids and a few grades in elementary. The next year, a bigger roll out to middle school. Now every kid in our town has a dedicated iPad at school. The high school kids get to take them home, and the other kids store them at school in charging carts.
The first year was really rocky to be honest. My kids were in elementary at the time. Most teachers didn't know what to use them for or how to use them. There were a lot of technical glitches with the network. But there were still some neat projects done with the iPads. The kids made movies and presentations with them, and used some of the math games to learn math facts. Was it necessary? Not at all. But the kids enjoyed using them and it provided a level of learning engagement that they didn't have before.
My daughter is in middle school now and uses hers mostly for taking notes and looking up stuff on the internet. Each school now has a dedicated IT person to handle everything, which makes things smoother and I haven't heard much about any problems or issues in a long time.
They are still using paper textbooks for some reason (at least in elementary and middle school), maybe because the software is just not up to par yet.
It sounds like the LA situation was a case of too much too soon with an unrealistic expectation of how the launch of this type of technology would go. If they had done it in stages, like our school did, they would have had a chance to iron out the wrinkles and perhaps things would not have gone so catastrophically wrong.
Tl;dr: iPads can definitely be a great educational tool, and are really the right form factor for schools if implemented properly.
The OS needs a refresh. Its too restrictive. iOS has far too many shortcomings, ts nice and stable but how good is that if you cant get anything done.
They need to add features, (come on BT file sharing, and a file browser to start), and then implement an enterprise type policy that will lock out anything the teachers deem unnecessary.
That's what it comes down to. Apple & Pearson didn't support the program. However, they should've tested it out first and ironed out the kinks rather than saying here is an iPad and here is some software go away... It was Apple's general mismanagement of the program that ultimately is the reason why it failed and is the reason the schools are now using other devices.
We had classrooms with computers in at least 10 classrooms in a school of about 700 students 25 years ago. My suggestion, when PowerBooks first came out, was that we should be giving notebook computers to all students when they entered in the 9th grade, and they could keep them when they graduated.
The shared labs had problems because the 'fast' internet was NOT fast enough ALL the time. That was wired, not Wi-Fi then. Of course, the hard drives were minimal, and the RAM was 5MB. Before a commercial and licensed grading program was bought by the school, several teachers were using a grading program I had written. After the professional system was in use, they even preferred using my program because it worked better for them for keeping day-to-day progress and printing custom periodic progress reports.
When Kindle came out, I thought we would finally be able to provide an alternative to expensive paper textbooks that we had to evaluate and submit for approval every 5 years. The main problem with such a path is the lack of foresight on the part of publishers. But students need to be able to perform searches that they can do only on computers now. iPad search capabilities are still underpowered and research is too slow to be useful. Kids do not need to spend all their time at home doing schoolwork.
What use is an iPad for photography and videography when the storage cannot be increased and the memory is sufficient for email and surfing, but not much more. I removed one locally popular TV news app because they could (would?) not update their stories which were minimal to start.
I have tried to take notes on an ipad and is so clumsy. Pen and paper, period.
What's the difference between a Macbook and the original Powerbook? Not much, really, it's still a screen hinged to a keyboard that you run desktop software on. There aren't going to be major changes to the form factor which is just a rectangle of multitouch glass. Just small software changes over time.
I've also never seen iOS "choke" an iPad Air 2
What choice do school districts have when it's easier to manage 1,000 Chromebooks, then 30 iPads?