The contract specifically stated there were various milestones, and that the district had the unilateral right to terminate at those points.
After the pilot, and before the next wave was one of those milestones.
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L.A. Unified School District Suspends $1 Billion iPad Contract with Apple
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The contract specifically stated there were various milestones, and that the district had the unilateral right to terminate at those points.
After the pilot, and before the next wave was one of those milestones.
What's 'infinent'?
Most things are 'finent'. But if something is 'infinent' then that means it goes on for 'infinenty'.
Now try telling that to the people that make money from making books and the school board that updates the curriculum every year. There's a reason books go out of print and are refreshed and updated every few years. Hint: It has nothing to do with education.
Word. All this tech spending isn't producing smarter kids. It's a total waste of money. Hire teachers. Reduce class sizes. Give students more attention. But those things aren't as sexy as an iPad for every kid.
I won't speak to the sciences, but in regard to social studies, things do change. Perhaps the changes aren't necessary for every three years, maybe not even five years. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for a number of changes in the academic fields start to filter down to the public schools. Furthermore, it is also not uncommon for a number of education policy changes at the national and/or state level to influence what content or skills are desirable for students to have. This interacts with the regular need for schools to have a renewed supply of textbooks every 4-5 years in addition to the growing technological additions to the classroom experience.
Sounds like a cop out to be dependent on technology.
Millions of people graduated high school/college without technology dependency.
Using technology to ASSIST in obtaining information is one thing. Using it to perform tasks that you yourself should be capable of performing is not.
I don't know about that. I was speaking with an IT manager at my son's old school, and he was saying that the damage rates were lower than you'd think. He didn't give me actual numbers, but I tended to believe him.
Thinking of my own 5 and 8 year olds... they have each had hand-me-down iPhones since they were 2, and hand-me-down iPads since they were about 3 or so (I just can't bring myself to sell them for pennies when they're worth so much more to us). These are two rowdy boys, who have owned iPhones for 9 collective years and iPads for 7 collective years... and we've never had a single problem. No screen breaks (or even scratches), no damaged frames, no broken buttons, no water spills, etc. And I have to say, other than keeping them in thin cases they don't take very good care of them. I find them face-up buried in toys on the floor, sitting on chairs and couches, buried under cushions, left out in the sun, drained until there's no battery left at all, etc. I once accidentally knocked a kid in a pool, and once the iPhone dried out it worked fine. Amazingly reliable machines. In fact, it bothers me because I don't like maintaining old devices that can't run the latest iOS, yet these things keep on going... and going... and going.
iPads are fantastic. But here's what need to happed to revive seemingly declining market.
1. More OPTIMIZED OS. Currently it's just a glorified stretched up Phone OS.
2. TRUE multitasking. Side by side apps + floating apps.
3. Better support for pen/stylus. For students. Currently most stylus have tip as large as finger tips. Not a pleasant experience. They need to have a lower cost stylus that students can use.
4. Anti-reflective coating.. again for students as well as general consumers.
1. More OPTIMIZED OS. Currently it's just a glorified stretched up Phone OS.
2. TRUE multitasking. Side by side apps + floating apps.
3. Better support for pen/stylus. For students. Currently most stylus have tip as large as finger tips. Not a pleasant experience. They need to have a lower cost stylus that students can use.
4. Anti-reflective coating.. again for students as well as general consumers.
Not sure if this is the right term for it, but "baselining". You bring a borked computer to the school or corporate IT department. They don't want to care what is wrong with it, they just want to put it back to prisitine condition
and maybe run a memory test. There are any number of Windows OS based tools for this (e.g. fogproject.org". There's no easy & cheap way to manage a large number (100+) of Mac & iOS tablets this way.
Windows OS with group settings allows all sorts of fine grained access control and remote management that just don't exist in OS X (out of the box).
Microsoft and other companies sell training and certification for the knowledge to use them.
It's 20 years of backwards compatibility, transparency in update roadmap and long support lifetimes that separates Windows from OS X. You can calculate your total cost based on this info.
IMO, the program was a failure. 1 week into the roll out, students were able to hack their iPads and start using them for things other than their intended educational purposes (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pandora, etc.)
http://www.dailytech.com/High+Schoo...+LA+Unified+School+District+/article33451.htm
and when the school district wanted the iPads back to fix them and lock them down, not all of them (about 700) were returned
http://www.myfoxla.com/story/23579993/la-unifieds-ipad-nightmare-worsens
and that's not including those that were considered stolen/missing
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/09/27/71-ipads-presumed-stolen-after-lausd-rollout/
I wonder how many were broken/damaged or that they didn't get back at the end of the 2013-2014 school year. I have yet to see a report on that.
Yeah, and the first one is disgustingly valued and oversupported in comparison to the second. Maybe eventually people will get that and stop squawking at the idea of spending money on education.
Now, whether or not that money should be spent on iPads is debateable, but I'm really tired of seeing people complain so much about the money that is spent on educating kids.
I'd largely agree, however, when it comes the numbers of unreturned devices, I think we would need to keep that in mind with the number of textbooks that otherwise go missing. That doesn't change the the total dollar loss is more significant than the textbooks, but it is something to keep in mind.
We have no idea how much of that $800 is Apple and how much is the education company, Pearson. Apple knows all too well how important it is to train future customers on their technology while they are in school. So I'm sure they are will to forgo some profits. So probably well over half of that $800 is going to Pearson for its education program. Maybe even 2/3s of it.
Most things are 'finent'. But if something is 'infinent' then that means it goes on for 'infinenty'.
Thank you. The reason I asked is that I couldn't find that work on any english dictionary, not even the other words you mentioned above.
Could it be a word only used in your region?
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Gatekeepers to education spending are the politicians that control the municipal budgets, not sports fans. One is paid for by taxes, the other by disposable income
I don't know why you're creating a false analogy by comparing the two
In the articles mentioned above, the district is paying $678 per iPad, and that includes the Pearson content.
It's the school district's fault, not the bidders. Apple and Pearson are paid to supply the goods/services spec'd out in that contract. Their only obligation is to meet the specs.
If kids weren't able to learn, then either the implemetation by LAUSD sucked or it was a bad idea that should've never gone out to bid in the first place
Good point.
In the article above, 71 iPads went missing. The contract with Apple says they'd replace up to 5% of the contracted units free of charge, but I don't know if that includes lost ones.
I bet most are simply lost or badly damaged. I doubt many are stolen... iOS 7's activation lock still isn't broken (a pair of programmers claimed they did it with a man-in-the-middle spoof and some stolen passwords, but they reported it to Apple in March and I imagine they patched it quickly).
Despite the extremely complex nature of the iPad, through perseverance and lots of training I did indeed figure out how to use my iPad. And, I don't want a kindle or eReader, I prefer the Apple ecosystem. But thanks.
it's a huge district. Which is why they had to have a bond issue to raise money specifically for upgrading tech.
That said, I personally feel like choosing iPads may have been the right choice however I am not pleased with the fact that they clearly didn't do their homework on how to secure them properly and am not pleased that they might have gone into this planning to get iPads and fit needs to the tech rather than the other way around. I'm paying those taxes and voted to pay them, to improve our schools. Not doing the proper research before coming up with a plan is not the way to do this. So I am pleased to see that someone is questioning motives and tactics and hopefully the same mistake won't be made twice
We can apply caveat emptor to our school systems and allow all manner of companies to profit off of them. And certain Wall Street has the US education budget firmly in its sights. But I don't have to be happy about the fact that companies are pushing expensive technology with dubious educational merit on our schools.
That said, I once had an idea for a really good educational app. But it would require kids to have tablets. So I deemed it too expensive a solution at this stage. But I think it would have educational merit.
as I understand it that amount included all the textbooks and apps, cases, insurance etc. So it isn't as far fetched as it might sound.
And you apparently need to read more of them, so you can learn to spell things like "infinite."
The bond was for school technology infrastructure, and thus was restricted to this kind of thing. It's illegal to use it for building maintenance, teacher salaries etc.