Los Angeles school district begins repossessing iPads from students
Just days after halting home use of the devices, some of the Los Angeles schools that have already issued Apple's iPads to students are taking the tablets back "until further notice."
Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday began repossessing iPads from students at at least two area schools following last week's revelation that some students had bypassed security restrictions on Apple's tablets, accordin gto the Los Angeles Times.
For their part, students ??who were told last week not to take the devices home ??appear to have ignored that order. A teacher from Roosevelt High School in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights said that only around two-thirds of the more than 2,000 iPads issued were turned in.
There was no word from the district on when the devices, issued to students at some 47 schools as part of the initial rollout of Los Angeles's $30 million plan to outfit every public school student in the city with an iPad, would make their way back to the classroom. Lisa Avila, coordinator for academic services to low-income students at Roosevelt, said that teachers "don't know when or if we will able to use the iPads again for classroom instruction ? this week, this semester or this year."
District officials had said previously that the iPads would remain available for use at school, with only home use of the devices being restricted. A spokesman for the school district reiterated that goal in a statement on Monday, saying the district is "working with Apple" to develop a solution and that "In the meantime, our team is working with each school to assist them with options for allowing students to use the devices at their school only."
Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday began repossessing iPads from students at at least two area schools following last week's revelation that some students had bypassed security restrictions on Apple's tablets, accordin gto the Los Angeles Times.
For their part, students ??who were told last week not to take the devices home ??appear to have ignored that order. A teacher from Roosevelt High School in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights said that only around two-thirds of the more than 2,000 iPads issued were turned in.
There was no word from the district on when the devices, issued to students at some 47 schools as part of the initial rollout of Los Angeles's $30 million plan to outfit every public school student in the city with an iPad, would make their way back to the classroom. Lisa Avila, coordinator for academic services to low-income students at Roosevelt, said that teachers "don't know when or if we will able to use the iPads again for classroom instruction ? this week, this semester or this year."
District officials had said previously that the iPads would remain available for use at school, with only home use of the devices being restricted. A spokesman for the school district reiterated that goal in a statement on Monday, saying the district is "working with Apple" to develop a solution and that "In the meantime, our team is working with each school to assist them with options for allowing students to use the devices at their school only."
Comments
Go to your battle stations...NOW!
The schools are dumber than the students!
This is why I'd never live in Cali. I could pay those ridiculous taxes if they actually went to something useful.
And this is with a 'notoriously' closed system. Imagine putting an 'open' system into the hands of school kids.
Gee, who saw this going bad? LA Unified is ridiculously in the hole right now, yet they can somehow dig up 30 million to buy kids iPads to abuse? Ok.
This is why I'd never live in Cali. I could pay those ridiculous taxes if they actually went to something useful.
Nice knee-jerk, anti government rant.
Electronic books and lectures are ultimately the best cost saving methods. Its going to take some trial and error to get it right.
The schools are dumber than the students!
Second that! Such dumb restrictions will render any such scheme useless. "Hey, the kids are smarter than we thought. Let's shut the program down!"
I hope that when the School District 'works with Apple' they are told to leave the kids alone and let them play. As long as the initiative improves learning, they should not try and control what the kids do at home. Or not give them iPads.
http://speirs.org/blog/2013/10/1/battle-los-angeles.html
Best part IMHO:
"Of course, there's a broader point to be made here too which is that an iPad that's locked down to Pearson curriculum content is probably the saddest of all iPads. The very act of giving out an iPad for "education only" purposes generates exactly the pressures that lead to breaches like this.
Imagine you're 14 and, one summer, you hear on the news that you're getting iPads when you go back to school. You go back, are handed an iPad, and then they tell you that you can't browse the web, can't use it for personal projects and all you can do with it is look at Pearson apps."
Gee, who saw this going bad? LA Unified is ridiculously in the hole right now, yet they can somehow dig up 30 million to buy kids iPads to abuse? Ok.
This is why I'd never live in Cali. I could pay those ridiculous taxes if they actually went to something useful.
Yet so goes California, so goes the nation. There's a reason 40 million people live there.
So...the kids are smart enough to teach themselves complicated technology like VPN and proxies, and then show their friends, but too dumb to learn history and math with paper books?
This is a great example why they are in the hole financially. Most early adopters don't save money.
The kids probably won't learn history or math, but at least they could learn some useful skills hacking the iPads. Otherwise they won't know anything when they enter the work force.
I can see the impracticality of letting the students take them home except for special projects and then the parent would have to take financial responsibility for the device. You can't just send the iPads home with the student unrestricted. In places like Boyle Heights those missing iPads probably won't be coming back.
Gee, who saw this going bad? LA Unified is ridiculously in the hole right now, yet they can somehow dig up 30 million to buy kids iPads to abuse? Ok.
This is why I'd never live in Cali. I could pay those ridiculous taxes if they actually went to something useful.
Yes exactly.... you are wise to stay away. I would, but they won't let us out. We are taxed to absolute death... literally; and wastefull.... like no other state any where... ever; cosmopolitan populous, health food, recycling, anti-polution, movie actors(mien Gott!), earthquakes, land slides, deserts(and desserts), ocean, tsunamii's, mountains and valleys, national and state parks up the gazoo and perhaps in the future 'single payer healthcare' ....arrrrrrrrrrrr.... the in-humanity! Google and Apple... they' are Doomed I tell you, Doooooooomed!!! /sAnd how was your day?
Instead of trying every "new" thing (like handing out iPads); how about actually applying tactics that have a history of working? You know, teaching basic math, reading and science. Based upon the data found online (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment ) you can see that California rates at #48 our of 50 states. Pretty miserable.
Other states, who spend a heck of a lot less of the taxpayer's money rate in the top 10. Wyoming, Minnesota and Alaska somehow manage to hold the top 3 spots. What are they doing? Odds are that they aren't passing out "entertainment" devices, instead of focusing on the core studies.
Angry Birds will not teach you how to read, do algebra or prepare you for a job in the "real world". That is the purpose of school - to prepare you for living as a responsible adult.
Nice knee-jerk, anti government rant.
Electronic books and lectures are ultimately the best cost saving methods. Its going to take some trial and error to get it right.
Get off your tea-bagger horse. You guys have already done enough damage to the state (thanks to Prop 13).
Do you live in California? The governments here- state and local- are utterly broken.And I love how you preach against knee-jerking and then knee-jerk right over to tea party (and, of course, using the completely immature and tired "tea bagger"). The tea party is barely a whiff on the wind here on the west coast. And the "All ills stem from Prop 13" has been soundly debunked many times over and ignores about 99.9% of the big picture. Seriously, I know die hard life long liberal democrats who think the California statehouse needs to be burned to ground. The only defenders this government has left is people employed by it and rabid, blind ideologues.
And, no, I'm not a conservative or any ideological label. Personally, I like the idea of bringing tech like this to replace textbooks and other things, but the people in charge of the schools here are corrupt filth.
The security protocols on the iPad are pretty decent, but there's no security lock that prevents a user from plugging the iPad into a computer and simply wiping the unit clean. Now it's free to do what it wants.
However, it can be set up so that when this happens, the school knows about it, and can reprimand the students for it. The best thing to do is show them exactly how to do it when giving them the iPads, and letting them know that if they do, there will be repercussions for that behavior. Pretending that they won't be able to figure it out is sticking your head in the sand.
Why is it wrong to hold a state responsible for how it spends the taxpayer's dollar?
Ideology. People can't let go of it. It's requires them to think. They'd rather traffic in simplified bogeymen, so the Left shouts "teabaggers" and the right shouts "socialism" and people with working brains wonder (albeit wistfully) when they can emigrate to a space colony where ideological idiocy would result in a trip to the airlock.
That being said, textbooks are long overdue for a radical update, and tablets are a good direction. We also need policy changes to fix problems in the textbook industry.
OK, LA Unified School District is basically forcing the students to use the tablets at school, but not at home (especially online)?
Simple solution:
Give the students Android or Surface tablets.
All the hard data show that very few people use Android or Surface tablets online (or anywhere else for that matter).
Data / facts, not opinion, folks.
http://gigaom.com/2013/07/23/the-ipad-accounted-for-84-3-percent-of-web-traffic-from-tablets-in-june/
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/23/apples-ipad-holds-on-to-massive-tablet-usage-lead-now-at-84
...
The kids probably won't learn history or math, but at least they could learn some useful skills hacking the iPads. Otherwise they won't know anything when they enter the work force.
Yeah, the schools are producing thousands and thousands of ipad hackers to enter the work force. The unemployment rate sure will be high in the near future.