Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Ya think...?

Here's a little bit of crazy for you.

It seems the Los Angeles school district decided to "put iPads in the hands of over 650,000 students to give them the most advanced learning tools available in an effort to boost their interest in academics"... all this to the tune of -- wait for it -- A BILLION DOLLARS.


And what was the result of this expensive high-tech infusion? Unsurprisingly, "the $1 billion plan is taking some heat after students in the nation's second-largest school district cracked the tablets’ security settings to forgo reading, writing and ‘rithmetic and instead post on Facebook and play games during class time."

To their credit, "School officials... quickly confiscated the iPads and went to work improving the security settings." No word of removing the iPads, just "improving the security settings."

Y'know, there's something to be said for the old-fashioned way of learning things. How on earth did our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. -- arguably the most literate generations in history -- ever learn without iPads? Just askin'.

22 comments:

  1. Ask yourself, why ipads? For half the money you could buy similar tablets with twice the functionality. This isn't about giving the students technology it is about $1 billion in fraud waste and abuse. Time will tell but somewhere, somehow somene was paid off and someone wil reciprocate and pay off the politicians. Wait for it... Sooner or later it will come out that the biggest benefactors of the billion dollars had contributed to somene's re-election or donated money to some union AND/OR the benefactor in turn gave back money to some politicians or union. The education system wastes enormous amounts of mney and hides/covers up enormous amounts of graft and fraud. This decision was decided in a smoke filled backroom and not a classroom. I predict it will come out sooner or later and further no one will go to jail or even lose their job.

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    1. Heck, they could have gone to Office Max, Staples, etc., and bought the same iPads for half of what they paid their "educational adviser/supplier" for these iPads. Of course, there wouldn't have been near the graft or kickback available to those involved.

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  2. But Patrice! I heard a radio piece about this, with brief interview with some of the students. Those kids are learning really useful skills and concepts for the future! 1) that no matter how much stuff the government gives you, what they really want is to control your access to information and communication; 2) how to hack government-imposed information blackouts; 3) how to set up and run an underground economy without attracting the attention of authorities; 4) That skills are more valuable than goods or services (for one price, the hackers would unlock your ipad - for a much higher price, they would teach you to do it yourself).
    These LA kids are future patriots!
    Tongue in cheek/wishful thinking.

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    1. Laughing myself silly! Great comment.

      Just Me

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  3. I guess my first question would be after smacking myself up against the head with a head slap at the way they are TRYING to "teach" there is the cost...WAIT...650,000 i Pads at say $500 each comes to only $325 million dollars....HUH? Where did the remaining $675 million dollars go? Software? I hardly think so...Maybe they forgot to include a math program in the LA School District offices?

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  4. I wonder how many of these things ended up being stolen.

    Huggs..

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    1. I read that nearly 1/3 are as of yet unaccounted for.

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    2. I read that nearly 1/3 are as of yet unaccounted for.

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  5. I live here in Kookville, and what they have not said is that when they took the I-Pads back, they "lost" 30% of them. There is no control, no deposit, no agreement making the parents or students financially responsble for the I-Pads. A "spokes-hole" for the district said that Apple agreed to replace broken or lost units. A local radio host got a hold of the contract, and it is limited to 5% of the units that cannot be recovered as a result of breakage or theft.
    Also, there is no replacement plan, which should be used to replace the units when they become unuseable due to memory hungry updates and new operating systems. My wife got an early I-Pad that was a minimum platform, and it can barely work with the latest operating system upgrade, which among other things was supposed to improve security. Enter her new I-Pad Mini, or as I call it the I-Pad repair kit. The last thing that the bureauocrats used to pitch the program, was that the students would take their state proficiency tests on their I-Pads. The tests require a keyboard, or will take more than twice the time allotted to take the test, due to the touch screen typing which is not meant to, and does not work like a separate keyboard. Did LAUSD order keyboards? Nah, the technology committee said they don't need them. Touch screens are fine for texting or a quick E-mail, but not for answering essay or short answer questions. They cost over $700 each, with pre-loaded text books (good idea) and enhanced security (didn't work out so well). They should have bought less expensive E-readers, with the books loaded, and specific research materials from approved sources included, and no internet capability, or have internet capability only when acessed through the school's website or Wifi. For $700 they could have bought small notebook computers that can be very tightly controlled through hardware keys and firmware. Just sayin'.

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    1. Straight from the horse's mouth! Wow. What an eye opener. Thanks for the facts.

      Just Me

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  6. St. James, Missouri is requiring parents to purchase, if low income can be proven the school district will supply the students. here's another way the ones that have support the have nots.

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  7. That's pretty funny in a way, couldn't happen in a better state, but it goes show how warped some liberals reason. I'm also 100% certain there are some scratching their heads wondering why the state is almost broke.

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  8. Tell me again, why would parents today even consider putting their children in the hands of government schools? LA may be one of the worse, but between condoms and Common Core etc. none of them will put a hand on our children.
    Montana Guy

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  9. I teach at a Christian school that recently jumped into the iPad game. We did this as a way to prep students for tech-driven nature of our modern university system. In theory, it's a great idea; in practice, not so great.
    The teachers are fed up with glitches and inability to access books. The students only slightly less so. (And I'm the tech guy who manages them. I teach from them and utilize them day in and day out and [to a small extent] know how to handle them when they act up; I can't imagine being electronically clumsy and having to teach with these.) But... we're stuck with them for now, so I'll just have to make the best of it.

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  10. It's not just CA doing this. Many other schools in other states are also doing this, or providing the students laptops. It's something they are pushing with the Common Core. To me it seems stupid, but if you look at the education system in general it is a lost cause. The Common Core standards that they are implementing now in the "trial schools" is ridiculous. Testing has been dumbed down, teachers have to teach to the dumbest kid in the class, so those who are average or above average get bored and lose focus. My husband is a teacher and at his school they are implementing common core standards now and kids are allowed to use their phones, ipads, laptops in class, and the school has opened up the wifi network for all students to use. While there are settings on it, so kids can't surf porn, the kids are often playing on facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. If a teacher dares to tell a student to stop, the teacher gets chewed out by the admin because it could damage the student's self esteem to call them out in class. My husband teachers a shop type class where kids could lose a hand/arm if they screw around in the shop, and he banned cell phones in the shop and got written up by the school district for not allowed kids to play on cell phones. The only reason he ended up getting to keep the ban in his classroom is that he said that if a kid got hurt because they were playing on a cell phone in the shop, he would take no blame and it would go on the school. And of course when the topic of lawsuits come up, the district allowed him to keep the cell phone ban. But many parents still are throwing a fit about it. My husband will be leaving the education field after this year as will many of the other long term teachers, many also plan to pull their kids out of public schools because of the Common Core. And I live in Idaho too, so its not just CA that is majorly screwing up.

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  11. Never underestimate your opponent...er, I mean student.

    Just Me

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  12. Our county has switched to common core and they, too, are talking about using Ipads. This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad because the classroom computers are constantly being (deliberately) broken by the kids. There are all sorts of passwords and kid protection on the computers so that they can't access 'naughty' sites, yet somehow they manage.

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  13. I am so thankful I get to home school my children.

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  14. Now that organized crime is backing Obama and all his toadies, as well as controlling our government, our schools, colleges and our military, we will be seeing FAR MORE of this sort of graft and corruption! Remember the hammers that were being bought by our government for almost a thousand bucks, when they were worth about $15 each? Remember those expensive toilet seats? And on and on. This is to be expected when liberal-progressives are running the country. They're liars and crooks! --Fred in AZ

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  15. Our public school has 10 Ipads that get shared throughout the school. Last week one went missing while in one of my sons' classes. They searched all of the kids/desks/back packs until it was found. There's another lesson in there...

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  16. My daughter was part of the original experiment to test if laptops improved student performance. All the kids in the middle school were given beautiful laptops. The school was full of working class families and poor families. At the end, the scores stayed pretty much the same. Strangely, English writing actually dipped but computer expertise went up slightly. Overall, a complete waste of money. In the end, the teachers mainly had the kids doing research on wikipedia cause they didn't have website they trusted.

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