If you haven’t been following the Los Angeles School District’s efforts to give iPads to every student in the district, the pilot $30 million program to give 31K devices to kids has been halted because the first thing kids did was, surprise, “hack” them so they could look at porn sites and Facebook. Not surprisingly, the half billion or so dollars that this program would cost (there are 640K students in the LASD) might be spent on other educational technology: (via Kevin Drum)
About 250,000 California schoolchildren don’t have the glasses they need to read the board, read books, study math and fully participate in their classes. About 95% of the public school students who need glasses enter school without them. These students are likely to fall behind and to frustrate their teachers and parents.
To address the problem, Austin Beutner, the guy who wrote that op-ed, started a charity called Vision to Learn, which sponsors vans staffed with eye doctors that go to schools and fit kids for glasses. That program has fit 10,000 kids for glasses. I’m sure they didn’t cost almost $1,000 each.
The $30 million for the iPad pilot program came from LASD’s treasury, but the goal was to solicit private donations for the rest. I’d bet those donations would have been forthcoming if iPads weren’t so obviously unsuited for the task at hand. It would have been yet another example of thinking that high tech is magic, while ignoring how the same money could be spent to really improve kids’ lives.
Also, too: an update from the iPad trenches–kids who have them aren’t using them. I know a couple of teenagers who have an iPad, iPhone and Macbook. They’re either using the phone or the laptop, because the phone is always with them and used as a communication device. The laptop is almost as thin and light as an iPad, and the batteries last almost as long in the newer models, so why not have a keyboard if you’re going to drag out the big device? Based on this anecdotal sample, I’d say a Chromebook is a better fit as a free-for-all-kids device, since it is cheaper than an iPad, has a keyboard, and can probably be locked down more tightly than an iPad. Or you could just make sure the kids have 3 square meals a day, headstart, full day kindergarten, books, glasses, medical care, dental care and after school programs. Oh, and well-paid teachers.
Keith G
So I assume those hacker kids will soon be working for the NSA. I hope they got extra credit.
After 25 years of teaching public schools, I can tell you that vision issues are really significant and impact many students. The same as equally to for dental health.
WereBear
As a very happy Chromebook user, I can attest to the sense in this view.
The full keyboard was a main reason I chose it as a portable device; cheaper than a laptop, fully usable at home, work (where it has pinch hit as my desktop when the company server went down) and in my favorite restaurants.
Botsplainer
I’ve long thought that fiscally, old fashioned chalkboards around a classroom, a single big screen TV linked to a teacher’s dedicated desktop and a set of base model kindles for textbook downloads each year made the most economic sense.
Jim Pharo
iPads can be a helpful tool for kids. And there is enough after-market software and tools so they can be managed fairly easily and effectively. None of which is to say they are a priority over, say, eye glasses or, say, adequate food.
The end game for the schools with this technology is twofold: one is that will allow them to discontinue traditional textbooks, and two is it will allow them ultimately to exit the real estate. While this technology can provide some real value, the reason they’re being pushed likely has to do with the so-called reform movement, whose ultimate goal is to reduce all education to a user name and password, plus PROFITS!
Cermet
Lets all wish: like the teabagger party would just teabag instead of steal money for the kock sucker brothers.
Superking
I think this is a good point. The thing I have never liked about the ipad is that you can’t do any real work on it. It still doesn’t do real multitasking like a computer. It’s just a big iphone. Having both an ipad and an iphone is duplicative.
Keith G
@Keith G: Hmmm. No edit button on the mobile platform. Lovin’ that.
Mudge
DPM is Dread Pirate McCutchen…especially this time of year.
replicnt6
Damn, I’d put all my chips on DougJ becoming Dread Pirate DougJ. It seemed like a sure thing.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Botsplainer: Yep, Kindles are cheaper, really can’t access much on the Internet, are durable, and need a recharge every few weeks instead of every couple of days.
Anya
iPads for students instead of all the other important needs? Really, LA school board? I think a marketing genius at Apple sold them this idea.
WereBear
Everybody told me “Get an iPad and one of those keyboards!”
But then I’ve got two things charging, on what I’d bet are wildly different schedules and run times. And other people told me that such keyboards were crap.
Besides, the Chromebook is as low as $200 now. I can get 90% of the usefulness of a laptop for a fraction of the price.
Mind you, NO electronic device is helpful if you need glasses, and don’t have them!
joes527
I expected this to be a comparison of Google Glasses vs iPad
jeffreyw
Disney is changing part timers to full time so they can get Obamacare. Fuckin commies.
Violet
Love your new name.
Waldo
My first thought when I heard they were giving students iPads: School bullying just got way more lucrative.
jon
The library I work at gives out free reading glasses. They’re donated by the Lions Club and I’m amazed at how many of them are needed (there are never enough.) I used to sneak them into the prison where I worked (as a librarian), and I have to say quite simply: if you want people to read, at a minimum they have to be able to see the words.
Also, if you want to do the world a favor, buy some reading glasses at a dollar store and donate them to a library or school. Or to the Lions Club. I see them for $12 at drugstores and such, but I always got them for 99 cents.
Emma
I use a Kindle Fire. It has everything I need: calendar app, note-taking app with email ability, email app that aggregates all my email accounts, IM, office-management tools, PDF reader, full access to the Internet, books, and audiobooks, Amazon Prime movies and TV shows. Half the price of the iPad.
joes527
@Botsplainer:
Old fashioned chalkboards and electronics don’t get along very well, and a TV? What is this? the 60’s? A decent projector than can display large enough for a class to see would be cheaper than a TV big enough to see from the back of the room, and take up less space to boot.
WereBear
Totally! We have a Lions Club donation box in our post office and I grab extras at the dollar store, my own if they break (the Lions have people who fix them) and friends’ glasses when the prescription changes, etc.
negative 1
Funny thing about paying the teachers in lieu of wasting money on iPads — avoiding paying teachers was one of the biggest reasons for wanting more computers. Plus, high stakes testing becomes a lot easier if the kids are already doing all of their work on a computer.
NotMax
Here’s a thought.
Howzabout throwing some serious bucks into curriculum?
Well, one can dream.
RSA
But some of those kids might have parents who made poor decisions at some point in their lives. We can’t “reward” them for that.
Snark aside, a few studies I’ve read suggest that (a) kids use the computers for games and social media more than education, and (b) the availability of the computers doesn’t seem to provide more benefit than just books. (At least, this is my memory of what I’ve read.) In other words, even the question of whether computers bring benefit to K-8 education in general is still open, which makes a tablet versus laptop debate kind of meaningless.
So, yeah. The money could be put to much better use.
ruemara
As a government employee who gets to see this bullshit up close, I am sure there’s a lobbyist and status seeking school board members in an icky 3-way. Behind every dumbass decision is this.
Belafon
My son’s middle school is very tech oriented, they figure it’s important for the kids to be able to figure out how to get information as well as what they are learning. So the teachers will ask kids a question sometimes with the express belief that some will look it up on Wikipedia or something like that.
Having said that, the only iPads the school uses are inside the science class. On days they are being used, the teacher pulls out a rack with the iPads, the students take one, and then return it at the end of class.
Anya
Sorry for going OT – De Blasio Extends Lead Over Lhota to 50 Points in NYC Mayor Race. Turns out New Yorkers have more pressing issues than the Sandinista Party.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-03/de-blasio-extends-lead-over-lhota-to-50-points-in-nyc-mayor-race.html
beltane
Without the ability to see, all the other technological bells and whistles are meaningless. Despite having annual well-child visits, we did not learn about our older son’s vision problem until his senior year of high school when it was too late. His younger brother’s far-sightedness is so bad it was caught when he was an infant, making him the lucky one. Glasses are also very expensive for those without insurance.
The laptop experience at my kids’ elementary school was a dismal failure. I’m not sure how the program was supposed to induce children to read more or to improve their basic math skills, but even the 5th graders were able to “hack” the safeguards and access porn and Facebook and 1,001 other diversions.
Also, the complete reliance on calculators in K-12 education bothers me a bit. I feel like we’re raising a generation of Megan McArdles who are helpless without an array of specialized devices because they lack the skills to do anything on their own. Learning basic arithmetic is like learning to make bechamel sauce. Both skills, once learned, can never be lost or forgotten, and they prevent us from being utterly dependent on external assistance.
TaMara (BHF)
Great piece, Dread Pirate.
I just spent 10 days on the road with my little acer netbook and my Galaxy phone and I had everything I needed. And light weight – my acer weighs less than my friend’s ipad with keyboard.
And if the three pre-teen/teenage boys I just spent time with are any indication, they never touched their ipad – they used either the laptop or their phones the entire time I was with them.
I’m not a mac vs. pc person, I definitely see the benefits of both (especially mac for video editing) – I just never understood the ipad. No keyboard and the price made it a non-starter in my life.
TaMara (BHF)
Great piece, Dread Pirate.
I just spent 10 days on the road with my little acer netbook and my Galaxy phone and I had everything I needed. And light weight – my acer weighs less than my friend’s ipad with keyboard.
And if the three pre-teen/teenage boys I just spent time with are any indication, they never touched their ipad – they used either the laptop or their phones the entire time I was with them.
I’m not a mac vs. pc person, I definitely see the benefits of both (especially mac for video editing) – I just never understood the ipad. No keyboard and the price made it a non-starter in my life.
MomSense
When one of my sons was in the Maine laptop program (every middle school student gets a laptop) he and some friends were very busy helping other students erase the evidence of the banned sites they had visited before they had to turn them in for periodic checks.
beltane
@TaMara (BHF): In my experience, the ipad is mostly favored by the elderly, not the young.
OzarkHillbilly
Hey, I’ve got an idea, I know it might be a little radical but here me out: Let’s make vision care a requirement for all health insurances to cover, AND lets try and get that health care to as many children as possible.
Whoops:
But the premium is not the only part of the Mangiones’ health plan that will change. For one thing, under the A.C.A., all insurance must at the very least cover ten “essential” benefits, such as emergency-room visits, inpatient treatment, mental health, prescription drugs, lab tests, and dental and vision care for children.
Damn. Beat me to it.
Tom Levenson
Anecdote not data: My kid has mild dyslexia, and some executive function issues — which is to say he can’t organize his schoolwork well and has trouble setting up work so that he can perform the steps he needs in the right order.
I’ve written here before how my iPad 1 became his iPad when it turned out that its iteration of the Kindle app made him a reader. (Without any coaching, he turned the screen to white on black and blew up the type size. Big advantages accrued: he found it easier to keep the letters in order with the reversal; the change in type size solved a problem dyslexics have with carriage returns — picking up the correct line of text as you finish the preceding line; and the electronic-ness of the book solved a big emotional challenge: YA books have gotten really long (think the Potter series). It’s terribly daunting to a kid for whom reading is real work to try as hard as he/she can for a paragraph or a page, and then look at that seemingly undiminished block of wood on the right. The iPad/Kindle app disappeared all that. You just read the page in front of you, and then the next, and so on.)
What happened last year is that he started taking his iPad to school (with permission) and doing his writing and note taking on it. Helped some. This summer he asked and then agreed to pay for half of a Mini, which, he said, would be easier all round. We agreed, and he’s been using it. At home, it’s all Netflix and PvZ2 (plus his reading). At school, he writes all the time on it. He’s turning it into an organizer, the first he’s ever used…and so on. It’s making a difference in both the speed he can muster and (relatively speaking) pleasure he takes in learning — and in the quality of the work his teachers see.
It’s not perfect, by any means. It would be way down on my list behind backpacks for every kid (our PTO ran that fund drive last summer) and, of course, glasses. But the devices aren’t useless for everyone. And speaking from just this one data point, if your kid is dyslexic, a tablet may really help.
And yes, I know how fortunate I and my son are that we have the wherewithal to get him such a gadget.
J.Ty
Somebody should come up with a K-12-specific Linux flavor or something if they really want to help kids learn and not, I dunno, distribute easy-to-‘hack’ teacher-replacements.
jacy
This is the first year at my kidlets’ school when every kid 5th through 8th grade got an iPad instead of textbooks. (They do all their assignments on it and submit their homework electronically.) They go to private school and the iPad’s were donated by a benefactor. My 13-year-old loves it, but we don’t have enough real-world experience yet to say whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. (The high school he’ll go to next year is also iPad for every student.) Kids went to training seminars and parents were invited to attend one also. (The S/O went, but I did not.)
But, yeah, that thing was hacked within the first two days, and every lockdown they’ve tried has been met with an immediate workaround.
beltane
@OzarkHillbilly: Dental and Vision care covered for all children? Obama sold us out! Worse than Bush!
beltane
@J.Ty: That is a great idea. The main problem we have now is that the children are far more technologically savvy than the idiot school administrators and education consultants who are implementing all these laptop/tablet programs in the schools.
celticdragonchick
My kid’s school issued all of the students a tablet (with a little attachable keyboard) as part of a trial program. I have found the thing to be a major pain in the ass. I would rather they just loaded all of the textbooks for grades 6-8 into a kindle and left it at that.
PurpleGirl
@Anya: It was a big story on NY1 this morning. Seems that the numbers break down this way: Whites — 55 to 40 deBlasio/Lhota. Blacks — 90 to 6 deBlasio/Lhota. Hispanics — 79 to 10 deBlasio/Lhota.
Kay
If anyone can talk me off the ledge and assure me they’re not going to use this to replace kid interaction with expensive adult human beings who require health insurance, I would sure appreciate it. After a decade, I’m wary of ed reform.
Can they have one place where they’re not being sold a product? Just one. They can resume frantic consumer activity the second they leave school for the day. I promise.
Bnad
The school district where I grew up–Calumet, MI / CLK Public Schools–has given every student an iPad for about 4 years now instead of textbooks. The cost differential isn’t much considering the money saved on textbooks, and several teachers are starting to write their own textbooks for iPad, further saving the school money on the e-textbooks the district otherwise would buy.
Early concerns that the kids would smash them or lose them turned out to be unwarranted. My friend who is on the local school board says that oddly, the kids who you might most expect to be irresponsible with them–the poor disadvantaged kids–are the ones who treasure them the most and take the best care of them.
Haven’t heard about any hacking, but this is a small town school district with only 100-150 students per grade, so maybe there aren’t as many criminal geniuses as in LA.
Zifnab25
iPad, really? And for $1000/ea? That’s insane. What the hell happened to old fashioned laptops?
Also, can we get over the idea that kids are going to use electronics to look at porn? I mean, I understand not wanting them to have access to it in class, but give me a freak’n break. I had friends with playboys stuffed in their lockers during middle school. Somehow, we all managed to survive. :-p
joes527
@J.Ty: good idea.
Kent
I teach HS science and my school district is planning to roll out iPads for all students K-12 this year. As a teacher I’m very in favor of it. Some points to consider:
1. iPads are really replacements for textbooks. My 9th grade daughter currently has 6 textbooks for her core classes. They are all univerally bad, especially the History and social studies books. The average textbook costs between $80-120. So on the first day of school she brought home $600 worth of textbooks that sit on her bedroom desk and rarely get opened. The school district will be buying the low-end WiFi only iPads for about $350 or about half of what her current stack of textbooks costs. The school will be getting online subcriptions to various online textbook sites but it will be much cheaper than paper books and much easier to change from year to year or teacher to teacher.
2. When all students have a portal to the web I can assign an infinite variety of reading and research assignments in class. I teach aquatic science and the books provided by the state are 25 years out of date. iPads will allow me to connect my students to all sorts of cutting edge oceanography and marine biology sites.
3. As for the iPads vs laptop argument. I know our tech staff went through this issue in extreme detail. It came down to several issues. First, iPads are infinitely easier to maintain than laptops in terms of softare updates and just the physical machine which has no moving parts and can be completely incased in an otterbox. Second, Macs in general and iPads in specific tend to have a longer useful life than PC products which go out of date faster. Finally, there is much more material for younger kids on the iPad platform than any other platform.
4. As for worrying about whether the kids see porn or facebook? This is just a pointless battle. Most of them already have smartphones and are on social media all day long anyway. I don’t think my district is even going to bother fighting that battle. There will be computer use standards that all the kids will sign before getting their machines but I don’t think the district is going to waste a lot of time trying to control what they see. The internet wifi at the school is already filtered for porn and social media sites so the only place they will be able to get anything forbidden is away from school anyway.
jon
@Zifnab25: The bigger worry is the production of porn using these devices. The fact that it would be child porn produced with tools provided by the school itself is enough to make overworked district lawyers shoot themselves preemptively.
joes527
@TaMara (BHF): I agree that the iPad is probably the most expensive way to get a tablet into a student’s hands.
Back when I was teaching, Apple marketed ruthlessly to schools, especially primary schools. (get ’em while they are young)
I’m sure that the iPads were heavily discounted.
The Red Pen
What is the fixation on iPads? There are halfway decent generic Android tablets that can be bulk ordered for less than $100 each.
Is this about some education use to having tablets or is this about making sure that the kids have trendy swah?
Kent
@Zifnab25:
Zifnab25….
No school is paying for $1000 iPads. I expect most schools are getting iPads in bulk for less than $400. Schools aren’t buying the 4G models with lots of memory. They are buying the cheapest WiFi versions and getting bulk discounts from Apple.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Botsplainer: The best thing about chalkboards vs. powerpoint is that chalkboards mean the prof goes as fast as they can get the ideas down, while pp means they can just rip through the material far faster than it can be written down in notes by the students. This means that the students will write down what they see, rather than downloading the powerpoint. This is pedagogically very important, for as Plato (speaking with the mouth of Socrates) said, you don’t really have an idea if you can’t express it; by writing down the ideas the students are expressing it, which means that they are actually learning what the idea is.
I always got a lot more out of the lectures I attended where the prof used a chalkboard rather than powerpoint, and that’s precisely the reason why; as I took notes I was expressing the idea, which meant that I was engaging both the linear and intuitive sides of my brain with the material.
Powerpoint is a terrible pedagogical tool, and no self-respecting prof should use it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tom Levenson:
And to live in these times. A buddy of mine has dyslexia. Like me, he grew up in the 60s 70s. Unlike me he grew up in the inner city. What’s more, his mother was schizophrenic. All the strikes were against him. I mean ALL of them. Spent more time hustling the streets so he could eat than he did in school. Dropped out in early HS. But he has read 2 books: Huckleberry Finn, and one that I gave him, Black Elk Speaks. (he is Native American) He is also one of the most intelligent people I know. Could make $100 walking fifty feet down a street.
Unfortunately, he is now exhibiting signs of schizophrenia and his alcoholism is locked in. I don’t see him much since I moved out here but his daughters tell me it does not look good for him.
beltane
@Zifnab25: The problem in our school is that the laptops were not integrated into the curriculum in any meaningful way, so that their use was, at best, 5% education related and 95% assorted bullshit. The supervisory union must have hoped the laptop program would ameliorate the problems caused by severe under-staffing but things did not pan out as intended.
J.Ty
@joes527: Nice, hadn’t heard of that.
The big advantage of something like this is that you can install it on crappy donated/used hardware and your students get access to the stuff they actually need, more or less for free, and nobody wants to steal it… even if you need to borrow a sysadmin for a few hours to get the ball rolling for you, that’s way less than $1000/kid.
I guess that’s not shiny or grifty enough, though.
rda909
@beltane: I agree with this. The amount of time I’ve spent watching a teacher fumble around trying to get a “smart board” to function as they want it to, has been mind-numbing.
Our elementary school invites us parents in to see the kids give presentations and little plays, and it’s been amazing to me why the kids can’t simply give their presentations with their voices, hand-made costumes, and props they’ve made themselves, and instead it often starts with 10 minutes of the teacher struggling with the technology in the room first. The kids start looking bored and distracted and the parents get tense. So strange.
When so many schools are literally falling apart, and teachers buying their own supplies and food for their students, this iPad idea is fantastically stupid. Although, we of course know why these programs move forward though…taxpayer dollars being funneled to for-profit companies which will in turn trickle it down upon us little people. That’s been the dominant political policy since Reagan, and how’s that worked out for us? Runaway national debt ever since, with the only slowdown happening when Democrats raise the top tax rate slightly and cut spending. Yep, Republicans are the fiscally responsible ones though, correct national media?!?
OzarkHillbilly
@beltane: SOCIALIST! COMMIE!
Kay
@Kent:
They’re not, though, it looks like:
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Kent:
Somehow the LASD got themselves into a place where they were going to fight this battle, and of course they lost almost immediately.
The rest of your points make some sense, though I hope those iPads have a hell of a good cover when they go out, because they’re pretty fragile compared to, say, textbooks.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Kay: I got my “nearly $1000” number by dividing $30 million by 31K students. The $30 million must also include administrative overhead.
Kay
@rda909:
Cervantes
An update from the iPad trenches–kids who have them aren’t using them.
Tell that to my seven-year-old & her friends.
Granted, we control what software appears on her iPad and how much she gets to use it — but within that framework she uses it as much as we allow and she learns a great deal while having a blast. My only regret is that I can’t crack the thing open and add more memory.
And just FYI: our experience is typical in our social circle (meaning that I have no survey data, just what I see around me).
Needless to say (but just in case): I think it’s certainly more important for a school district to first make sure that all kids who need reading glasses, food, etc., have access to such things — and I imagine there are bone-headed administrators everywhere — but it’s also not difficult to imagine that available funding sources do not always match up with funding priorities. If one has the wherewithal, one should perhaps do something positive — create and fund an effort to donate glasses for kids, say — rather than first insisting that something kids use and enjoy using be taken away because it’s not an obvious necessity.
Belafon
@Kay: Don’t get so hyper. As I said, my son’s school has a very technology centric focus because the stuff’s out there: A kid can end up owning a laptop, a smartphone, and a tablet so why not teach the kids to use them. This is especially important for kids who won’t have those things because their parents can’t afford them.
Hell, there are some nice benefits from this. Every teacher has a wiki. The assignments and lectures are up there. The math teacher links to other videos he thinks are helpful. I can ask my kid “Have you checked his page for anything?” At the same time, we’re still sitting at my white board working out problems he’s having with his math assignment, the same as we have even before middle school.
Tom Levenson
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes. Absolutely. Sorry to hear about your friend. I’d add that the importance of timing is there even for kids-turned-grownups without all those strikes against them. My son’s best friend’s dad is dyslexic, and he tells horrifying stories of the “dumb” and/or “lazy” labels he had to dodge through school.
Kay
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
I think we agree generally. I would go further. I think they should compete to place the product in public schools. They’ll make money on the program and replacement end.
They should have to donate the device. Make that a condition of putting that product in. Let them duke it out. I’m a little wary of the very close relationship with big tech donors to ed reform and these giant experiments. Is it fair to say they also benefit from the experiment? Okay, then they can donate to its successful adoption in more and more schools.
I know kids want them. Kids want a lot of things. I want the companies to compete to pay the upfront cost. We’ll start at “free”.
beltane
@rda909: I’m a long-time volunteer at our school and I’ve noticed the same thing. While technology has its place in the classroom (anything that breaks the back of the textbook publishers is a good thing), there is a distinct stench of snake oil surrounding much of what is being promoted.
Feudalism Now!
Technology can be a huge boon to education, but meeting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will give a bigger bang for the societal buck. The tech is there, whether iPad, chrome book, tablet or Surface, but the software is all over the place. A truly interactive classroom is awesome to behold with a teacher who embraces it. The classroom should not be a museum and alien to modern life.
rda909
@Kay: Won’t be able to help talk you off. I’m out on the ledge with you.
Tom Levenson
@Belafon: Oh how I wish my otherwise wonderful school district would get the homework assignments online gospel.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Cervantes: It will be interesting to see what happens when those kids have the same technology choice as teenagers, i.e., a mobile phone, a laptop or a tablet. When she got an iPhone, it was eye opening to me how much my kid would use it for things I’d want to do on a different device.
Felonius Monk
@beltane:
Their seems to be a growing trend to not teach children good mental arithmetic skills but instead just have them use a calculator. The prevailing thinking is that it is a waste of time to memorize multiplication tables and learn how to do long division when we live in the age of electronic calculators and computers.
If you have ever tried to do business in a store when the power has gone out, you find out quickly how really short sighted this is. Technology is great but it is a tool to help us accomplish more, not a crutch for an undeveloped mind.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Kay: I’m more upset by the extra crap they pack into these devices, which smells to me of some middleman screwing the school district. $675/each is crazy for a tech device when the cheapest Chromebook or 7″ tablet costs $200. An iPad mini is $329.Is there that much more benefit that you need to pay 3X or 2X the price? Doubt it.
Edited to add: missed your comment but I agree with this: @Kay
WereBear
Because of his chronic illness, Mr. WereBear has developed a difficulty in reading long form items. But if he listens, he’s back to a normal level of processing the material.
This year, I talked him into an iPod touch; not that expensive, and he can carry it anywhere and listen to his reading material. It’s done wonders for him.
Kent
Regarding costs.
The schools are probably getting the actual iPads for somewhere in the $400 range. They are probably sealing them in otter boxes or the equivalent which might add $50-75. They might be adding some software packages but probably not a lot because there is so much free stuff out there. And they might be adding some sort of support/warranty package which might bring the total cost per tablet into the $500 range.
On top of that, most schools probably already have robust wired ethernet for the administrative and classroom computers but may not necessarily have sufficiently robust wifi to accommodate every teacher and every student running a tablet simultaneously. And frankly, may not have enough bandwidth to accommodate all those new connections. So many if not most schools doing this are going to be needing to beef up their network infrastructures.
In my district they are installing apple TV boxes on all of the classroom LDC TVs so that teachers can mirror their ipads onto the TV for lessons and presentations. That’s another $100 per classroom.
Finally they no doubt need to be adding some new tech staff to do all this work and to maintain all of this new network infrastructure and new tablets so we have their salaries and expenses.
So it wouldn’t surprise me to learn the per-student cost for this sort of tech initiative comes to a lot more than the actual cost of buying the tablets.
beltane
@Felonius Monk: It’s really about training the brain. Any time you rely on a prosthetic device, the original organ is going to atrophy. A tool is worthless when you do not posses the underlying knowledge to make correct use of that tool.
Kay
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
I am too. There’s nothing wrong with it, as an idea. Honestly, they shouldn’t over-sell it, because they’ll lose credibility. It is in their best interest to tread carefully.
My 11 year old is using a math test prep program the district bought. It’s online. Okay, so probably half of the kids in this town don’t have internet access, and I watched him and his 11 year old friend use it Monday night. They were cackling maniacally because they believed they discovered that is is NOT “customizing” responses to their answers. They know this because they compared answers, and then entered nonsense answers and they always got the same response (8 more problems). So it’s 8 more questions whether they enter a string of zeroes because they’re goofballs or whether they don’t actually know the answer.
I’m listening to this hilarity and I’m hoping it’s not diagnostic, because if it is my neighbor kid is headed for special ed. I gather they’re not supposed to work together. That was obviously a mistake.
Feudalism Now!
The educational software market is a grifters paradise. I agree with Kay. The hardware should be chalked up to advertising for Apple or Microsoft or whomever. The educational software is typically crap and expensive to boot. It mirrors the textbook and testing industries, utter junk.
Felonius Monk
@beltane: AMEN.
Tyro
What shocks me is why these schools think than iPads are some kind of miracle cure for their issues. Do these administrators ever pay a visit to their more successful suburban counterparts or elite private schools and even CONSIDER exploring what made them successful? And if certain aspects of those schools can’t be replicated (eg, having a bunch of wealthy students), why is it that they think that spending millions of dollars on IPADS is going to make up for those shortcomings?
rda909
@beltane: Spot. on.
Felonius Monk
@Kay:
Who decides his fate? The computer or a real, live teacher(s)? If it’s computers, then we really are into the deep doo-doo.
RSA
@Kent:
There’s also training costs for teachers, but I suspect that’s been completely ignored. The “strategy” seems to be to dump new technology into classrooms and expect teachers to know how to use it, how to teach others to use it, how to fix it, and to integrate it into their curriculum planning, all on their own.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard K-12 teachers complain about this sort of thing. For myself, I have to say that a lot of software aimed at education is shoddy at best, seriously under-tested with respect to functionality, usability, and ability to meet educational goals.
beltane
@Tyro: Because when it comes to technology, the typical school administrator is of the same naive mindset as the inhabitants of San Salvador seeing Columbus’s ships for the first time: “Behold! They are gods!”
Cervantes
@Tyro: If you read the linked articles, and others linked therein, you may find some answers to your questions. You may not like the answers but they’re there (or can be found).
By the way, in the articles, I did not see any administrator use the term “miracle cure.”
Also, I question whether “suburban counterparts” and “elite private schools” should be called “more successful.” Where was Ted Cruz educated, do you think? Was his education a success?
Cervantes
@beltane: Any time you rely on a prosthetic device, the original organ is going to atrophy.
How do you define “prosthetic”? Do you drive a car or use a telephone? Or do you instead always walk to your destination and deliver messages in person?
catclub
@Kay: “I gather they’re not supposed to work together.”
If there is anything I learned too well in school, it is this. The ONLY thing that matters when actual problems are hard, is working together ( Andrew Wiles, excepted).
Kay
@Felonius Monk:
I don’t know, but a real live person would not treat the two the same because it doesn’t make sense to treat them the same. They’re different.
It bothers me that there isn’t enough of an allowance for their essential differences from adults, or I don’t see it. I’m not an expert, I’m just listening to kids here. If one more adult tells me that they took an online course and did fine I am going to scream. Are you 7 years old? No? Then how is it the same?
Are we going to resist the “cheap teachers” factor? Because they won’t be replacing teachers with programs in wealthy districts. If that happens, it will be in working class and middle class districts. I have some trust issues. I know how lobbying works and I know how state budgeting works. I also know there is a big group of billionaires who are all of a sudden passionately devoted to public education.
DaddyJ
As they say in the House of Commons, “Hear, hear!” Or in some churches, “uh-huh!”
Felonius Monk
@Kay:
Yeah, right. Like any of them would know anything about education. They either delude themselves with the meme that “I’ve got all this money I can use to make myself feel important and get a tax deduction as well” or they are so egotistical that they think they know more about education that the professionals. It’s all bs. They would do more good if they just donated the money for eyeglasses and good nutrition.
I notice that Diane Ravitch has really turned on the hand that fed her for so many years.
Botsplainer
@joes527:
Thanks, I never considered the dust factor, and I answered due to my prejudice in favor of my pre-whiteboard experiences in grade school and high school.
Either would work, whichever is cheaper. I actually considered projectors, but my recollection of them was awful.
? Martin
California spends $400M annually on textbooks. The plan for some years has been to open source the textbook content – paying teachers and others flat rates above their salary to write them – and then distribute them electronically and get out from under the publishers, at least to some extent. The goal is to reduce the recurring costs associated with the textbooks, along with the need for economies of scale to make the whole thing work. With e-books, they can approve a dozen different books for a given subject and let teachers or districts choose which book to use – after all, the book is free and has zero marginal cost.
Additionally, open up the assignment process to also happen electronically to eliminate at least some of the cost (also in teacher time) of paper handling, and expand the utility of the textbook by being able to introduce animation, etc. We’re experimenting with this for topics which are very visual – and some topics just are. The anatomy software for med students is pretty damn useful over textbooks.
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): Unfortunately, those devices aren’t durable and they’re damn near impossible to manage in scale. An old acquaintance of mine has been a leader on tech deployment in the classroom – laptops, tablets, etc. He’s a K-6 teacher and has made a pretty good career out of getting the funding to do these experiments each year at his school (not just his classroom), and then poking holes in them. He’s got a reliable, predictable base to compare results and he can set up different programs in parallel classes within a single grade and A/B test. So far the iPad is the one classroom tech that he says has held up and provided measurable utility when implemented properly (BIG caveat there – it’s a LOT of work to that proper implementation). He’s tried the Android tablets – half were non-functional within a few months, and the enterprise management tools just aren’t there. The ones for iOS are actually quite good and have been key to why you see iPads taking off as they have. You can deploy them in HIPAA environments, DOD, etc. I think LAUSD really just fucked up their implementation. There’s a joke in there, but LAUSD really is trying to get this stuff right – I think they’re simply too large, too bureaucratic, too politicized.
Honestly, a lot of the Android devices that are coming out are trying to get down into the impulse buy range, and they’re increasingly disposable devices – use it for a year, toss it, buy another. That’s fine for a consumer device – you have the flexibility to buy it when it suits you. Institutions don’t. If they need it to last a year, it really must last a year. And if the more expensive device lasts 3 years, then it’s cheaper over time than the disposable one.
And another angle on this is that the districts are being creative with how to meet goals. They only get about $80/student for textbooks. That’s maybe half of what they need. So how do they bridge the gap? By getting federal and private grants, funding from the local government to do these experiments. The cost of the iPads is new money outside of that $80, so they’re able to pay for e-textbooks out of this other pot of money without losing the $80. That’s just how things work now.
? Martin
@Botsplainer: We’re doing TVs now over projectors. The costs are lower for the TVs and they work better with lights up which causes students to be more attentive. Projectors are a bit of a support challenge – the bulbs aren’t that durable and they’re extremely expensive to replace, and the projector interfaces can be very frustrating. TVs have a lot of non-PC applications now – you can stick in a USB drive with photos and get a slideshow without going through a PC. They’re much more flexible. And stick an AppleTV on them and you have a very good collaborative environment – you can push a presentation from your iPhone or iPad with zero configuration. We’ve expanded our student presentations from 10 to 15 minutes because they don’t need 5 minutes fucking around with the cables and such. They just get up and go.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Since I got an iPad, I can barely tolerate using my Win 7 laptop.
lol
@J.Ty:
The problem is that the goal is to evangelize Ubuntu and open source software, not necessarily provide something useful or productive in a classroom setting.
Joel
My wife has an iPad and loves it. It’s technically ours but I only use it when traveling, and it’s nice for that purpose.
Billy K.
Wow. Mistermix is recommending a Google product over an Apple product!? The shutdown really has turned the world into a crazy, mixed-up place! Down is up! Blah is white! Cats and dogs humping!
Because everyone knows “the kids” hate iPads…
Manyakitty
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): Who knew your new name would turn you into a starry-eyed dreamer?
Kay
@Felonius Monk:
I don’t care about her prior positions, really. They desperately need a high profile dissenter. This monolithic Jeb Bush-Bill Gates-Walton Family-Arne Duncan chorus needs “disruption” to use one of they favorite words.
I get frightened when media, America’s billionaires, all Republicans and half of Democrats jump onboard a train.
I think Arne Duncan is a purely political animal and I suspect he’s endorsed all those Right wing governor education ideas because it’s a quid pro quo for supporting his Common Core. Our objectives aren’t aligned. I’d like to hang onto universal public education, thanks very much. The health care system is godamned fragmented disaster. I don’t know why anyone would want to turn K-12 into a for-profit fragmented disaster, but that’s where they’re headed.
Ravitch won’t shut up. Good for her. There should be ONE dissenter. I’m grateful to her.
Manyakitty
@Felonius Monk:
These are probably the same schools that think it’s pointless to teach cursive.
rammalamadingdong
My stepson’s 8th grade class received Chromebooks this year, and it is working well. The best part is it facilitates sharing and group projects. They work in teams, gather information, pass it around and turn it in. They are using Edmodo for assignments, turnitin.com for plagiarism checks, the text books are on the shared drive, and Powerschool for the grades. The only awkward thing is trying to navigate the online text book, and type into a Google doc. It’s easier to have a print book next to the Chromebook.
He has a few learning disabilities including poor executive skills and slow processing. He used to get zero’s for missing work that he completed but forgot to turn in. It’s getting easier to locate things with fewer missing worksheets. However his drive is filled with hundreds of documents labeled “untitled.” So periodically I go in and help him sort things into folders.
This past Friday they had homecoming activities, followed by a friends birthday party, and return trip to the school for the football game. Apparently half of the class lost their minds and left their backpacks where ever they were standing. I spent Saturday morning looking for the backpack and Chromebook, thanking Jesus for cloud storage. That is the true value of the Chromebook. It was found – on top of his locker.
Ironically we just found an Education $pecialist to help with his learning disabilities. I want him to learn, not just manage his grades. For her services we had to purchase a 4×6 chalkboard for our home. Chalkboard cost more than the Chromebook.
The Other Chuck
@Felonius Monk: Sorry, but long division was never a particularly good math skill either, especially when there are superior methods for estimating. If you want exactness after your estimate, that’s when you reach for a calculator. I’d rather teach kids critical thinking than rote gruntwork.
The hours and hours I spent making fucking loops in remedial cursive, I could have spent reading and actually learning something. Books printed on that newfangled technology crutch called a printing press.
WereBear
Too true. A great feature for any person, but especially so for someone like my Mom. If her Chromebook goes down, she gets another and doesn’t miss a beat, because her tech support person is several states away.
She doesn’t need me for that any more, and thank goodness.
Mnemosyne
Aargh! It’s not LASD. It’s LAUSD — Los Angeles Unified School District. It’s right in the headline!
Mnemosyne
@OzarkHillbilly:
If he’s exhibiting psychotic symptoms for the first time late in life, it’s probably not schizophrenia. It’s more likely to be untreated clinical depression or bipolar disorder that’s gone untreated for so long that he’s developed psychotic symptoms. His family really needs to get him to a doctor who can diagnose him correctly. If the psychosis is due to an underlying problem like depression or bipolar, being treated for schizophrenia isn’t really going to help him very much since it will only be treating the symptoms, not the cause.
auntie beak
arrrrr….. abaft! abeam! [/piratetalk]
Tyro
@Cervantes: I did read the articles. Why they like the iPads?
“It makes people feel better and more ‘modern.'”
The point I was making, which should have been obvious, was that whatever problems a school has won’t be solved by giving people iPads. They will be solved by fixing the actual problems that the schools and the families have.
I am willing to entertain arguments that this program won’t improve leaning but will make the day more pleasant for students. But at least be up front about that and ponder whether the same thing could be done by actually keeping buildings in decent repair.
Trollhattan
re. The glasses thing–I can believe it. Back in first grade they had open house for the parents to come watch and the mom noticed me leaning forward on my desk to read the blackboard (yeah, no sissy greenboard and definitely no whiteboard, yew kidz). She whisked me to the eye doctor and I’ve had glasses/contacts ever since.
In college I took speech pathology and was taught the most common learning and speech impediment is hearing loss.
Eye and hearing screening are basic education building blocks. I wonder what Michelle Rhee’s private sector solution is for these?
Cervantes
@Tyro: This “they” you’re quoting now is a parent, not an administrator.
Persia
@Trollhattan: And of course not all private insurance covers hearing aids (if those are even the right solution for the kid in question), and some school fought all the way up to the Supreme Court so they wouldn’t have to provide proper support. (On the upside they lost.)
Mnemosyne
@Tyro:
I can understand parents being worried that their kids will only have access to substandard and obsolete equipment and won’t be able to move up if they don’t know how to work a computer. Frankly, a lot of those parents ran into the same problem.
I don’t know that iPads are necessarily the solution, but I think it’s valid for parents to worry that their kids will be behind other children whose schools did give them access to modern technology. Sure, the teachers can probably give the same information through a filmstrip as they can through an iPad presentation, but who still needs to know how to load a filmstrip projector?
Cervantes
@Tyro: The point I was making, which should have been obvious, was that whatever problems a school has won’t be solved by giving people iPads. They will be solved by fixing the actual problems that the schools and the families have.
Well, if nothing else, you’re aptly named.