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More Schools Embracing iPad as Learning Tool

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Let's see, we can't even afford $100 laptops for school children but $750 iPads are a great idea? If you pay taxes and your school is considering iPads for students, you need to march down to the school board and kick someone dead off in the nuts. :mad:

The New York City public schools have ordered more than 2,000 iPads, at $1.3 million; 300 went to Kingsbridge International High School in the Bronx, or enough for all 23 teachers and half the students to use at the same time. More than 200 Chicago public schools applied for 23 district-financed iPad grants totaling $450,000; the winners each received 32 iPads, on average — for a total of 745 — as well as iTunes credit to purchase applications. The district is now applying for a $3 million state grant to provide iPads to low-performing schools next year.
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How about we plant our butts right here and not go to a voting booth until no politician is willing to support public education in the first place?
 
Cool they can play Angry Birds in physics class on authorized products.
 
Netbooks at least would teach them something about the computers themselves.
 
A Kindle or something similar I can understand. Heck, eInk might even be cheaper than buying textbooks, especially when you consider textbooks run $35-200 on average. However, supply schools with new technology will no change anything if the kids can read or write. I hope some New Yorkers call the school board out on this, but this does make me think of my master plan for the education system:

Mind you, this would require the federal government to contribute more than its current 10.5% (on average per state). However, my idea would be to standardize education (shocking I know). By standardization, I mean the federal government would control the decision of what textbooks would be used and what education metrics would determine education success. In such a world everyone would use the same textbooks, same tests and all of this would be centrally controlled and purchased, with rebid contracts put out every year. In addition all academic clothing would be standardized (read uniforms) with the colors and badging decided upon by local cities. Bids for clothing and shoes would be done on a state or local level, however all would have to abide by federal standard codes.

The results of this would be a roughly 40% reduction in education material expenses. Local and state administrative costs could be chopped by a 1/3rd. With a standardized education, children moving from one state to another would have no change in education. Individual education costs would be significantly be reduced as clothing costs could be reduced to $200-300 per year.

Non-subjective testing materials would exist in a federally managed database and answer material would not be supplied to teachers for anything besides practice exams, thereby reducing cheating. In order facilitate this, something like an iPad or Kindle would need to be distributed to kids. However purchased in bulk combined with the reduction in books and printed material this would net a positive savings overall.

I ran the numbers on all of this about 5 year ago and I made a bunch of education board admins really upset when I presented it to then during a conference where they were trying to get input from businesses (at the time I used a state based not federal based model). I know a lot of people are going to be resistant to a federal board rather than state board, but there are just too many crackpots with their hands in cookie jar. Making it more centralized makes any back room dealings more obvious and subject to public protest. Currently every state/city determines how they are going to educate their population and there are 10s of thousands of administrators who make obscene amounts of money to "manage" your local schools.
 
WarriorX said:
Cool they can play Angry Birds in physics class on authorized products.
Click to expand...

Exactly. My school tried this 6 or so years ago, with Apple iBooks. Look up the MLTI program. Students used them pretty much exclusively for instant messaging, and had no respect for the laptops since they were just handed them. The project was hemorrhaging money from having to replace all the laptops that were thrown, sat on, punched, dropped, kicked, walked on, and just plain broke. That was before they were even allowed to take them home, so all that happened in the classroom.
 
These schools board wouldn't know how to save money if thier jobs depended on it, and it should!

This will NOT save money, just like the schools that gave all the kids laptops over the last 10+ years.
The publishers keep pushing to go electronic so they can make more money. They charge almost as much as the paper books, yet it's licensed for only one year, so the school is basically buying the full set of books every year.

They complain about the high cost of books, yet don't go after the kids/families that don't return them. They also buy books from publishers that bring out new editions ever year or two, requiring new books yet again. The new editions are usually nothing more than a few page being re-arranged so they can sell more books. School districts need to start using thier buying power to reduce the cost of books/supplies (5 year life for any given book edition, and a large discount or we buy the other guys book), instead of getting in bed with the publishers.

As for the ipad, this is nothing but schools trying to show they are up to date with technology, buy instead showing they only care about the latest fad, just like they alway hop on the latest education fad that doesn't work. Most these ipad will end up sitting unused in a closet/drawer, broken from being dropped, or stolen.
 
EchtoGammut said:
A Kindle or something similar I can understand. Heck, eInk might even be cheaper than buying textbooks, especially when you consider textbooks run $35-200 on average. However, supply schools with new technology will no change anything if the kids can read or write. I hope some New Yorkers call the school board out on this, but this does make me think of my master plan for the education system:

Mind you, this would require the federal government to contribute more than its current 10.5% (on average per state). However, my idea would be to standardize education (shocking I know). By standardization, I mean the federal government would control the decision of what textbooks would be used and what education metrics would determine education success. In such a world everyone would use the same textbooks, same tests and all of this would be centrally controlled and purchased, with rebid contracts put out every year. In addition all academic clothing would be standardized (read uniforms) with the colors and badging decided upon by local cities. Bids for clothing and shoes would be done on a state or local level, however all would have to abide by federal standard codes.

The results of this would be a roughly 40% reduction in education material expenses. Local and state administrative costs could be chopped by a 1/3rd. With a standardized education, children moving from one state to another would have no change in education. Individual education costs would be significantly be reduced as clothing costs could be reduced to $200-300 per year.

Non-subjective testing materials would exist in a federally managed database and answer material would not be supplied to teachers for anything besides practice exams, thereby reducing cheating. In order facilitate this, something like an iPad or Kindle would need to be distributed to kids. However purchased in bulk combined with the reduction in books and printed material this would net a positive savings overall.

I ran the numbers on all of this about 5 year ago and I made a bunch of education board admins really upset when I presented it to then during a conference where they were trying to get input from businesses (at the time I used a state based not federal based model). I know a lot of people are going to be resistant to a federal board rather than state board, but there are just too many crackpots with their hands in cookie jar. Making it more centralized makes any back room dealings more obvious and subject to public protest. Currently every state/city determines how they are going to educate their population and there are 10s of thousands of administrators who make obscene amounts of money to "manage" your local schools.
Click to expand...

This is an excellent proposal. Your cost cutting measures are simple yet actually plausible to save us some money.
 
nutzo said:
These schools board wouldn't know how to save money if thier jobs depended on it, and it should!

This will NOT save money, just like the schools that gave all the kids laptops over the last 10+ years.
The publishers keep pushing to go electronic so they can make more money. They charge almost as much as the paper books, yet it's licensed for only one year, so the school is basically buying the full set of books every year.

They complain about the high cost of books, yet don't go after the kids/families that don't return them. They also buy books from publishers that bring out new editions ever year or two, requiring new books yet again. The new editions are usually nothing more than a few page being re-arranged so they can sell more books. School districts need to start using thier buying power to reduce the cost of books/supplies (5 year life for any given book edition, and a large discount or we buy the other guys book), instead of getting in bed with the publishers.

As for the ipad, this is nothing but schools trying to show they are up to date with technology, buy instead showing they only care about the latest fad, just like they alway hop on the latest education fad that doesn't work. Most these ipad will end up sitting unused in a closet/drawer, broken from being dropped, or stolen.
Click to expand...

My high school run about 100 c2d iMacs because the IT guy is a Macguy. Anyone know the price tag on that?
 
Every freshman at our university starting last fall semester receives a "free" ipad.. which of course comes out of MY tuition >=(
 
This pretty much says it all:

“There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better by using these machines,” said Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, who believes that the money would be better spent to recruit, train and retain teachers. “IPads are marvelous tools to engage kids, but then the novelty wears off, and you get into hard-core issues of teaching and learning.”
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For some reason, this reminds me of parents who complain about offensive things being on TV because they'd rather pawn off their responsiblities on something/someone else.
 
I am not the biggest ipad proponent, but I believe the future is paperless. A paper book is pretty unnecessary if a proper digital library is provided. I kind of regret not being forced to use more digital resources for research, because had I been forced, I'd probably feel more natural while using is, as opposed to now, where I'd prefer to go and get a paper periodical.

Also, the school can control what traffic reaches the ipads through their network. I'd also point out the possibility that students could also use the ipad for testing purposes.

Of course, there are cheaper tablet options, but I the software on the ipad is part of its cost. Furthermore, I can't believe they went for a $750 model, when 3g is unnecessary for that application, and so is 64gb of memory. A refurb 16gb wifi is 430 now, and if the school board talked to apple, I be the price would be even lower.

Long story short: I think if it's wisely used (big if), it's no more egregious than requiring a laptop. Poorly used (I'll admit that's a commonality in schools), it's a distraction.
 
The only thing i do with ipad is visit few webpages, got some games and pretty much thats it, i don't see anyone wanting to read off the ipad's ips screen is nice for pictures but for books we have an ipad.
 
As much as I would love to see every child carrying an iPad, wearing their university robe around campus, with their Vulcan hair cut and pointy ears, utilizing the technology ushering in a golden age... the truth is... Americans are dogmatically stupid, arrogant, loud, ignorant, obnoxious, imperialistic, lazy, placated and have a huge sense of entitlement... and their kids learn from that.
 
Soulblaze said:
As much as I would love to see every child carrying an iPad, wearing their university robe around campus, with their Vulcan hair cut and pointy ears, utilizing the technology ushering in a golden age... the truth is... Americans are dogmatically stupid, arrogant, loud, ignorant, obnoxious, imperialistic, lazy, placated and have a huge sense of entitlement... and their kids learn from that.
Click to expand...
Welcome. Are you here to threadshit preaching all about Apple and calling us poor that we can't afford Apple computers?
 
XtuRmN8r said:
I am not the biggest ipad proponent, but I believe the future is paperless. A paper book is pretty unnecessary if a proper digital library is provided. I kind of regret not being forced to use more digital resources for research, because had I been forced, I'd probably feel more natural while using is, as opposed to now, where I'd prefer to go and get a paper periodical.

Also, the school can control what traffic reaches the ipads through their network. I'd also point out the possibility that students could also use the ipad for testing purposes.

Of course, there are cheaper tablet options, but I the software on the ipad is part of its cost. Furthermore, I can't believe they went for a $750 model, when 3g is unnecessary for that application, and so is 64gb of memory. A refurb 16gb wifi is 430 now, and if the school board talked to apple, I be the price would be even lower.

Long story short: I think if it's wisely used (big if), it's no more egregious than requiring a laptop. Poorly used (I'll admit that's a commonality in schools), it's a distraction.
Click to expand...

Thank you for being so very sensible about things. I must agree with you. I'm not certain I actually agree with the need for an iPad, but I really do agree that we are moving towards a time when school children won't need to lug 50lbs of books around just to look at a few pages at a time.

Respect for the devices, though, is a significant issue. This, to me, makes more sense in a university setting, rather than one with young children. I'm not sure if the pros of making the learning experience more engaging really outweigh the cons of having to replace broken devices and make sure that kids aren't just playing Angry Birds. On the other hand, this is the issue with all technology, and I have a feeling that this school is perhaps jumping a bit early, rather than in the wrong direction.

I would love to have had my iPad and digital copies of all of my college textbooks while I had been going to school. I don't actually know if all of the texts are available electronically, probably not, but one day I see that as standard. Now, I don't care if it's an iPad, netbook or other tablet, I just like the idea of digital texts. Hell, I wish I had had my Sony Reader in college too!

The problem with technology is that it is so often rolled out into situations where the people using it on a daily basis don't really know how to make it do all that it could. I think that if they train the teachers on the tools (in this case iPads, but whatever they are), and the teachers use the tools in an effective manner, then we could see a positive change here. Instead, they'll likely be thrown to the children and teachers, no one will have any idea what they're doing, and it'll just turn out to be a waste. It all comes down to effort and accountability, both on the part of the teachers and the students. If they let the kids break the devices and yet replace them (what's the policy with expensive textbook destruction in gradeschools now?), and don't really use them much in a real educational process, then I'm not optimistic.

Perhaps, though, we should see what the school looks like in a year, and see if anything good has come of it? Then would be a good time to see what worked and what didn't, and what can be improved or removed.

Note that I am reasonably technologically neutral, and I don't know if it makes any difference whether they use iPads, netbooks, Samsung Tabs, iPod Touches or Furbies for this application. I own mostly PCs, but also have a Mac Mini. I have an iPhone and iPad, but am strongly considering an Android tablet once they move the OS forward in that region. I just like technology, and I'd love to live in a world where it was used to great effect, and not just wasted on ungrateful schoolchildren the way I have always seen it. Hell, I'd love to see how well computers are even used in schools at this point... does anyone have any links to articles that discuss the current state of technology in education?
 
That is a school system that is broke and they go spending money like this? WTF?
 
I work in education and we were looking at going with a platform such as Kindles, iPads, etc.

So by far Apple is in the lead. They are the easiest to centrally manage and there are several configs dedicated to schools. You can get them with a locked down and deploy the software remotely to a set of them. The kids can't install anything that isn't an approved app. Its really nice. It also only costs about 2/3 of the money for the students vs buying books.

We decided in the end to not lock into a platform yet and wait until it matures a little. As of right now we require students to have laptops, since a lot of our classroom content is online.

But basically as of this past summer the iPad as a textbook replacement was way, way in front of the competition. I am sure things will change and something else will catch up. However multimedia is huge, so something like a Kndle just can't do the job.
 
Soulblaze said:
As much as I would love to see every child carrying an iPad, wearing their university robe around campus, with their Vulcan hair cut and pointy ears, utilizing the technology ushering in a golden age... the truth is... Americans are dogmatically stupid, arrogant, loud, ignorant, obnoxious, imperialistic, lazy, placated and have a huge sense of entitlement... and their kids learn from that.
Click to expand...

AND THATS WHY AMERICA > YOUR SHIT PLACE OF RESIDENCE. :D

This is 'merica, what we say goes.
 
Yes, I'm so glad my local school has decided to spend their budget on four (4!) iPads for the entire Jr. Kindergarten through Grade 8 student body instead of getting some used books for that empty library they're so proud of.
 
brom42 said:
I work in education and we were looking at going with a platform such as Kindles, iPads, etc.

So by far Apple is in the lead. They are the easiest to centrally manage and there are several configs dedicated to schools. You can get them with a locked down and deploy the software remotely to a set of them. The kids can't install anything that isn't an approved app. Its really nice. It also only costs about 2/3 of the money for the students vs buying books.

We decided in the end to not lock into a platform yet and wait until it matures a little. As of right now we require students to have laptops, since a lot of our classroom content is online.

But basically as of this past summer the iPad as a textbook replacement was way, way in front of the competition. I am sure things will change and something else will catch up. However multimedia is huge, so something like a Kndle just can't do the job.
Click to expand...

The problem we had with the iBooks, is that all the teachers got used to the very small amount of educational programs that were offered. When the state stopped paying for the hardware, none of the teachers could afford new macbooks, and none of them knew how to use anything else. We spent an enormous amount of time teaching them how to use the new web based, platform independent systems.
 
My old high school is doing this.

The entire school district just SHUT DOWN about 3 elementary schools to save money. But guess what the art department got during this whole financial strain? That's right, FOURTY, BRAND SPANKIN' NEW TOP OF THE LINE 64GB MO'FUCKING IPADS! Because that's what the children need in an art class that's all about CREATING stuff, is a device that is only able to CONSUME media!

Fucking genius!
 
Solidstate89 said:
My old high school is doing this.

The entire school district just SHUT DOWN about 3 elementary schools to save money. But guess what the art department got during this whole financial strain? That's right, FOURTY, BRAND SPANKIN' NEW TOP OF THE LINE 64GB MO'FUCKING IPADS! Because that's what the children need in an art class that's all about CREATING stuff, is a device that is only able to CONSUME media!

Fucking genius!
Click to expand...

That's pretty sad actually.
 
brom42 said:
I work in education and we were looking at going with a platform such as Kindles, iPads, etc.

So by far Apple is in the lead. They are the easiest to centrally manage and there are several configs dedicated to schools. You can get them with a locked down and deploy the software remotely to a set of them. The kids can't install anything that isn't an approved app. Its really nice. It also only costs about 2/3 of the money for the students vs buying books.

We decided in the end to not lock into a platform yet and wait until it matures a little. As of right now we require students to have laptops, since a lot of our classroom content is online.

But basically as of this past summer the iPad as a textbook replacement was way, way in front of the competition. I am sure things will change and something else will catch up. However multimedia is huge, so something like a Kindle just can't do the job.
Click to expand...

The printing costs, profit margin, storage space, and the high number of required books are driving this.
 
brom42 said:
But basically as of this past summer the iPad as a textbook replacement was way, way in front of the competition. I am sure things will change and something else will catch up. However multimedia is huge, so something like a Kndle just can't do the job.
Click to expand...

But a Windows like my HP Slate device could. It doesn't have the battery life of the iPad but for an educational environment the active pen is a big plus over the iPad or even current Android devices though pen tech is coming to Android.
 
Schools need to go back to the basics before shit like this. Such a waste of money
 
Solidstate89 said:
...
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Schools are closing because districts are shifting the diminishing student population around and staff, reducing building operation and maintenance costs. It is to prevent, or reduce labor issues. I think the salary of staff members are the majorly of districts costs.
 
I am a high school teacher and was recommended to spend part of my budget on iPads for the kids to play, I mean learn on. I politely turned down the offer and have made mention of how useless it is to teach them an expensive proprietary system based on user consumption, but my comments seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

The line of thinking from the district office point of view is that the iPad is the future, it will help them network with others, and help students become valuable to businesses..........
 
96redformula said:
The line of thinking from the district office point of view is that the iPad is the future, it will help them network with others, and help students become valuable to businesses..........
Click to expand...

The future of stupidity and mediocrity if this is what educators are thinking instead of actually teaching kids REAL skills like math perhaps. But no doubt the touch UI on the iPad makes differential calculus a breeze.
 
Solidstate89 said:
My old high school is doing this.

The entire school district just SHUT DOWN about 3 elementary schools to save money. But guess what the art department got during this whole financial strain? That's right, FOURTY, BRAND SPANKIN' NEW TOP OF THE LINE 64GB MO'****ING IPADS! Because that's what the children need in an art class that's all about CREATING stuff, is a device that is only able to CONSUME media!

****ing genius!
Click to expand...

Yep, and teachers in my school district this year took up to a 7% pay cut. In addition, when I went to high school I didn't have to pay hardly anything to take extracurricular activities, such as football. I had to buy my food on long bus trips and buy a $1 mouthpiece, and my cleats. No fee for taking the actual sport.

And yet where I live now kids pay between $50 up to almost $300 to take a school sponsored extracurricular sport/activity, depending on the school they go to and other factors.

They have to bring their own facial tissues, and a lot more of their own supplies than I had to when I was a kid.

And I'm not saying any of that is WRONG. What is wrong is doing that and buying iPads. If the districts here start talking about buying tablets or other computers for the kids, they'd better be talking about a netbook, or the color nook.

The nook is the no-brainer in my opinion. Especially the color one. Lots of functionality. There's no way Barnes & Noble wouldn't work extremely well with schools to set these up just right for them, work with publishers, and provide not only an economical arrangement for schools, but also a profitable one for B&N and the companies they sell books for. This could be lucrative, widespread, and very affordable, and makes WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY MORE SENSE than $750 or even $430 refurbished iPads. Please people, get your heads out of your behinds. (not [H] people, [E] people.)

The only reason a school would do this is to appear hip or trendy, possibly garnering publicity. I would much rather arm my student body with a device backed by a damed BOOK STORE than a device two to three times the money backed by a computer company with 5% of the world's actual computer market.

Android is beating Apple in smartphone sales. Android is making its way on to many tablet and otherwise cheap computing devices. Chrome is headed are way as well, which has its ups and downs. But I think if you're going to get people used to an OS other than Windows, it should be Android nowadays, and NOT Apple. Giving them iPads, like many here point out, is still only getting them accustomed to Apple's locked down, limited, and more expensive products.

And did I mention the color nook is $250? It has an IPS screen, too.... It wouldn't take much for the larger schools to cook up their own ROM and whatever restrictions or access they wanted for B&N to put on the nook, and if they were going to sell lots of Nooks, I would think they'd be happy to oblige, not just for the devices but for the book sales as well.

This system is already in place to do it, and textbooks are going electronic day by day. Yes, you can put a kindle or nook app on your iPad. Or I could buy a netbook AND a color nook ...
 
Wow, this entire thing IS sad.

This is me and all the tax payers pretty much right now...

facepalm5.jpg
 
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