San Diego Schools Purchase 26,000 iPads

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With a current budget deficit in the tens of billions, federal funding for schools was cut by $2.2 billion, and no plans to fix anything, California spending tax dollars on 26,000 iPads is just brilliant. At least Apple is knocking $30 off each iPad. :rolleyes:

Nearly 26,000 Apple iPads will go to San Diego Unified School District classrooms this fall in what is being considered one of the largest iPad deployments for K-12 schools in the country. "I think over the next five years, virtually every school system will be implementing this kind of a strategy," said Drossos.
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Yeah, not a fan of schools buying any kind of tech gadget unless there's some savings that can be attributed to the acquisition.
 
My kiddos enjoy my iPad and it has some pretty decent edjewmakaytchon apps.
 
Im thinking they did this assuming it'd save on cost of books in some way or another.
 
If they last longer then 2 years they will pay themselves back. Our school house just did this and we almost have them paid off from saved paper already and we go through 250 students a year. I imagine the books (that are NEVER up to date) in california cost quite a bit more then our books.
 
I mean just think in 10 years, an Ipad 3 equivalent will probably be like $50.
 
I may add that I think there are better alternatives to just purchasing the iPad.

Cheaper e-ink readers would be better for the vast majority of what they need but I can see they need the iPads for their retina display for math books and science books.
 
Inu said:
Im thinking they did this assuming it'd save on cost of books in some way or another.
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This...to a degree.

Lets do the math shall we?

Book = $60 and lasts years. Extremely resilient towards drops and accidents...at most a slightly ripped page here or there or some water damage, but otherwise they still work and last forever.

iPad = $350 and lasts ?...I mean, you have accidents, drops, malfunctions, broken charger ports, spilled drinks...I'm sure most people will take care of them but most won't. HOWEVER, they can also be constantly updated with new material and be used for general anything really.

Hmmm...I guess besides the money spent I can't really decide on whether this is or isn't the best idea. I think if ANYTHING they could have gone with some cheaper Android tablets. Really don't see school use being something that Apple just has over Android no competition...
 
JoeUser said:
Hmmm...I guess besides the money spent I can't really decide on whether this is or isn't the best idea. I think if ANYTHING they could have gone with some cheaper Android tablets. Really don't see school use being something that Apple just has over Android no competition...
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The only thing i can think of is for the retina display so they can incorporate science/math.

I'm not going to pretend to know how much each individual book costs, I'm sure its different for each class. I just know that while in high school our books were ancient and we would constantly have to cross out outdated crap in our books or skip over sections that were no longer applicable. If they are anywhere close to the costs of college books these would pay themselves off in a year.
 
JoeUser said:
Hmmm...I guess besides the money spent I can't really decide on whether this is or isn't the best idea. I think if ANYTHING they could have gone with some cheaper Android tablets. Really don't see school use being something that Apple just has over Android no competition...
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I really would love to see Windows RT tablets with pens, combined with One Note that's a every valuable educational tool and it REALLY does cut down on paper.
 
Inu said:
Im thinking they did this assuming it'd save on cost of books in some way or another.
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Problem is that the book companies, especially in the textbook world, have caught onto this and sell their crappy digital copies for the same price. So no savings there...
 
My question is, why iPads? Why are all the schools giving out macbooks and ipads?

Sure, there's a discount, but why not spend the money on a cheaper HP or Dell laptop, or an Android tablet?

I guess on the laptop side they don't want kids to be getting viruses or whatever, but god damn it just spawns more generations of snooty apple owners who have their heads so far up their asses that they can see their own colon go to work.
 
Do you research about education apps on iOS vs Android.You'll see why they purchased iPads. Apple's iPad is also dominating the tablet market by a HUGE margin.
 
Inu said:
Im thinking they did this assuming it'd save on cost of books in some way or another.
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Brilliant plan not like the iPad could become a distraction in class, this is worst than a bad idea.
 
"I think over the next five years, virtually every school system will be implementing this kind of a strategy," said Drossos.

If by "strategy" he means rushing to bankruptcy, then I suppose he's got a pretty effective strategy there.
 
Only a $30 drop? You'd think that one of the richest companies in the world could do more than that, especially for education.
 
Ohmycaptain said:
My question is, why iPads? Why are all the schools giving out macbooks and ipads?

Sure, there's a discount, but why not spend the money on a cheaper HP or Dell laptop, or an Android tablet?

I guess on the laptop side they don't want kids to be getting viruses or whatever, but god damn it just spawns more generations of snooty apple owners who have their heads so far up their asses that they can see their own colon go to work.
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1) Apple gives decreased prices to educational insitutions in hopes of getting kids indoctrinated early in life and/or in college. The MS side of the world doesn't have one company powerful enough to spend lobbying money as well as take a monetary hit that doesn't have any quantifiable future gains (children can always make their future purchase from a competitor).

2) As the user base grows so will the instances of viruses. Apple still holds such a tiny market share of personal computers, it's not yet profitable for malware programmers. Eventually there will be a huge group of illiterate users that had believed all the marketing - and there will be a tsunami. It will be sooner than later. There have already been a few public mass infections in the past year or so. Your saying they don't want kids getting viruses is a just regurgitating the marketing. At least PC users aren't blind to the fact that viruses exist!
 
haste. said:
1)
2) As the user base grows so will the instances of viruses. Apple still holds such a tiny market share of personal computers, it's not yet profitable for malware programmers. Eventually there will be a huge group of illiterate users that had believed all the marketing - and there will be a tsunami. It will be sooner than later. There have already been a few public mass infections in the past year or so. Your saying they don't want kids getting viruses is a just regurgitating the marketing. At least PC users aren't blind to the fact that viruses exist!
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Google ios malware. How many do you see?
Now google android malware. How many do you see (if you're able to count them)

Now tell us again that the marketshare for iOS is tiny.
 
assuming zero accidents... the ipad still has a limited battery life... and will those book licenses transfer? :rolleyes:
 
heatlesssun said:
Yeah, not a fan of schools buying any kind of tech gadget unless there's some savings that can be attributed to the acquisition.
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There are savings that can be attributed to that. I work in IT Consulting and right now mainly deal with the Edu market. The big thing coming down the pipe in the next year or two are 1:1 initiatives and digital textbooks. It won't be long until you see many more districts adopting devices like these. I live in Indiana and for the 2013-2014 year all state testing will be done strictly online and with that comes support for not only OSX, Windows and Linux but also iOS/Android/W8. At this point in time Apple pretty much has that market by the nuts with the iPad and iTunes U. Which is why you're seeing news about many districts getting iPads.

One of the things we're planning at one of our districts is to start rolling out devices in the spring semester of next year. We are currently piloting the new iPads, an Android Based solution with a Content Management piece similar to BlackBoard or Moodle (which is what we currently us) and Windows 8 Tablets once they hit.

The idea behind this would be, at least at the highschool level, a student will receive a device when they are a freshmen. The funding that would normally go to their book rental will go towards the device and at the end of their four year stint they would leave with said device. This will save the district millions by saving on Text Books as the cost of DD is significantly cheaper than a B&M. The money invested in the devices will eventually be paid back via Student Fee's.

There's a lot of money to made in this market and as I stated earlier Apple has a one-up on pretty much everyone at this point. The downside to Apple is managing the devices which requires a 3rd Party Solution. The most popular solution at this point is Casper and it's pretty expensive. I just finished deploying Meraki Systems Manger last week and it has support for Windows, iOS and Android is on the road map. It works basically like GPMC for Mobile Devices.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8 pans out at least in our case, because it would fit into our existing AD environment and device/app/user management can be done easily and free via Group Policy.
 
Trimlock said:
The only thing i can think of is for the retina display so they can incorporate science/math.

.
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Lol, what? I fail to see how a few more pixels is going to change anything regarding these two subjects. Most tablets have resolutions that will work absolutely fine for this. Heck, my phone can do it.
 
the ios textbook functionality was my number one motivator for buying an ipad. ive purchased over 30 textbooks so far. (only 5 of those are official textbooks though)

they are awesome. my favorite one, 600 pages of organic chemistry, was free.
 
I work in IT Consulting and right now mainly deal with the Edu market.
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While you may be knowledgeable in the subject, you are inherently biased in your opinions... (ie: taking everything you say with a bag of salt )
 
I forgot to add that Systems Manager is a free service offered by Meraki. We just finished lighting up our campus with capacity for 1:1 using their AP's. It snaps directly into our current dashboard and allows me to manage our Wireless Infrastructure and Mobile devices from one cloud based control panel. It's nice cause there's no hardware to manage and no need to worry about a controller going down and leveling the wireless network.

Meraki initially introduced it as a paid service and didn't garner much interest. They switched to a free business model with it in hopes of growing the user base and furthering development. If anyone is in a similar situation I'd suggest checking it out, and I'd imagine at somepoint it will move back to a paid model and hopefully grandfather us early adopters in.

http://www.meraki.com/ -> Quickly becoming one of my favorite vendors. They've got some really interesting products coming up in the Networking Deptartment. They've got some really interesting feature sets as far switching/routing and their firewalls go.
 
If they had to go with tablets, why not go with cheap android tablets? I got a nice one from China for 130 dollars (capacitive screen, 8 gb storage, 1.3 ghz cpu, 512 mb RAM, running ICS) and I'm sure if they bought in bulk they could easily get the price lower.
 
lilbabycat said:
While you may be knowledgeable in the subject, you are inherently biased in your opinions... (ie: taking everything you say with a bag of salt )
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Understandable but I'm just kinda giving my two cents. This is an entirely new market and everyone from School Administration, IT Folks inhouse/outsourced and even the Vendors themselves are learning. There will be failures and while it's a good idea in theory it may not end up saving money at all but there is no debating the fact that this is the direction that we are moving towards. There's still a lot of logistics that need to be ironed out before we deploy at the district I oversee but at this point all signs point to positive things coming coming from it.

There's also another angle you can look at which is interactive learning. Wireless devices in the classrooms, interactive white boards etc. Things like this can help accelerate and encourage kids to learn. I'm only 22 and I know for damn sure that if we had more technology in the classroom I'd of been a much better student. The current k-12 generation of kids were basically birthed into an always connected and social networked digital age. I'd be surprised if some of these kids even learn to type properly. If you take the things these kids do in their free time and incorporate that into curriculum it can help make education fun and leads to a much more enriching and engaging experience.

There's also a reward system that could be incorporated because of this. Lets say I'm an elementary educator and I want to reward my students for turning their homework in on time or for engaging in classroom discussion, I have the ability to let them play angry birds for the last 15 minutes of class at the click of a button. I as an educator would have the ability to control and limit what apps and features are available to my students during my instruction time at the click of a button. That's a really a game changer.


Times are a changing. :)
 
cleathco said:
If they had to go with tablets, why not go with cheap android tablets? I got a nice one from China for 130 dollars (capacitive screen, 8 gb storage, 1.3 ghz cpu, 512 mb RAM, running ICS) and I'm sure if they bought in bulk they could easily get the price lower.
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The Big Draw for the iPads is iTunes U and the educational apps that are available for it. There is not much choice with Android, and with iPads being so popular your choices for Device / Content management are much greater. Apple also gives a decent Edu discount.
 
Another cool tidbit, Imagine having a pen pal overseas/across the country and instead of writing and waiting for a response. You could fireup Facetime or Skype and interact with them in real time right there, or hell you could even email while you're in class!
 
Matalim said:
There is no Android tablet ecosystem.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/0...-and-googles-running-out-of-time-to-fix-them/
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Indeed. Android, especially on the Tablet front is pretty meh. It's way too fragmented of an OS, though Google is working to fix that.


We're piloting an Android solution right now and it's been a pretty meh experience from the deployment, the device itself and the API.

http://mykuno.com/kuno-tablet.html

That's the device we're using and it works in unison with a product called CurriculumLoft

http://curriculumloft.com/

It's got some interesting prospects but the whole thing feels very beta, much like Android in my opinion.

FLAMESUIT: Android fans please take note that I've not used ICS yet.
 
Ohmycaptain said:
My question is, why iPads? Why are all the schools giving out macbooks and ipads?

Sure, there's a discount, but why not spend the money on a cheaper HP or Dell laptop, or an Android tablet?

I guess on the laptop side they don't want kids to be getting viruses or whatever, but god damn it just spawns more generations of snooty apple owners who have their heads so far up their asses that they can see their own colon go to work.
Click to expand...

The answer is simple, they don't want Android pieces of shit.
 
A sawbuck says San Diego Unified School District gets hit with an accessibility lawsuit before Labor Day.
 
TheBlueChanell said:
Indeed. Android, especially on the Tablet front is pretty meh. It's way too fragmented of an OS, though Google is working to fix that.


We're piloting an Android solution right now and it's been a pretty meh experience from the deployment, the device itself and the API.

http://mykuno.com/kuno-tablet.html

That's the device we're using and it works in unison with a product called CurriculumLoft

http://curriculumloft.com/

It's got some interesting prospects but the whole thing feels very beta, much like Android in my opinion.

FLAMESUIT: Android fans please take note that I've not used ICS yet.
Click to expand...

Android will probably do well in the >$200 category simply because there aren't any other options but in higher priced OEM devices I think Windows 8/RT will take that space assuming that anything can do well in the tablet space above $200 besides the iPad.
 
Honestly, I could care less if a school district makes a purchase like this, as long as said school district is not hurting financially.

California itself is doing terrible, I wonder how that affects this school's finances?
 
Matalim said:
Google ios malware. How many do you see?
Now google android malware. How many do you see (if you're able to count them)

Now tell us again that the marketshare for iOS is tiny.
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What is this Google ios you speak of?

Well considering that Android holds a quite significant margin over Apple as of the last numbers I saw (probably Q4 2011 - which Apple was around 30% and anroid 50ish%) , I would say that they were the most profitable place to create malware. I know this concept is hard since Apple users think they are the only thing that exists out there, but...

Even if Apple has lessened or even eliminated that gap it will take time for a transition over.

I can count how many viruses I've gotten on any of my Windows based PCs or my Android Phones (that I've owned since their first model G1) on one hand - 0.
 
It is a good idea to replace paper books.

But e-readers are far more effective than iPads for that purpose, you don't have to worry about the kids playing games in class and other apps, and they have far superior battery life and are much more cost effective.

If I were a tax payer there, I would be pissed off.
 
The gave my cousin a free iPad for her "lesson plans" she's a fucking kindergarten teacher too.. she always has it with her doing non-school type shit too.
 
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