After the Los Angeles Unified School District spent $130 million last year on iPads for every child in its forty-seven schools, it will be switching to laptops this coming year. How come? Kids reported difficulty typing on the virtual keyboard, and district filters for sites such as YouTube and Twitter were easily bypassed. Education News.org reports:
Students were having trouble typing on the iPad’s touch screen, and state they are more comfortable on a laptop with an actual keyboard and larger screen.
According to Nate Swanner of Slashgear.com, students were easily bypassing the security features and using the iPads to visit YouTube, Twitter, and other non-school related apps. The tablets were removed from several schools, causing distribution to fall behind.
Also causing problems was senior staff, who misunderstood the terms of the deal with Apple, stating that the district owned the curriculum, where in reality they simply had a three-year license. The curriculum they did have proved to be incomplete in the first year.
Twenty-seven schools will be allowed to choose from six laptops to be tested this fall. This includes the low-cost Chromebook, which has already seen success in schools across the world. Also included in the choice are the Lenovo Yoga Touch, Microsoft Surface Pro 2, and the Dell Latitude E7240.
The California Board of Education is allowing $40 million for the cost of these 19,300 laptops, writes Vanessa Romo for The LA School Report.
Apparently LAUSD hasn’t read the study that says technology increases the (wealth) achievement gap.
In addition, Microsoft founder Bill Gates himself has recently stated that current “poor results” of using technology in the classroom are the result of “unmotivated students.”
IMAGE: Pablo Ruiz Múzquiz/Flickr
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