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Kathianne
04-17-2015, 12:00 PM
In light of this story:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/04/16/l_a_school_ipad_program_ends_with_district_demandi ng_refund_from_apple.html?wpsrc=fol_tw


L.A. School District Terminates iPad Program and Seeks Refund From Apple



It's been an interesting ride, but the Los Angeles school iPad program is done. Between the rampant student hacking (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/10/l_a_school_ipad_program_students_should_hack_their _tablets.html) and the FBI probe (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/12/03/grand_jury_subpoena_and_fbi_search_lead_la_school_ district_to_end_ipad_pearson.html), you can see how the focus kind of wandered away from education. But there are millions of dollars tied up in the project, so it's not just lunch money.

As the Los Angeles Times reports (http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-refund-20150415-story.html), the Unified School District Board of Education told its attorneys that they should consider litigation against Apple and Pearson. (Pearson developed the iPad curriculum as an Apple contractor.) District counsel David Holmquist said that Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines “made the decision that he wanted to put them on notice, Pearson in particular, that he’s dissatisfied with their product.” In a letter to Apple, the school district wrote that it won't continue to pay for the Pearson curriculum or services. And board members are calling for a refund.
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A bit of how it should be done:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/ipads_in_the_classroom_the_right_way_to_use_them_d emonstrated_by_a_swiss.html


The Smart Way to Use iPads in the Classroom


Touch-screen tablets for young students have become all the rage. Some districts are even buying iPads for every kindergartner, a move sparking both celebration (http://heidisongs.blogspot.com/2012/06/one-on-one-ipad-program-in-kindergarten.html) andconsternation (http://www.centerdigitaled.com/policy/Kindergarten-iPads.html?utm_source=related&utm_medium=direct&utm_campaign=Kindergarten-iPads). Do we really want to give $500 devices to kids who can’t even tie their shoes? What are these schools doing with these devices, anyway?

...

The school has an unconventional take on the iPad’s purpose. The devices are not really valued as portable screens or mobile gaming devices. Teachers I talked to seemed uninterested, almost dismissive, of animations and gamelike apps. Instead, the tablets were intended to be used as video cameras, audio recorders, and multimedia notebooks of individual students’ creations. The teachers cared most about how the devices could capture moments that told stories about their students’ experiences in school. Instead of focusing on what was coming out of the iPad, they were focused on what was going into it.

One morning I watched first-graders taking assessments of what they understood about “systems.” No pen-and-paper test was in sight. Instead, the teacher asked her students to come up with an example of a system and record a video of themselves explaining why their choice did, in fact, represent a system. A girl with a blond braid had drawn pictures of how people check out library books. With some technical guidance from the aide sitting next to her, and using an app called Explain Everything (http://www.explaineverything.com/), she started arranging the pictures in a digital flow chart, adding arrows between her drawings of the book shelves, the checkout counter, the book at home, and the book being returned to the library. A few minutes later, she sat in a quiet corner by herself, pressed the record button, and explained each picture out loud. “My system is good,” she said at the end, “because if you don’t do something in my system, it will break down.”

Sam Ross, a second-grade teacher at ZIS, sees real potential in moments like this. “Children are being able to show what’s in their minds by adding the oral explanation,” he said. “That’s off-the-charts amazing.” Particularly helpful, he said, is to watch the recordings made by young children and English-language learners—students who may not speak up much in class but can actually show deep learning when asked to interview each other or record what they know. But most eye-opening, he said, is watching children have their own “aha” moments after watching recordings of themselves and talking to teachers about what they were thinking at the time.

At ZIS, every student has a blog or, in the case of younger children, a digital portfolio that teachers maintain. These portfolios allow teachers (as well as parents and students) to review specific work and rewatch moments that exemplify how the children have progressed over the year. One teacher showed me the blog of a fifth-grade girl who had recorded an assignment to show her knowledge of the parts of a plant. She did so by recording herself teaching a first-grader and answering the first-grader’s questions. In P.E., fourth-graders have recorded gymnastics routines so they can watch what they looked like and decide how to improve.
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Granted I taught middle school and high school, but never was asking the kids to use anything I didn't know how to use myself. To just 'dump' computers or ipads or even a DVD player without knowledge beforehand of how they are going to be used is asking for trouble.

First one has their goals and objectives, then creates the methodology to be used.

jimnyc
04-18-2015, 07:01 AM
Last year, my son came home from school one day with an Ipad, which of course was meant for studying, homework and other school related work. Then back to school this year, and I never saw one again (other than our own). It appears they may have discontinued the program, and I didn't even think of it until reading this! I think it can be a useful tool, but of course used in an appropriate manner.

Jordan liked to use it to take notes in class, as his writing skills pretty much suck, but he types well and is good at using such a device to organize notes/homework. I believe they allow him to bring his own Kindle in from his bookbag for such reasons as well.

Kathianne
04-18-2015, 09:16 AM
Last year, my son came home from school one day with an Ipad, which of course was meant for studying, homework and other school related work. Then back to school this year, and I never saw one again (other than our own). It appears they may have discontinued the program, and I didn't even think of it until reading this! I think it can be a useful tool, but of course used in an appropriate manner.

Jordan liked to use it to take notes in class, as his writing skills pretty much suck, but he types well and is good at using such a device to organize notes/homework. I believe they allow him to bring his own Kindle in from his bookbag for such reasons as well.

There are many justifications for using technology in schools, the problem is that too many teachers haven't a clue to how to do what they are asking of the kids. Indeed, what tends to happen is the kids 'create' a project, that impresses the teacher, even though said project has nothing to do with the lesson. The project then drives the grade.

I agree that in high school especially, the use of ipads or smartphones for notetaking/recording/video can help students a great deal. The problem becomes monitoring that they are indeed doing that and not gaming or chatting or bullying.

Thunderknuckles
04-18-2015, 11:32 AM
Oh my God Kat. Don't get me started on the iPad fiasco we had in L.A. The damn fools raided 1 BILLION dollars from the general construction fund to pay for that little experiment!

DragonStryk72
04-18-2015, 04:08 PM
In light of this story:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/04/16/l_a_school_ipad_program_ends_with_district_demandi ng_refund_from_apple.html?wpsrc=fol_tw



A bit of how it should be done:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/ipads_in_the_classroom_the_right_way_to_use_them_d emonstrated_by_a_swiss.html



Granted I taught middle school and high school, but never was asking the kids to use anything I didn't know how to use myself. To just 'dump' computers or ipads or even a DVD player without knowledge beforehand of how they are going to be used is asking for trouble.

First one has their goals and objectives, then creates the methodology to be used.

Here, I blame the school district. You can't just dump a bunch of computers onto kids and hope for the best. They should've setup individually passwords and usernames for any use of the tablet, for starters. This would've immediately allowed them to track who was using what, and simply making sure parental controls are engage would've gone a long way.

Central, though, is making sure that the teachers understand the full uses of tablets. I mean, they could easily have used a KhanAcademy app to give assignments to struggling students that target the areas they're having difficulty in. Administer quizzes, tests, even frontloading pdfs of the textbooks for their students. There's even an ability to Privately message a student about something they seem to be having an issue with, removing embarrassment from the picture.

God, so many things they really could've done with this, and they just figured they could slap down the ipads and be done.