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L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

latimes.com

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Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#91

Post by CodeWriter23 »

LAUSD parent here. At our school, we have been successfully using iPads for instruction in certain grades. MacBooks and Airs in higher grades. The software used is pretty much the stock iPad selection, reinforced with some pedagogical offerings through web SaaS products. In Kindergarten, my daughter made a Ken Burns-style presentation using iMovie, researched building a parachute with a gondola to compete in the egg drop competition (her and her partner's egg broke), and has been drilled in numerous ways on spelling, counting, addition and subtraction. I am unsure how tech is applied in other grades, but I have seen the movie making and egg drop competition themes at the other grade levels, so I assume there is some iterative rigor year over year. By 4th grade, I expect my daughter to be participating in curriculum sourced from the Hour of Code program.

In my view, Director Deasy's persecution is politically-motivated. The choice to go Apple was the result of successes in various Magnet and Lab Schools, conducted prior to the service agreement with Apple. Multiple vendors were evaluated during the Magnet / Lab development process. There was no opportunity in the process to put it out for three bids during the actual procurement process, because the other vendors were eliminated prior to procurement.

Our technology program is funded by our PTO, which is a becoming a common trend in many public schools. It's much easier for our PTO to raise $80K/yr for tech (we raise more than that, to fund other programs) than it is for LAUSD to indemnify the purchase or lease of tech on a district-wide basis. We will likely continue to choose Apple products, with the primary motivation for that decision coming from the instructors, and secondarily, the build quality being able to stand up to student use at school and home.

Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#92

Post by BuckRogers »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #13
FleshGordon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief everyone REALLY doesn't need to be a programmer.

Nope, but everyone doesn't need to be a mathematician, biologist, geologist, historian, or any of the other primary subjects in school either. I think that in 2015 it's hard to argue that a basic grasp of computers / software won't have at least as big of an effect on your quality of life after graduation as being able to work quadratic equations by hand, without reference.

I agree completely but, even with the glacial pace of true technical innovation I doubt that education can keep up with it.

I tend to believe we should scrap the idea of studying subjects, and go back to teaching how to think instead. In the information age, the subjects are easily accessible.

Focusing on the original Greek education of grammar, logic and rhetoric makes more sense to me today. I could see a limited subject study at the high school level, but overall I believe deciphering and processing information is far more important today than its ever been.

I'd love to have my kids focus on the trivium until high school, then move to a limited quadrivium of programming, math, history and biology at that point.

Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#93

Post by PhasmaFelis »

Nullabillity wrote: post #22
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did they expect Pearson to produce an entire curriculum just for the iPad? More or less, yes: "Under the contract, Pearson was to provide English and math curriculum." > Why not a website instead The article says "Deasy had said the technology effort was a civil rights imperative designed to provide low-income students with devices available to their wealthier peers." It's easy for you and me to assume that every m…

If you want to level the playing field then giving out devices that are effectively only useful for consuming content is not the way to go.

There's a lot of reasons why the plan didn't work out, but your objection seems more like a knee-jerk anti-Apple catchphrase. An iPad with the proper software (which these obviously did not have) is quite capable of presenting indexed, hyperlinked course material, distributing schedules and assignments, helping students communicate with the teacher and each other, and so forth.

If you want to argue that there are better ways to do all these things, that's fine, but the "only good for consuming content" thing is awfully shallow.

Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#94

Post by 4927a15fe7b0c35 »

pjc50 wrote: post #20
4927a15fe7b0c35 wrote: post #17

This is almost 100% about Pearson. The article even has this gem buried toward the end: Although the threatened legal action applies to Apple and Pearson, the district also sent letters Tuesday to two other companies: Lenovo, a device maker, and Arey Jones, a computer distributor. These companies also have included the Pearson product on some devices purchased by L.A. Unified. So, they had problems with non-Apple dev…

“Any given class typically experiences one problem or more daily." It means there is a complex system that isn't reliable enough for its target usage and the end users have no way of pressuring for its improvement.

My issue with the statement is two fold:

1) "Any given" really isn't the same as "every". It's vague and ambiguous, and generally means it happens often, but is not a useful measure of incidence. 2) A deployment of this number of devices + custom software will have problems, that has to be accepted. One problem, without knowing what it is, really isn't enough to say the thing is a failure. In fact, it's not even close. Is the problem that someone has to restart their iPad? That the content freezes? The content is inaccessible? The content is incomplete? The Wi-Fi goes down? The teacher's materials aren't working? We really have no idea, and that kind of comment in this kind of story is adversarial and unnecessary.

Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#95

Post by tajen »

scott00 wrote: post #83
ams6110 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you an education professional? I'm not, but I wonder why we don't go back to the model of segregating students by ability/need. It seems like the trend today is to "mainstream" everyone into a common classroom, so you have high achievers, low ability, as well as genuinely abnormal (mentally retarded, severe behavorial problems, etc.) all together. I see no way that can be effective for any of them because you wil…

So, not a teacher, but I have a lot of close friends who are teachers; this post is mostly informed by what they've told me about their experiences. First, I would say that segregation by ability is common in high school, but uncommon in elementary school. It can go either way in middle school. So, in my mind, your question is mainly asking if increased amounts of differentiated instruction could benefit elementary s…

Apart from everything you said being true, my father is a high school headmaster and he says classes of 35 perform the best. Lower students are pulled ahead and they understand that they have to become independant if they don't want to be rejected. Of course, as you mention, the lowest 5% will have bigger problems than in smaller groups.

Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#96

Post by [deleted] »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #93
Nullabillity wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to level the playing field then giving out devices that are effectively only useful for consuming content is not the way to go.

There's a lot of reasons why the plan didn't work out, but your objection seems more like a knee-jerk anti-Apple catchphrase. An iPad with the proper software (which these obviously did not have) is quite capable of presenting indexed, hyperlinked course material, distributing schedules and assignments, helping students communicate with the teacher and each other, and so forth. If you want to argue that there are bet…

[deleted]

Re: L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum

#97

Post by Nullabillity »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #93
Nullabillity wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to level the playing field then giving out devices that are effectively only useful for consuming content is not the way to go.

There's a lot of reasons why the plan didn't work out, but your objection seems more like a knee-jerk anti-Apple catchphrase. An iPad with the proper software (which these obviously did not have) is quite capable of presenting indexed, hyperlinked course material, distributing schedules and assignments, helping students communicate with the teacher and each other, and so forth. If you want to argue that there are bet…

It's not just about Apple (though they did a lot to start the trend), I'd have the same objection if it was an Android/Windows/whatever tablet.

I suppose it depends on what your goal is. If it is to give people a device to use for reading texts then I suppose it's fine. If you want people to reply, or to provide a level playing field outside of school then what I said still applies.

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