[IAEP] Los Angeles ditching Apple/Pearson iPad program

[Caryl Bigenho]

Wow!
Thanks for gathering this all into one place Sean. My family has long-term ties to LAUSD as both teachers and students for 3 generations so we are always interested in what is happening there. 
When I was still working there I received several technology grants and I can tell you that the bidding and purchase problems have been going on for at least 30 years! When we had grant monies to spend we were given a list of approved devices and vendors we could use. If we wanted something else, the bidding process was rigged in such a way that sometimes funds were lost because they delayed too long in approving an order. If an item wasn't delivered by a certain date, the money went back to the state!
There was a time when Apple was not on the approved list… you had to buy only IBM! Then, suddenly Apple managed to sell the district thousands of the Apple iic+ (which were about to be discontinued... a practice Apple also used when selling about to be discontinued models to teachers at an "educator's discount").  
Those iic-pluses had what everyone called a "Chiclet" keyboard, and the keys popped off very easily. At most schools they were installed in the typing room, replacing typewriters. Classes in "keyboarding" (instead of "typing" were offered). Bored students soon discovered that the keys could be popped off and, before long, most of the machines became pretty useless.
Caryl



From: sdaly.be at gmail.com
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 14:39:02 +0200
To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org; marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: [IAEP] Los Angeles ditching Apple/Pearson iPad program

A large-scale ($1.3 billion budget for iPads, pearson software, wifi infrastructure, target 650K students) education ICT project started in 2013 and meant to eliminate the digital divide which has gone awry. The superintendent resigned and is under FBI and SEC investigation for corrupt bidding process, although the board stated they did not believe there was wrongdoing, only mismanagement.

Only 5% of the students (in 2 of the 69 schools) are able to use the Pearson software on an iPad.

Interestingly, it seems many of the problems were related to wifi/networking infrastructure (see last link for gory details).

Sean.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-refund-20150415-story.html
http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/15/51027/lausd-ipad-program-ditching-pearson-software-reque/
http://www.laweekly.com/news/lausd-chief-john-deasy-resigns-5152268
http://www.pearsoned.com/news/pearson-lausd-statement/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/27/343549939/the-l-a-school-ipad-scandal-what-you-need-to-know
http://laschoolreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Instructional-Technology-Initative-Pearson-Update.pdf



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