Education officials in the nation’s second-largest school district are working to reboot a $1 billion plan to put an iPad in the hands of each of their 650,000 students after an embarrassing glitch emerged when the first round of tablets went out.
Instead of solving math problems or doing English homework, as administrators envisioned, more than 300 Los Angeles Unified School District students promptly cracked the security settings and started tweeting, posting to Facebook and playing video games.
“‘Temple Run.’ ‘Subway Surfing.’ Oh, and some car racing game I can’t remember the name of,” said freshman Stephany Romero, laughing as she described the games she saw fellow Roosevelt High School students playing in class last week.
That incident, and related problems, had both critics and supporters questioning this week whether LAUSD officials were being hasty or overreaching in their attempt to distribute an iPad to every student and teacher at the district’s more than 1,000 campuses by next year.
Read also:
LA Unified students need iPad keyboards to take state tests (Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles School Districts Take Tampered iPads Away From Students (ABC News)
The real LA schools iPad scandal (ZDNet)
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