LA school district to fix iPad glitch

Sunday, October 6, 2013

LOS ANGELES - 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.

That incident, and related problems, had both critics and supporters questioning this week whether school district 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.

“It doesn’t seem like there was much planning that went into this strategy,” said Renee Hobbs, director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. “That’s where the debacle began.”

It’s crucial, she said, to spend extensive time drawing students into a discussion on using iPads responsibly before handing them out. And, of course, installing a firewall that can’t be easily breached.

Front Section, Pages 7 on 10/06/2013