Apple ordered to pay $4.2 million for botched iPad program in LA


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The LA Unified School District (LAUSD) will receive a settlement worth $4.2 million from Apple for the ill-fated program that aimed to put an iPad in the hands of 640,000 students in the city. Cupertino was supposed to earn $30 million from the $1.3 billion project, but it was apparently riddled with issues from the beginning. It didn't take long for the initiative to crumble, and LAUSD -- accused of mismanagement, miscalculation and corruption among other things -- is now under FBI investigation for the bidding process that spawned the contract.

Lenovo, the other tech company involved in the project aside from Apple, agreed to let the district have the $2.2 million worth of laptops it recently ordered for free. LAUSD will also get $6.4 million (it's still a tentative amount, though) from education software maker Pearson, which was contracted to conjure up math and English curriculum to use with the project. The district says the software company only ever provided a partial curriculum. While the FBI investigation still isn't done, LAUSD plans to use most of the money from the settlement to buy computers for a completely different initiative.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/30/apple-la-ipad-education-settlement/

 

 

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I know of a few private schools in the LA area that also tried an "iPad for every student" program. And it just didn't work out for a multitude of reasons.

MSFT should let school districts try Surface 3(s) free for 6 months.

I already said Apple and Enterprise LOL, but it applies to education environments as well. They're great consumer products but sadly fail at large scale deployment.

"mismanagement, miscalculation and corruption", sounds about right, but you can also call it hype and if you fall for it without doing proper research, you have yourself to blame as well.

LAUSD will also get $6.4 million (it's still a tentative amount, though) from education software maker Pearson, which was contracted to conjure up math and English curriculum to use with the project.

Well, until they fix the curriculum and materials, I don't think throwing any number or type of tablets at them is going to solve any problems.

It's LA, so what would one expect? LA City Public Works and DWP makes CalTrans look efficient.

The race between LA (city mostly, but county as well), San Francisco, Sacramento and New York (state as a whole) is a very close call regarding ultimate ineptitude.

 

 

Well, until they fix the curriculum and materials, I don't think throwing any number or type of tablets at them is going to solve any problems.

Funny you say that.

We live in an adjacent county, but the first thing the teacher says to the class is "Buenas Dias", then "Good Morning".
Almost every AD I get served in web sites is in Mexican.
And I just bought my lunch from "Yak in da box", not Jack in the Box.

Throwing tablets and PC's won't fix the curriculum at all. And, there's been recent evidence showing that tech might actually regress learning.

Funny you say that.

We live in an adjacent county, but the first thing the teacher says to the class is "Buenas Dias", then "Good Morning".
Almost every AD I get served in web sites is in Mexican.
And I just bought my lunch from "Yak in da box", not Jack in the Box.

Throwing tablets and PC's won't fix the curriculum at all. And, there's been recent evidence showing that tech might actually regress learning.

Almost every AD you get served in web sites is in Mexican?  Never knew Mexican was a language.  I knew it was a type of food but never know about the Mexican language.

And what does Spanish being the second most spoken language in this country have to do with anything?

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