Charleston Students to Get iPads

The Charleston County School Board gave unanimous consent Monday to give every student in two schools iPads this fall in an effort to study whether it’s a cost-effective and worthwhile investment to do the same for every student in the district.

Only one school board member, Mary Ann Taylor, initially voiced opposition to the district’s proposal, but she ultimately voted in favor of it because she said it seemed like a good idea. School board member Toya Green was absent.

“We believe that the investment will come back many-fold in terms of the ability of our children to accelerate their achievement and be prepared in a digital-driven world, which demands the ability to interact with technology,” said Mike Bobby, the district’s chief financial officer.

The Post and Courier

What we are learning today is that the Charleston County School Board is an assembly of the collectively stupid.  Why does it seem like so few people with at least a few ounces of common sense and an allergy to naivete get elected to government?

I work in IT for a company that has over 50,000 employees around the world.  We issue company owned laptops to thousands of these employees.  These are professional people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, many of whom are making six figure salaries.  When these people leave the company or we upgrade their laptop and get their old one back, they come back scratched, beat up, and filthy.  Do you know why that is?  The reason is because the user doesn’t own the equipment and therefore they are not conscious of taking care of it.  Now if middle aged professionals can’t be relied upon to appropriately take care of their company issued equipment, how in the hell can a bunch of 13 year old kids be expected to care for an iPad which is far more delicate?  If I was a resident of Charleston County I would be furious right now.

These kids are going to be breaking these things left and right.  They are going to be downloading inappropriate content to them increasing the cost of IT support to the district.  Furthermore, since a yet to be named high poverty school is going to be given priority for receiving these, rest assured that you’re going to finding several at the local pawn shop, having been sold off for drug money.

If the school board feels that iPads are such a useful tool for education then they ought to purchase a set amount of devices that are to be left at the school and only used under the supervision of the teacher in the classroom.  Of course, what can an iPad do that the school computer labs already can’t?  Being that the school district is facing a $9 million deficit next year, is this really the appropriate use of district money?

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