iPad 1:1 Plan Fails on a Billion Dollar Scale With Bonus Points for Possible Fraud

[SYNACK]

Supt. Deasy's early and avid support of iPads under intense scrutiny - LA Times

 

Why does this sound so familiar, management goes off to talk to Apple people and come back thinking Apple is the only answer, an 'impartial' procurement is launched to get iPads then the whole thing falls apart as the back end stuff has been poorly considered.

 

This article raises a bunch of really concerning stuff such as the guy in charge making promo videos for iPads in education before the project even started along with trips to see both Apple and Pearsons CEOs beforehand.

 

Stuff this article glosses over are the infrastructure issues, this is the same place where there were leaks about the iPads crushing the internet links with their ridiculous phone home behaviour and noisy network protocols. There was also the issue of the filtering being defeated by two clicks on the iPads leading these 1:1 devices use to be banned outside of school.

 

Currently the whole thing is being investigated and the project has been put on hold standing at several hundred million over budget already with further purchases of USD$768 iPads suspended.

 

I'm glad our little run in with iPads was on a much smaller scale even if it did follow a very similar pattern.

Edited September 4, 2014 by SYNACK

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Do any of you have iPads and like them?

 

We only ever seem to hear "We have iPads... I hate them... they're a nightmare... the kids hardly use them... the head made me" etc.

[Earthling]

Do any of you have iPads and like them?

 

We only ever seem to hear "We have iPads... I hate them... they're a nightmare... the kids hardly use them... the head made me" etc.

 

A year ago, I was in the middle of an evaluation of 10" and 7" tablets, iPad and Android and I was about to buy a Surface when I was phoned out of the blue by the HT and told to get 16 iPads, cabinet, MacBook and all the other stuff. Approximately £9,000.

 

I bought them, no one knew then (or knows now) what to do with them. They have to stay in one room in one block, because we don't have school-wide WiFi. We don't have, nor do we intend to have, a Volume Purchase Plan with Apple for apps, so I was given a £25 iTunes voucher to buy some apps, if we couldn't find free ones to do the things that we didn't know we wanted to do.

 

I've given up trying to keep them secure and in some sort of order. The staff all have access to the cabinet, so they help themselves to an iPad 'for the weekend', and then, of course, have to be chased up-hill and down-dale to return them after the 'weekend'.

[Bompalompalomp]

I've given up trying to keep them secure and in some sort of order. The staff all have access to the cabinet, so they help themselves to an iPad 'for the weekend', and then, of course, have to be chased up-hill and down-dale to return them after the 'weekend'.

 

That kind of selfish thinking would make me threaten charges, regardless of when they return it. Padlock it or slap a webcam in view of the cabinet and see who picks one up after work or never returns one the same day.

[zag]

Ipads work best as a 1:1 device with no restrictions.

 

I really don't get why people are trying to shoe horn them into anything else.

 

EDIT: Also have they ever heard of transparent proxies??

Edited September 4, 2014 by zag

[SYNACK]

EDIT: Also have they ever heard of transparent proxies??

 

Doesn't help with unique and reoccurring per app, per device update and authentication traffic. That was one of the issues, not just the amount of bandwidth but the shear amount of packets were flooding their network gear. Bonjour screaming at the top of its lungs would not have helped either and so they needed to segment down their wireless and Ethernet broadcast domains, put in bonjour proxying and traffic shape or block hits to certain locations if I recall. You need a rather high end bit of equipment to deal with the nattering of 10k devices let alone 10k ipads all trying to phone home.

 

Your average transparent proxy would need many cpus and stacks of ram along with multiple NICs to deal with that kind of traffic in a timely fashion along with causing trouble with https, the main source of the troublesome traffic.

Edited September 4, 2014 by SYNACK

[Blue_Cookeh]

We've only got about 35 iPads in our small school at the moment and both I (and the teachers) love them and will probably continue purchasing more. They're truly set and forget from my point of view, using Meraki MDM. I have them on their own SSID and VLAN to use a transparent proxy and let the teachers manage the applications on them (I just manage the credit on the account etc).

 

These aren't on a 1:1 basis, they're just handed out willy nilly to classes. They understand that work is stored on the device and is only accessible from that one device, so I think they tend to get the kids to pick up the same number (on the asset tag) each time. If they want to get work off the device I've set generic email addresses up for each iPad with transport rules to only allow emails sent internally.

 

From an educational standpoint, they're taking them outside into our pond areas and all sorts to capture/edit photos and videos using storyboard apps and probably more I don't know about. We're using Griffin Survivor cases on iPad Minis which have stood up to even the reception class!

 

I'm looking into a couple of Apple TVs for our projectors now for easy presenting, which (surprisingly) was an idea the teachers came up with.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Blue_Cookeh

[Alkaline]

Everything to do with Apple is a nightmare in terms of networking. If it works its ok, but I can't see the point in education. More money, more time, more hassle. Why have one mac room, when you can have two standard room. If I had my way they would be ripped out of my place, but the people above want them because they look nice in pictures. Edited September 4, 2014 by Alkaline

[Jasbo]

We have 3 class room sets of iPads that are booked out and used all day everyday and managed by a resource department who make sure they are back each day and charged.

 

We handle all app requests and updates, we restrict as best we can and re image to fix issues.

 

Staff have lots of education/department specific apps on them, I'm happy with them and so are staff.

 

We also have a scheme for staff to get a cheap iPad if they sign up to bringing it in each day, 80% ish of teachers now own one. We actively monitor then using meraki and provide and support a number of services to support them in classroom use, emerge, foldr, mobile print, air server, email, one drive, Remote Desktop etc

 

They seen to find these very useful and a good service and I am happy with supporting it, the school spent a Lot of time looking at one to one and we are not Planning to introduce, but we are looking at introducing byod to support student devices for those that wish to bring them in to support their studies - the tech is ready but everything else is going to take a lot

of planning.

 

Overall, I'm happy with where we are, the school has listened to our advice and invested making a part time tech post a full time technician role so that they largely handle all mobile device / service issues as well as our other mac kit for the media dept, they have provided some funds to also improve on infrastructure and services, origins of these schemes have developed over 2 years, but i still think things are developing all the time but that we are working hard in trying to introduce and support this stuff to enhance the it services available to teachers and students, which is what my job is supposed to be about I think

 

So In answer to the does anyone actually like this stuff, err yes, I do actually - spent time looking at android, windows, chrome and for us ios/ iPads seems to work okay.

 

Sure there's stuff I don't think is great, quirks, learning curves etc but by and large it mostly works most of the time, like most of my other windows stuff.

[SYNACK]

Overall, I'm happy with where we are, the school has listened to our advice and invested making a part time tech post a full time technician role so that they largely handle all mobile device / service issues as well as our other mac kit for the media dept, they have provided some funds to also improve on infrastructure and services, origins of these schemes have developed over 2 years, but i still think things are developing all the time but that we are working hard in trying to introduce and support this stuff to enhance the it services available to teachers and students, which is what my job is supposed to be about I think

 

 

There in lies the difference, ongoing consultation and funding of them rather than the hook , line and sinker approach that many get landed with after a shiny Apple seminar in disguise comes to town selling magic beans.

[Arthur]

There was also the issue of the filtering being defeated by two clicks on the iPads leading these 1:1 devices use to be banned outside of school.

Apparently removing MDM profiles is classed as programming now.

 

Students at three LAUSD high schools access unauthorized sites on new iPads

 

Ron Chandler, the district’s Chief Information Officer, said tech-savvy students used their programming skills to alter settings and delete files, giving them access to sites like Facebook and YouTube. However, software embedded in the iPads immediately locked down the devices and alerted officials that they’d been tampered with.

 

“We knew immediately what had happened,” Chandler said.

 

[...]

 

Chandler said some of the students told administrators they had bypassed the security measures because they were unable to access websites they needed for their studies. The district is testing various “filtering systems,” and one apparently had such narrow parameters that even the most innocuous sites were blocked.

 

Those are the types of glitches that will be worked out as the district moves forward with its technology project, Chandler said.

 

It's easy to see why students wanted to remove the restrictions...

 

www.speirs.org/blog/2013/10/1/battle-los-angeles.html

 

... an iPad that's locked down to Pearson curriculum content is probably the saddest of all iPads. The very act of giving out an iPad for "education only" purposes generates exactly the pressures that lead to breaches like this.

 

Imagine you're 14 and, one summer, you hear on the news that you're getting iPads when you go back to school. You go back, are handed an iPad, and then they tell you that you can't browse the web, can't use it for personal projects and all you can do with it is look at Pearson apps.

 

Total heartbreak.

 

If that was me, I think I would prefer that I had never had my hopes raised at all than to be presented with an iPad that, in the words of LA students quoted in the news "you can't do anything with them".

[hardtailstar]

We have three in our school (small school) used for year groups, One has been kept in a teachers cupboard and the other two will not work on the MDM we had set up through our support company.

 

Even replaced Ipads do not seem to work.

[CamelMan]

We have 3 cabinets of 15 and a set of 15 out for teachers use - locked down as much as we can.

As far as I can see:

Teachers take home - very rarely seen again on site.

Students use in classroom to take pictures of themselves on and play little games / internet use

Teachers like using them as a "go on the web and do research" lesson

 

I havent seen a massive educational improvement since introducing them 2 years ago. As internet use in areas without machines that is a big improvement (but not due to the fact its an IPad) but havent seen anything to convince me that the investment was worthwhile, especially as we could have provided alternatives.

 

We - like many schools - were pulled into it by the old Head who basically had to bring IPads in without any idea or strategic plan of how they were to be used. "Basically heres the solution - now go and find the problem"

[sonofsanta]

...Deasy presented his technology plan to an independent panel that reviews how voter-approved school bonds are spent. He wanted the group's endorsement because he planned to pay for the devices with school construction bonds.

 

But the panel members expressed concerns. Should the district use bonds paid back over 25 years to purchase devices with an expected life span of about three years?

 

I've heard of some inadvisable finance packages in schools in the past - even cleaned up the mess afterwards - but that's pretty phenomenally short sighted, to still be paying for iPads in 2027 (the discussion mentioned above was Nov. 2012). By that point I expect us to have passed the singularity and to live our lives as free-floating webs of electrons coursing throughout a networked world, freed from the shackles of our corporeal bodies. Except in LA, where kids would be sat on an iPad looking only at Pearson apps still. No singularity for you, peasant!

[Meldrew]

We've only got about 35 iPads in our small school at the moment and both I (and the teachers) love them and will probably continue purchasing more. They're truly set and forget from my point of view, using Meraki MDM. I have them on their own SSID and VLAN to use a transparent proxy and let the teachers manage the applications on them (I just manage the credit on the account etc).

 

These aren't on a 1:1 basis, they're just handed out willy nilly to classes. They understand that work is stored on the device and is only accessible from that one device, so I think they tend to get the kids to pick up the same number (on the asset tag) each time. If they want to get work off the device I've set generic email addresses up for each iPad with transport rules to only allow emails sent internally.

 

From an educational standpoint, they're taking them outside into our pond areas and all sorts to capture/edit photos and videos using storyboard apps and probably more I don't know about. We're using Griffin Survivor cases on iPad Minis which have stood up to even the reception class!

 

I'm looking into a couple of Apple TVs for our projectors now for easy presenting, which (surprisingly) was an idea the teachers came up with.

 

I think being primary is part of why it works. Secondary where you are fighting vandalism malicious use, etc is a way different environment. Generally primary school students appear to respect equipment (and people).

 

Meldrew.

[Dos_Box]

I think being primary is part of why it works. Secondary where you are fighting vandalism malicious use, etc is a way different environment. Generally primary school students appear to respect equipment (and people).

 

Meldrew.

 

I suppose that could be another tick in the box for BYOD schemes. No one is going to trash their own device. Well, some pupils excepted.

[Dos_Box]

I also note that given the price of iPads, had Android tablet been chosen then the price would have dropped considerably from the inception of the program if they had stipulated that the scheme would have current pricing per year of implementation. A Nexus 7 per student would have been far, far cheaper.

And ace!

[Lewys]

On the whole, teachers here are happy with iPads and we have found that since the introduction of iPads fewer people are reporting errors on PC’s as they are now used much less.

 

For example, most of our academic staff use their iPad to register their classes. So SIMS on the PC has mostly become redundant for this purpose.

 

Teachers are 1:1 and we have 4 sets of 30 for students.

 

The classroom sets were assigned to certain departments that bid for them and I believe that every single department put their own bid in, so there was a fair amount of demand.

 

They are locked and during the holiday’s I go around and re-image, update or install any new apps that may have been requested. They are restricted so students cannot just install any app and we have VPP setup to allow us to purchases app licenses. Using Apple Configurator is incredibly quick and easy to use.

 

Staff more or less manage their own iPads, we originally setup departmental Apple ID’s but we found this didn’t really work and instead staff have setup their own school Apple ID and use this instead of a shared one.

 

Can’t say we have had much in the way of problems.

 

Teachers like that they can book a set of iPads for students to quickly be able to do some research in lesson, without having to shift the classroom to an IT suite for the entire lesson.

 

We have had no vandalism or malicious use on the student iPads. I don’t think a single one has been broken in the 12 months they’ve been in place.

Around 10% of the original iPads we gave out to staff have since been broken. But they’ve had them 3 years now, so I do not consider it that bad.

[SYNACK]

Using Apple Configurator is incredibly quick and easy to use.

 

Wow, buy a lottery ticket, the amount of issues configurator and profile manager can cause are immense, you have been very lucky.

[mthomas08]

Do any of you have iPads and like them?

 

We only ever seem to hear "We have iPads... I hate them... they're a nightmare... the kids hardly use them... the head made me" etc.

 

I have an iPad at home and an Android Tablet. The only real difference to me is the fact that one App I use a lot which is Android only. THATS IT.

 

Said it once, say again if you choose to go iPads just "because" you need a wake up call in your job. Our job is to evaluate what the Students and Staff will be using those devices for. If they INTERNET heavy then all you need is a device that can handle browsing all your daily sites. Which is usually anything above the very basic spec Tablet costing £120.

 

Schools were very very quick to go down the Tablet route in the assumption it would fix all the problems they had with Laptops/PCs. We are aiming for Android Tablets this September, Staff have been using them for the last 8 weeks and only one issue so far (our wireless related).

 

Once Students begin using them next week it will be good to see how it all goes. We didn't switch to Tablets lightly, it was a big discussion going on for the last 18 months and a lot of questions were asked.

 

"And several board members said they should have asked tougher questions early on"

Prime example of what's wrong, we knew exactly what was going to happen in switching to Tablets, we knew exactly the Software we will lack from Netbooks (windows).

[Meldrew]

...Can’t say we have had much in the way of problems.

 

Teachers like that they can book a set of iPads for students to quickly be able to do some research in lesson, without having to shift the classroom to an IT suite for the entire lesson.

 

We have had no vandalism or malicious use on the student iPads. I don’t think a single one has been broken in the 12 months they’ve been in place.

Around 10% of the original iPads we gave out to staff have since been broken. But they’ve had them 3 years now, so I do not consider it that bad.

@Lewys, do you not have students setting passcodes, messing up wireless settings, putting into aeroplane mode, etc etc etc, all making the iPad unusable for the next student? The classroom discipline by teachers must be out of this world!

 

Meldrew

[Lewys]

I've had a few, (less than 10 in the last year) passcodes set on them to date (out of 120). Just plug them into Apple Config and bam! the passcode is removed.

 

Occasionally have students putting the iPad onto our 'Student WiFi' SSID but I've set the iPads up to work just fine on that too; so we don't have a problem with that. All the WIFI authentication/certs are setup in Apple Config and are then installed on the device when I supervise them. I guess we are fortunate enough to not have many rogue SSIDs around here.

 

Staff and students alike are savvy enough to deal with Airplane mode; I've certainly never had an iPad across my desk for that reason.

[Arthur]

Currently the whole thing is being investigated and the project has been put on hold standing at several hundred million over budget already with further purchases of USD$768 iPads suspended.

The deal is off now!

 

LAUSD officially ends 'iPads-for-all' contract with Apple

 

As of today, LAUSD has scrapped a landmark iPad in education initiative meant to provide Apple's tablet to students and educators within the district's schools, reports the Los Angeles Times. The decision announced on Tuesday was supposedly unrelated to a surprise FBI seizure of 20 boxes of documents from LAUSD's headquarters on Monday.

 

"We're not going to use the original iPad contract anymore," Cortines said. "I think there have been too many innuendos, rumors, etc., and based on my reading of a great deal of material over Thanksgiving, I came to this conclusion. As CEO and steward of a billion-dollar operation, I have to make sure things are done properly so they are not questioned."

 

LAUSD, with uncontested Board of Education approval, first inked a $30 million agreement with Apple last June as the initial phase in what would become an ambitious $1.3 billion rollout. The district subsequently earmarked $115 million for additional supply as the project grew beyond 47 seed campuses.

 

Since initial funding came from voter-approved bonds, "iPad-for-all" was controversial from the start. Further confusing issues was mismanagement and a nebulous funding plan devised in part by former schools Superintendent John Deasy, who championed the iPad initiative as a civil rights issue. Also in question was the bidding process and ongoing budget issues, the latter stemming from a misunderstanding of Apple's bulk purchase discount terms. Facing criticism, Deasy resigned in October.

 

Other issues with the program included a security breach in which students found a way to bypass school-imposed content filters, prompting LAUSD to halt home use of the tablets.

 

As noted in today's report, Cortines' decision will delay 27 schools from receiving iPads already approved last year. As an option, the campuses can swap out iPads for Google's Chromebook under a separate deal authorized by the board in June.

 

Some schools will end up with Chromebooks however.

[tmcd35]

Apple are a consumer company, they build consumer products. Using them on an enterprise network will always be fraught with problems. That's not to say it's a bad thing, just you should accept and know that before you jump in. Like all products, Apple have their place.

 

The ideal of 1:1 devices and tablet computing is not synonymous with iPad. I think people get into this kind of trouble because they mistakenly believe it is. What Apple do have is the App Store, which quiet frankly outclasses anything similar on other platforms in terms of overall app quality and availability. That said, LearnPads (LearnPad - Simple Classroom Tablet Solutions) are a really interesting alternative and far easier to manage in the right environment.

 

I think a combination of BYOD and a healthy mixture of school provided devices is the ultimate solution. It's what I'm promoting here. SEN are looking towards Intel Classmate style devices, possibly with Windows 8. Likewise, PE staff are looking at getting Intel based Windows 8 tablets with keyboards. General use IT suites are being phased out for mobile trolleys of laptops. They will eventually give way to Windows 8 Tablets. A trolley of iPads looks useful for creative subjects to use iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband on. Music will probably switch to Mac Mini's on the next refresh.

 

Still can't see the attraction of Chromebooks though...

[mthomas08]

Some schools will end up with Chromebooks however.

 

What you mean something that doesn't cost as much but does almost exactly the same?