iPads in education: Where's the money coming from?
When San Diego public school officials decided to distribute 26,000 iPads to students this year, they were lucky: They already had a big pile of money.
The city’s voters had approved a $2 billion bond issue in 2008—$500 million of which was designated for a five-year “digital transformation program” designed to update the district’s curriculum. San Diego schools started distributing inexpensive netbooks to students in 2009; the next year Apple unveiled the iPad. And school officials soon changed direction, believing that tablets were a better educational tool.
“We were writing a five-year plan,” says Darryl LaGace, who was the district’s director of instructional technology when the bond passed. He told officials: “I fully expect what we write out in year one won’t look like what we’re doing in year three, four, five.”
The result is that San Diego was financially well-prepared to join the wave of schools around the nation that are placing iPads in the classroom. Districts in Chicago, Texas, and Massachusetts have all earned headlines as they move to iPad-based education.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2012812/ipads-in-education-wheres-the-money-coming-from.html
