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Here at Bob Jones High School, we have iPad carts at the disposal of the students. At James Clemens High School, some students receive iPads to take home, while Huntsville City Schools students receive laptops.
Until recently, there weren’t many people who questioned whether the decision to give students these tools was a wise decision or not.
That’s when the news focused on Los Angeles, California.
According to MSN news, Los Angeles schools spent $1 billion to give every student in the district an iPad of their own for educational purposes. Some students, though, had their own plans for the iPads.
On the same day they received the iPads, some students took them home and found a simple way around the security settings. This allowed the students to access apps and websites that were normally blocked by the firewall.
Once the school board discovered that students were cracking the security system of the devices, they took the iPads away.
Some students that hadn’t hacked the iPads and did plan on using them for educational purposes found this unfair. The L.A. school board does claim that they plan on giving the iPads back to the students.
Unlike the students in L.A., not everyone at Bob Jones has a personal iPad from the school system, but we do have an iPad lab. Even here, Mrs. Cindy Husky, library media specialist, gets all kinds of problems with students tampering with the iPads’ original security settings.
“Problems that I have to fix a lot on the school iPads [have to do with students] changing the lock screen and wallpaper, setting up personal email accounts, attempting to download Angry Birds, taking photos and videos of themselves, setting up iMessaging (I’ve read some really juicy texts), setting alarms to go off at random times, and changing the restrictions and entering a lock code,” Mrs. Husky explains.
She even stated that some of the iPads had to be completely wiped out to factory settings and re-imaged.
“Kids just need to chill out,” Bob jones junior Connor Cook says.
“If they would just do what they’re supposed to do on these iPads, then maybe we’d all be able to get school-issued iPads of our own. As of right now, administrators probably think that we would do the same thing that the L.A. students did when they got iPads.”
So maybe, in the words of Connor Cook, we students should just “chill out,” and use school technology the way it should be used instead of causing authority to question our maturity with technology.
How will issues like irresponsible use of school-granted technology affect our advancement into technology-centered learning?
How long before students use advanced gadgets for their intended purpose instead of for play?
With new avenues of knowledge at our fingertips, could we lose the opportunity to learn through the use of modern-day technology like the students in L.A.?
