School iPads to cost nearly $100 more each, revised budget shows

[happyslug]

10. i"includes curriculum from Pearson Education Inc. that is still being developed"????

Now, such educational packages (use to be called "Texts" when we had books) may cost more then the tablets themselves. My problem why can't the school do that themselves? i.e. have the teachers decide what is needed, put it on the PC is and teach the course.

Now, a lot of what is being done in schools today is being driven by the Federal "No child left behind" act, which requires testing and grading of the school based on that testing. Thus a movement to teaching the test as oppose to the subject. This sounds like the major reason for the excess costs, obtaining software that teachers what the school will be tested on. To a degree teachers can do that, in high school you have mostly reading when it comes to English, thus you could opt to install all of Shakespeare's play into the Tablet for students to read, and many other "Classics" that are out of copywriter. Books still under copywriter would be harder, but such books can be obtained with payment of the copywriter fees.

Math in high school (and that includes Statistic, Trigonometry and calculus) have been taught for centuries. Yes, the newer books are geared to calculators and computers as opposed to old fashion graph paper, but that adjustment is NOT that hard to do.

History is a little harder, for most Schools what books that are somewhat up to date, but a good teacher can still teach the subject based on public records. Hard but not impossible,

Languages are another area that has not changed over the last couple of hundred years. Books out of copywriter can be as good as anything more modern

Side note: Any teacher would have to take any book out of copywriter and adjust it to make the school look good under today;s testing rules, but a good group of teachers can do that.

Sorry, the more I read of this project, the more it comes back to the School Board wanting to adopt the latest fad (Ipads) AND maximize the school scores on the various testing system that are in style today. I see little input from teachers and even less from students (Except when such input is in favor of what the administration wants in the first place).