In a perverted sense, this is an opportunity to teach the children a very important lesson: if you're using a machine or network owned and operated by your employer (or, by extension, your school), then you should be scrupulous about only using it for work (or school) business.
Very firm agree. These devices were school owned, and technically "government" owned property. They were not handed out to the students to use however they pleased. They were to be utilized for digital text books, curriculum, and ancillary education resources that were designed by the teachers and administrators of the district.
We locked the devices down so that student's couldn't get to certain kinds of apps, parts of the web, and had to be used with school issued Apple IDs. We (as the school district) were wholly responsible for what the student's did on these school owned devices. It's no different than monitoring what goes on in a school's computer lab, except the iPads are mobile devices.
Take money via taxes, and give it back in the form of laptops - oh but now there's strings attached.
That something is 'government owned' is no excuse for such a disgusting violation of privacy. Services paid by taxes should serve, not act as means to control people.
> We (as the school district) were wholly responsible for what the student's did on these school owned devices.
Why?? By what legal theory?? If person A gives item X to person B, why would A be responsible for what B does with X? Maybe if B was a minor and did not get parental consent - but that was not the case, was it?
School administration operates under a not unjustified terror of having their careers ruined if anyone successfully accuses them of "letting something happen", whether it would have been reasonable that they stop it or not. Where "something" is usually bullying, any sex stuff, or self harm or suicide.
If you assume that for every decision they make the #1 concern is to make it as difficult as possible to personally blame them for anything, that'll be a good guide to understanding their behavior.
Why should we just give public schools a pass for providing kids with email addresses and other adult technologies that have no real educational value?
Giving devices to kids is not saving on educational costs, and it's not making their backpacks any lighter. Books don't require tech support lines, chat bots, or surveillance tech to keep it all humming smoothly.
But worse of all, it's totally outside the proper purview of our education systems. Public schools don't implement, monitor, and protect a new mailbox on every student's property just for school-related mail delivery. Why should they be giving kids email addresses and expecting them to use those addresses?
School-issued Apple IDs? I cannot be the only one who reads that with extreme disgust and concern.
Books? Who uses books anymore? My kids have had laptops for school since the 2nd grade, they are in 5th and 8th grade now. Syllabus & courses, homework, communication, research all on their laptops. Everything is interactive, videos and classroom lectures recorded. No paper, they never miss a thing, can move ahead in assignments or review old.
That is so unbelievably disgusting. This kind of abusive invasion of privacy should be a crime.