California teacher Larry Ferlazzo, who blogs for Education Week, has a list of predictions for 2014 that, if they come true, could spell a good year for those who are concerned about the efforts to "reform" and privatize public education.
One of his predictions, however, if it comes true, is not good news for the Joplin R-8 School District.
The district, which spent more than $300,000 to give IPads to all eighth graders this year and has plans to give them to sixth and seventh graders at some point, has not had the problems the Los Angeles School District has had with IPads (though it would not matter if it had since the Joplin Globe would never write anything about it), but LA's problems have education officials re-examining the push toward putting IPads or laptops in the hands of every student. Ferlazzo's prediction:
Thanks to the continuing iPad fiasco in Los Angeles schools, more and more districts will not only move much more slowly to integrate tablets/laptops into the classroom (no more large-scale roll-outs; instead, very small pilots followed by gradual expansion), but Dell’s and Google’s low-cost Chromebooks will dramatically increase in popularity and begin to overtake iPad use in public schools.
I question whether that move toward Google Chromebooks or any Dell product will take place. The words "low cost" cannot be found in Joplin R-8 Administration vocabulary.
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