. If you define iOS as essential to education, then by defintion any device not running iOS will be inadequate.

I don't think anyone is saying essential. But the 2013 spec the goal was highly interactive textbook applications and these mainly exist on iOS. That's not arbitrary.

I could define open source software as essential to education, but I would be required to justify such a claim.

The justification in this case were:

a) Interactivity leads to greater enjoyment thus higher literacy and lower refusal to use
b) iPad and Chromebook are used by California testing and thus familiarity with these two devices is a plus.

If you haven't already, you should check out this small startup company called Google. They have actually invested quite a bit of money into tablet software, if that's what's important to you.

As a percentage of the total tablet software, no they haven't invested very much.

You can develop software for any platform whether it's iOS, android, windows, macOS, linux, etc. In fact people have developed software that makes it possible to develop software for all these platforms simultaneously.

I'm not sure that's really true in practice having used cross platform toolkits for 18 years. Certainly not quite that range. But regardless what can happen is not what does happen.

In some organizations that is part of their job to verify that they really mean #2 pencils and understand what #2 means and there is a reason #2 is on the requirement list.

That for example avoids building requirements in such a way that only a single vendor could qualify.

Run iOS software. Which is the OS that's getting the tablet software investment. Chicken and egg perhaps but consequential none the less.

More than that you hire an entire integration team to work under the project manager. LAUSD seems clueless.

Once you have gotten around KNOX the a physical fuze is destroyed and the keys inaccessible. The device is effectively off the secured network for good. Which means the kid is going to immediately caught.

Beyond that it doesn't matter. I would assume the goal is to get access and not get caught since otherwise they could just steal from a store.

The list you are showing is "Third-Party Products: Software Licensing and Hardware Price List". Apple is pretty explicitly acting ad a distributor here and nothing more. I think they can hit Apple up for a problem with the firewall and even then it is likely pushing it. I think the customer either:

a) Needs to hire an integrator
b) Needs to understand what they are buying.

The original proposal were for fully interactive textbooks. Those sorts of things (Grey's elements, interactive Rome, history of Jazz) software exist mostly in the iPad. Also there was some software that could only work on Chromebooks or iPads.

But certainly this could have been done cheaper and not $758 / device if something other than the iPad were picked.

I was just commenting on what procurement does. Having read several articles it appears management changed and the priorities changed. This was change of strategy more than anyone not understanding the strategy.

Anyone buying a zillion ipads for school children without realizing that they'll be using them mostly to screw around on the internet within about five minutes is certainly an idiot;

That's not true. I can put a pretty tight monitoring application on an iPad that doesn't allow it to use any TCP/IP except via. the VPN which only whitelists certain parts of the internet. I'd rather use it on a Samsung where I can kill the device entirely if they try and hack the firmware, but it is still doable for the most part on an Apple. A kid can probably reload firmware and install his own generic OS but I'll know which device fell off pretty quickly, the kid will get caught.

As for Pearson, your description sounds fair. It is hard to bid on government contracts but I've certainly seen them have some very unrealistic implementation strategies.

In 2013 the superintendent was of the "deploy as quickly as possible" and just keep fixing till it works. Sort of an agile mentality of minimal viable product and build. He considered speed essential and was cool with the fact other infrastructure wouldn't be in place in time, this was his top priority. When he left the iPad project had the same schedule but not the institutional juice of being the first priority.

For this number of devices they could have paid for a deployment, training and device management service. Though obviously that sort of thing costs.

FWIW my daughter (central NJ) is in a district. Low boycott rate though parents got worked up about it. Essentially the curriculum being tested doesn't match the curriculum currently being taught. So the test is going to accurately show before and after but for individual students is kind of worthless.

My daughter's school uses tablets. Very simple..

1) Teachers distribute materials via. a Google share system tied to a school based Google docs account
2) Kids submit homework via. this system
3) Some classes the materials are useful in class, when it is they kids can use their own tablets or one of the school's Chromebooks.
3') There are iPads when interface is best used in a casual touch, shared way in place of the Chromebooks.

Works well. Gets used just like it is used in life.

Procurement in many organizations is supposed to verify that management understands what they are buying. Not sure if that's true in LAUSD or not.

There are 2 tablet markets in meaningful numbers.
1) A high end market with iPads acting as a variant on computers.
2) A low end market with Android tablets acting as a variant on televisions + DVRs.

Type (2) doesn't exist meaningfully in the USA, i.e. tablets in the USA are iPads. You want to train students on today's technology, which the original LAUSD superintendent did then iPads are much more desirable. You are absolutely correct the alternatives may be better in all those other ways.