What is Digg?103 Comments
- benitojuarez, on 10/14/2007, -1/+56this is a waste of taxpayer money. i dont care if its a ipod, zen, sansa, zune, whatever. Use that money for new textbooks or computers. I mean seriously, giving the "poorest school system" poratable devices that can be easily stolen?
- grapesofbaath, on 10/14/2007, -1/+32They are using them for English second language learning, which is among the more legitimate uses of a portable audio advice. But it's still a dumb, wasteful idea. Why pay 250 dollars per child, when you can buy a portable cd player for them for 20 dollars? Oh right, the coolness factor of iPods.
- saltywings, on 10/14/2007, -1/+30Ok.. so the people who actually can afford ipod's can't even use them, but the people who can't are given one for free and encouraged to use them??? I will never understand the logic to some things in life...
- BrutusCirrus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+22$130,000 = 300 iPods?
- MicroBerto, on 10/11/2007, -2/+21...or pay teachers something more than dick so that you can attract some talent into the bad areas. A good textbook means nothing if you have an idiot teaching the class.
- yoda17, on 10/11/2007, -4/+19generic mp3 from Fry's - $4
iPod - $120
Government fraud and graft? - priceless - Bkaufman, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15We could pay good teachers more, but teachers unions want tenure pay, not incentive. One of the main reasons that our education system is going to *****.
- zdiggler, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13I was ESL student before. Listening to radio and books didn't help me at all.. What helps me was watching shows with closed captions.
- RadicalEdward, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9get the kids a damn shuffle or something.
300 shuffles(79): 24k
300 nanos (149):45k
300 Touchs(399) :119k
plus tax - rnwen2750, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Old news if it was just saying that they were being used in the world. This is news b/c it is happening in a new place.
- NeoCortex, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6“You have kids who never said a word in English, and now they’re singing Black Eyed Peas."
Yeah, this is the quality of English I want to deal with when these children are out in the work force. - Vicujozobenaxod, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6WOW! Talk about corporations getting programs to penetrate schools. What's next? Wiis?
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+51) Get Into a Position of Authority in the Public School System
2) Buy Apple Stock
3) Convince yourself that wasting tax payer dollars on the most retarded idea ever will make your stock go up
4) ???
5) Profit - ToadLeg, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7Why are they wasting 10x as much money as they need to? There are plenty of portable media devices that cost less than $50. Did Apple lobby for this, or was the school board clueless and thought that Ipod was the only kind of portable media device?
- Bkaufman, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Teachers are now mainly failures in other professions who fall back on teaching as an easy job, which was not the case 100 years ago. You can tell the ones who actually wanted to be teachers because they CARE about the job and hence should be paid more than the ones who are just trying to collect the decent paycheck.
- m00nmaster, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5"...sharpen their vocabulary and grammar by singing along to popular songs."
Are...you...serious? What grammar can they learn from popular music? Vocabulary, yes. Words like crunk and pimp. Far ranging vocabulary words for them. - NeoCortex, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5At least they'll be able to listen to some great music while reading about Reagan's current policy towards the Soviet Union.
- TjLAXattack, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4This same guy is wondering why US Election 08 coverage is news, considering other countries already had elections.
- theblooms, on 10/14/2007, -1/+5Sorry, but teachers not making a good salary is a MYTH. They only work 9 months out of the year, and their benefits are INSANELY good. They even qualify for ultra good terms on loans and such through TIAA-CREF and other lenders.
Take all that into consideration (especially the 3 month vacation they get) and teachers actually make MORE than nurses, plumbers and even Chemists!
What you need to do is break the ***** union that keeps BAD teachers in place. If you suck, you should be able to be fired, period. But the union says no, so we have ***** teachers all over the place, and the kids are suffering. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"In one recent class, eighth-grade students mouthed the words to the rock song “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s as they played the tune on the iPods over and over again. The braver ones sang out loud."
Uhh....>.> - SirRX7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I was from Perth Amboy and I can Guarantee that a huge portion of those ipods will be jacked almost as soon as they're unboxed. I can see a use in them since my 4th grader uses his ipod to study his spelling words but realistically every kid is going to use the ipod for music.
- dafragsta, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Setting aside the notion that this is a terrible waste of money, why would they need to spend $400 on an iPod? My 80GB 5.5 generation was $349. There are tiered entrypoints into the iPod line. Why do they need the absolute most expensive one?
- kingkilr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Math is hard :(
- codyfrisch, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5That and the fact that our school system is controlled by the federal government instead of locals. They want that tiny bit of federal money and all the strings that come with it. Shut down the U.S. Department of Education, cut our taxes, and let the states make up the budget difference (either through more wise spending or increased taxes at the state level) and then fix the damn problems. And get the unions out of it, I've seen the unions fight for the dumbest programs. On top of it as you said, they want pay not based on incentive.
Oh yeah, they need to make Atlas Shrugged mandatory reading everywhere. - natedouglas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3He also ***** hated school, specifically the pencil-and-paper parts of it.
- edzilla, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4You can get a audio player for a 10th of the price of an ipod. WITH a video screen, however useless that is.
- kingkilr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Heh, when I was learning German watching stuff with closed caption didn't help at all(I use closed captions when watching in English though).
- Mac101, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3You didn't even bother to read the article didn't you? Well that's OK, ignorance is bliss to your type. The iPods are assigned by the teacher and are only used in class and stay in class. At the beginning of class the teacher hands out iPods with English music already in it, at the end of class they return them to the teacher. ignorance and laziness these days.
- CraigCarlyle, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2My history teacher converts all his Keynote presentations into .mp4 and puts them on the school's student portal so students can watch/listen to them on their iPods on the bus or on the way to school. Pretty helpful on the days leading up to tests.
- chicagodj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Again... a school doesn't pay TAX
- gl77, on 03/31/2008, -4/+6sounds about right, overpriced crap. should have ordered some fake ipods from ebay. look identical and do the same thing for half the price. some are even better than the ipod (waiting for flaming fanboys to digg me down)
- BlackJackJester, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4This guy wins at truth.
- sexybobo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3no but there are much cheaper mp3 players with video screen on them than ipods. For 50-60 dollars you can find mp4 video players if you buy $130000 worth of them i bet you could get them for $30 or less. But like grapesofbaath said they are getting ipods because they are cool. it is a complete waste of tax payers money. Also if you are needing to watch a video for school especially science classes the video on an ipod will not work. they need large screens so you can see the details.
The only use full item an ipod has is as a personal audio player and you can 1gig mp3 players that can do that for $6 dollars or cheap portable cd players for $2-$3 - ultra80, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Actually, the school district I teach in has several elementary age PE programs that use Playstation 1s or something with a floor pad. The kids do those track games / DDR type stuff. So, I fully expect the Wii to make inroads into PE classes at some point.
- sm4k, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3There was an American History teacher near me that won teacher of the year (I'm not sure from who) but one of the primary reasons was because he would make 'studycasts' and give them to his students so they could listen to it on their ipods. I'm not sure what he did for students who didn't have ipods, likely burned them on CD for them.
- ultra80, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2no kidding. In a rare moment of lustful kindness I offered to buy my girlfriend's Organic Chemistry textbook. Wow. $175.00 later....
- ultra80, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2As a coda to my previous post, I do have to give some (perhaps much) credence to the idea that this is a poor use of tax dollars. Besides paying a premium for the cool factor of an ipod, http://tech.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documenti ... takes the contrarian view on technology in education and makes some valid observations.
Also I realize that every student will learn differently, but, in my opinion, the passive act of listening is substandard compared to the interactive experience where a student can have a give AND take with human feedback. - TjLAXattack, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Terrible point. He isn't insulting Apple, relax.
- fasda, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Quick question hasn't tenure always been apart of the educational systems of the country so wouldn't something new have to occur to cause a new decline
- Macskeeball, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2http://www.bugmenot.com
- natedouglas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The same people bitching apparently don't remember how much textbooks cost in college.
- MageLordy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2yeah! shoutout to my town - south brunswick.
of course, i never got to use those ipods cause that was for what...ap french 5? and ap spanish 5? waste of department money. especially since spanish 4 was given ***** books that were like 15 years old - arjie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They only needed that so that they could sing along to songs from another language?! See, I know technology's great and all, but in school we used to sing songs in another language with other people. The teachers knew the songs. They don't have to be music teachers and stuff, after all the importance is on learning the language not the songs.
- leoedin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I'm pretty sure that tax will not be paid on the purchase (schools being not-for-profit state owned bodies and all). So, $433/ipod???!!!!???
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1That sounds awful.
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Ever had someone ask if your other-company-than-apple media player is an ipod? Then you explain that it works like a hard drive when you plug it in and is easier to use than an ipod but kinda runs like one and they STILL don't get it, but understand you when you tell them it's "an ipod made by a different company"?
The district knows about as much about technology as my grandmother. (of whom i've fixed her 3-in-1 remote three times so far) - zdiggler, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1some show on univision got English captions now.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Then how do you get from having some insane theory about the stock market to making money?
- TheGuruStud, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Why are they wasting money on Ipods? Sansas are cheaper, tougher and better functioning. Hail to your marketing overlords (and dumb ***** "leaders").
- MacintoshSauce, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I am a Social Science teacher and I think this has got to be the most bloody stupid idea ever. I have to constantly deal with students thinking its OK to listen to an iPod or playing with a cell phone while I am conducting a lecture. :-/ I do not allow any of these devices in my classroom, because they are so disruptive.
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