Each and every student in the St. Paul School District is getting an iPad. The district announced the move this week, saying students at about half of the schools would receive the tablets on loan starting this year, with plans to have in iPad for each and every student and teacher starting in the fall of 2015. The tablet initiative is part of the district’s Personalized Learning Plan strategy – which initially had a different computing partner. The district had a nearly $4.3 million deal with Dell to create a new digital learning platform that would act as an online hub for everything school-related.
After a contract with Dell failed to live up to expectations, a school district in Minnesota has pulled the plug and turned to Apple devices for their students. The St. Paul school district had sought to roll out a new technology initiative with Dell devices for its schools in the 2014-15 school year, but now won’t see a full iPad program rollout until 2015-16. The move to Apple comes after the school district has already spent upwards of $715,000 on the project and a year of time. Funded by a $9 million a year project proposed in 2012, the idea behind the device program was to extend technology to students in a way that promoted learning and communication. Custom software from Dell would have allowed students to see video lessons, take quizzes and access assignments. Teachers would have a way to contact parents and students after hours, while tracking student progress.
