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Friday, September 27, 2013

Student hackers lead L.A. schools to halt major iPad initiative

Student hackers lead L.A. schools to halt major iPad initiative:

Student hackers lead L.A. schools to halt major iPad initiative

(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg)
(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg)
The $1 billion initiative by the Los Angeles public schools district to give an iPad to all 650,000 students and teachers for home use has hit a snag that, in hindsight, someone should have seen coming: student hackers.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times,  officials in the country’s second-largest school district stopped allowing home use of the iPads this week because high school students had hacked into the devices and used them for non-educational purposes such as tweeting, checking their Facebook accounts and streaming music.
No adult anticipated this?
School Superintendent John Deasy had pushed the initiative to spend about $1 billion to give every student and teacher in the system an Apple tablet to take home, with half the money going to pay for the devices and the other half to set up wireless networks at schools and other costs. The money is being funded by