Los Angeles School Districts Take Tampered iPads Away From Students
Students were able to 'hack' the security settings of the iPad within hours.
Oct. 2, 2013— -- The ambitious plan to get an iPad in more than 30,000 Los Angeles students' hands hit another snag.
Workers at the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) have started confiscating iPads that bypassed the devices' security measures, according to the Los Angeles Times. The tampered iPads could access unauthorized websites and apps, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Pandora.
The school-issued iPads were installed with their own security software that prevented students from getting access to anything but the preloaded educational software. However, students at several different schools discovered a work around within hours after students received their iPads.
Sarah Bradshaw, the chief of staff for District 5 of the LAUSD, said that there were signs that the iPad program was going to be a rough ride.
"We could see this thing coming," she told ABC News. "So much of this has been rushed and so ill thought out."
Despite the presence of 340 hackers spread among three LA schools, some students took to heart that the iPad should be kept strictly for school work and not for personal use.
"We did sign a contract that we shouldn't modify it, so I'm going to follow it if I signed it," Ramon Uribe, a senior at Theodore Roosevelt High School, told ABC station KABC-TV in Los Angeles. "I sure do not deserve my borrowed iPad to be taken away."
According to an Apple press release back in June, the Los Angeles School Board of Education committed $30 million to purchasing new iPads for its students.
Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said that it was the first phase of a major initiative to get an iPad to every student across 47 different schools.
"Education is in Apple's DNA," he said.
Though the schools have requested that the iPads be returned to them, the students may get a second chance.
"There's a reason why students did this," said Ron Chandler, the chief information officer with the LAUSD. "We have to have a conversation about what is the appropriate place and maybe we need to relax our requirements a little."