Earlier this year, the Los Angeles public school district confirmed that it would be giving an Apple iPad to each of its 640,000 students. The billion-dollar rollout (which includes other expenses alongside the tablets) would replace textbooks and "Dog ate my homework" excuses, assuming they use iCloud.
First of all, great idea. Second of all, they should have seen this next part coming.
Yesterday, The LA Times reported that 300 children at Theodore Roosevelt High School had already hacked their iPads—within days of receiving the devices. The tablets were issued with restrictions, so students couldn't use them for Facebook, Pandora, and similar recreational or social networking activities. But students cleverly figured out a workaround and spread the word among their classmates, who are now happily Tweeting away on the school's dime.
What was the LA school district's reaction? They halted the program.
What should they do? Start a coding curriculum and put these kids in charge.
Authorities tend to be terrified of the word "hacking." But some subversive behavior is extremely interesting from an education perspective. This kind of boundary pushing is how innovation happens in the real world; why shouldn't we encourage it at a young age?
The kids who hacked their iPads just completed an exercise in problem solving (and quite an easy one, I might add, from the simplicity of the workaround, which was to delete the user profile the school set up in the iPad settings). Giving them tools for intense computation and problem solving—like an iPad—and then setting them loose on real-world challenges will be a much more interesting (and effective) learning tool than what they're probably planning on doing with these devices, i.e. abstract algebra and making Keynote presentations.
If I worked at the LA school district, I'd set up a hacker curriculum where each week the students must complete harder and harder challenges. Each Monday, I'd lock down their iPads with increasingly difficult security, and tell them to post something on my Facebook wall by Friday. I'd have them build things in Hopscotch (awesome, iPad-based programming/edu-game), and hold class-wide IFTTT (If This Then That) challenges. We'd use Raspberry Pi as a springboard to learn Linux and more advanced programming. The final project would be to figure out how to change their grade in my spreadsheet from a remote computer.
We'd be subtly teaching kids lateral thinking, which will help them no matter what career they pursue, computer science or no. And there'd be no surprise when these kids go on to kick ass in the ever-competitive global employment marketplace we're about to dump them into.
Alternatively, the school district could give up on blocking social media and just make all the kids accept their teachers as Facebook friends. (Oof!) But whatever we do, let's certainly not punish ingenuity.
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Shane Snow is Chief Creative Officer of Contently. He writes about media and technology for Wired and Fast Company, and tweets at@shanesnow.
(image via The Breakfast Club, hacked by author)
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