NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month

Nate the greatest writes "Guilford County Schools' headline grabbing tablet program is back in the news again. The program came to an abrupt end last Friday when the school district announced that they were recalling all of the Amplify tablets. GCS had leased over 15 thousand of the tablets (at a cost of $200 a year) for its middle school students, but decided to recall the tablets just one month into the school year after some 1500 students reported a broken screen. Around two thousand complained of improperly fitting cases, and there were also 175 reports of malfunctioning power supplies. There's currently no explanation for the cases or power supplies, but GCS has stated that the tablets broke because they lacked a layer of Gorilla Glass. This was listed in the contract, but the school district did not confirm the condition of the tablets before accepting them. This program was the poster child for News Corp.'s entry into the educational market. It was the single largest program to use the Amplify tablet, and its failure represents a serious setback. The Amplify tablet now has a record for poor construction quality and a breakage rate that is 12 times higher than what Squaretrade reported in early 2012 for the iPad 2."

The rabbit hole

[sdinfoserv]

Studies have shown no increase in math and reading scores with the adoption of high technology - use of tables or laptops. The moral of the story being there's no magic bullet to replace old fashion reading, writing and arithmetic. Just because it's sexy, doesn't mean you need to spend the money.

Re:Obvious Solution

[RoverDaddy]

That's quite a generality. I've been to my daughter's high school and the teachers there don't appear to be lazy in the least, AND they seem to be leveraging technology in sensible ways. For example, the way my daughter can log in to a school web site and see every day's lessons and homework assignments.