Utah school criticized for buying IPODS

[pam]

At the risk of offending someone on the site who has a child going to this school (not my intent), couldn't this federal stimulus money have been spent in a better way?

ksl.com - US senators criticize Kearns High for buying iPods

[UrbanFool]

I actually think there are a lot of stupider things that money is going for. This is pretty stupid though.

[Just_A_Guy]

From a Keynesian standpoint, the stimulus' raison d'etre is to pump "federal" dollars back into the private sector.

No one who engineered this tomfoolery will admit this, but the article shows the stimulus doing exactly what the Administration's economists wanted it to do: your federal tax dollars are providing revenue to Apple, jobs for its employees, and free goodies for those on the dole. The fact that no one really needs what those dollars are buying--the fact that those expenditures most likely conceal graft and corruption on a massive scale--is entirely irrelevant to Mr. Keynes' latter-day disciples. Some within the administration might even argue that it's a feature, not a bug.

Edited August 5, 2010 by Just_A_Guy

[UrbanFool]

I hadn't even thought of that.

[Moksha]

Gee whiz, Apple will get a booster shot right when it is reporting record profits (courtesy of Snow informing us about Apple's success).

Could be worse. They could be getting that Microsoft imitator instead. So many great music accessories are made to work with the iPod.

[HoosierGuy]

I like the idea because I have an iTouch and love it. You can download and install so many different kind of applications, I can sort of see it being ok, sort of. but, I'd rather see the students be given full laptops or home computers if they don't have them already. Perhaps take all the money for iTouch's and instead send the students on a school trip to Washington D.C. or something.

[Tarnished]

"They don't get to keep it unless they meet graduation requirements."

As someone who majored for awhile in secondary education, I have to ask myself, "If you are going to buy expensive electronics for every child in your school, why not keep those electronics to help the following years of student? Why give a gift to only a small group of students when you can use that electronic resource as a learning tool for at least a few years?

It is like buying laptops for classrooms to help with learning, and then giving them away at the end of the year as an incentive for graduating. It doesn't help you in years to come, in fact it leaves you right were you started, and for this school will take them back to buying text books after all the iPods are gone.

[rameumptom]

Yep, should have bought them each an IPAD. Then they could learn to do some real school stuff.

Geometry: figure out the best way for the bus to take them home using GPS points

Business: figure out how to raise enough online money for their avatar to see Justin Bieber's avatar perform in concert.

Nutrition class: Using the FatA$$ app, figure out how much weight you are gaining getting chips and sodas from the vending machines.

As with Apple's Apps Store, the possibilities are endless.....

[Moksha]

Yep, should have bought them each an IPAD. Then they could learn to do some real school stuff.

.....

Everybody knows teenagers like music. Don't blame them. It's just too bad the Granite School District could not come up with a better plan to spend this free money.

Even worse that Barack Obama did not use this money to create jobs, when that is what the economy needed most.