After studying technology issues for more than a year, an LA Unified task force this week offered their ideas for the district after the botched iPad debacle that was supposed to result in one computer device in every student’s hands. The price tag would be $311 million for “a 1:1 environment,” providing every student with a tablet...

A plan to improve Information Technology at LA Unified is close to getting every school wireless internet access and providing every student access to a computer. It’s a slower, more methodical strategy than the approach taken by former Superintendent John Deasy, which led to the botched $1.3 billion iPad program, an FBI investigation, his resignation and an abrupt end to the...

By the end of next week just before winter break begins, 95 LA Unified schools will have been issued computer devices for the year — one for every student, according to Bill Wherritt, the district’s Distribution Project Manager for the Instructional Technology Initiative Task Force. The remainder of the 103 schools in a pilot program for...

When 50,000 iPads, laptops and Chromebooks went out to LA Unified students last year, about 1,500 were unaccounted for. So far this year about 1,000 were recovered and district computer techs now say they expect to recover the remaining 500 devices by sometime next week. “We’ve been like Sherlock Holmes,” said Bill Wherritt, a Facilities Division...

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines delivered a “jump start” to the newly-reformed Instructional Technology Initiative Task Force at its first meeting of the school year yesterday. He addressed such concerns as an already-aging supply of computers, a change in task force leadership and his renewed effort to get a device in the hands of every student in...