“While Apple started selling iPads to the public only 15 months ago, the 1.5-pound tablet computers seem well on their way toward ubiquity. This year, Alaska Airlines began issuing them to pilots to replace the 25 pounds of paper flight manuals they were required to carry on flights,” Timothy Williams reports for The New York Times. “Now, Cornelius, N.C., with a population of about 25,000, has stopped printing meeting agenda packages for town commissioners and has given them iPads instead.”
Anthony Roberts, the town manager (with Bence Hoyle, the police chief), discusses:
Q: Why use iPads for your agendas?
A: The short version is, unlike a lot of governments, we try to operate as much as a business as possible. At the end of the day, when you are printing agendas around 200 pages apiece and after the meeting they go into the recycling bin, you say, “Why are we doing it like this?” We have to run 20 agendas at 200 pages per agenda. That’s 4,000 pages just on that one, and that’s not including the time to put it together. And you usually don’t get it right the first time because everything changes. I would think it takes over eight hours per packet.
(Chief Hoyle cuts in) And the Police Department would actually deliver it to the board members to make sure they got it and had time to study it.
(Mr. Roberts continues) We see it as a money-saving measure. We see it as saving our taxpayers money.
Much more in the full article here.
A 200 page agenda? Wouldn’t like to be at those meetings!
Realistically, one or two pages of agenda, 200 pages of supporting documents.
BTW, is Cornelius the next town over from Maiden, NC?
I think Cornelius is about 30 miles from Maiden.
Wow, that’s just 32 miles from Shelby.
At least some government officials actually think about cutting the expenses.
So they say. What Mr. Roberts really wanted to say was “We wanted something to fiddle with during these long-ass boring meetings and it saves taxpayers money.”
It was an excellent and laudable move …
Hats off to whoever initiated this !!!
Yes! One group gets it now think bigger. “Think Different”.
It would have been great to have those many thousands of page bills that the Senate and Congress vote on in pdf form on iPads. You would not hear, “We have to pass it to see what is in it.”
How about all those school books that every town keeps buying every year, year after year at $40 to $100 each.? Ever see those little 40 pound kids hauling ALL their books home every night and back to school in the morning. Those are 20 or 30 pound loads that they are caring on old school out of date books. Give them all iPads and educate the next generation better than this generation. Let them see the whole “I have a dream” speech not someones talking points about it. Let them see how things are made or done in the world around them.
That’s a nice idea in theory, but there are lot of issues you have to take into consideration when giving iPads to students. Have you ever seen how school kids abuse their materials – books, computers, writing utensils? I’m a school librarian in charge of all of my school’s textbooks. I can tell you first-hand about abuse, neglect, theft, etc. Additionally, there are a things to consider like management of the software, the loading and off-loading of e-books for each student, keeping kids from using their devices for other things (Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, searching for “b&&bies” in Google images”) when they’re supposed to be doing research or listening to a lecture. And when iCloud hits, how will we prevent students from downloading anything they want onto the iPad?
When the cost of an iPad drops considerably and better tools for managing e-textbooks become available, iPads will be a wonderful boon to education. Until then, they are too expensive and difficult to administer.
Bah! Always with what can’t be done and pointing out the hurdles. Learn to jump over them instead of just describing how hard it looks to make the leap. I’d rather the people educating my kids had a more optimistic view of how that could be accomplished. So tired of the refusing to even enter the forest because the trees look so big…………..
Nice post Jersey_Trader – I couldn’t agree with you more!
Abuse, neglect, theft. When I was in school the kids had respect for teachers, school property and other kids’ possessions.
The reason the respect was there is that when someone crossed the line they got the strap in front of the other students. Corpral punishment was the greatest tool to counteract delinquent behavior.
I blame the left leaning bastards that run the teachers unions. They deserve to work in the hell holes they created.
For some reason your ‘old fart’ opinion reminds me of The Four Yorkshiremen monty python sketch…
…but seriously, you are advocating a return to a time when sadistic cruelty by certain teachers towards minors(the most vulnerable), was a legitimate career choice???
Wow, you must be angry a lot nowadays.
That was funny and very appropriate.
Dude it has nothing to do with coporal punishment. It is primarily a parental responibility to let kids know what is right and wrong behavior. It doesn’t reqiure corporal punishment, it requires parents who are interested in and actively involved with their kids.
When interested parents get a report from school that their child is misbehaving they can easily register their meaningful disapproval without any kind of physical punishment.. It all depends on the relationship with the kids and the kind of example parents set.
It wouldn’t be surprising if kids who are abused at home act up in school.
aka Christian, If you are interested in the subject, you should take a look at Fraiser Speirs blog. He is a computer teacher and IT for a mid-size private school in Scotland and an Mac programmer. He replaced laptop carts and the most of the computer labs with iPads for each child in the school. His blog is filled with quite interesting about the future of the program combined with successes and troubles of managing those devices. Anyone with an interest in education and the iPad should read through it. http://www.speirs.org
I did a survey recently and asked groups of schoolkids: “Would you rather have 20 text books or have everything in one place onscreen?”
Result: kids 100% onscreen (yes, 100 percent); only objectors were teachers and grownups.
It’s a generation thing, except, at far too old to reveal on this forum, I’m with the kids.
My question is.. why do you have 200 page agendas. And 20 of them.
Fix the root of the problem. Getting iPads only fixes the symptom.
Saving tax payer’s money my a$$.
One doesn’t “buy” something to “save money”. That is logically incorrect, even if everyone misuses the terminology.
One may invest in new equipment to reduce future expenses.
And let’s hear the rest of the story: was the city council already using laptops? Couldn’t the documents be distributed digitally without spending money on more portable electronics? Oh yes, they’re all on the city website in pdf format!!!
A city council needs iPads IN ADDITION TO THEIR EXISTING COMPUTERS like a fish needs a bicycle. iPad purchases are WASTE of taxpayer money, as is the printing of thousands of pages of paper.
It’s how local municipalities conduct business. These agendas include staff reports, studies, maps, etc. Council members and other city officials get these for personal review and analysis.
Mike, questioning your logic, iPads DO save money. It takes hundreds of dollars per session to print, assemble and distribute the agendas and the worst is that it gets tossed after the meeting. You can use one computer to push data to the iPads.
Laptops can do the job but laptops are cumbersome, need maintenance, especially if they are Windows laptops.
iPads will pay for themselves in less than a year of implementation. They are much easier to use and there is hardly ant training involved. Laptops just become a maintenance and cost burden.
MEES, do you really think that council members are going to stop using their current laptops?
All the city needs to do is stop printing the reports and give council members the choice of new hardware WHEN THE OLD HARDWARE NEEDS REPLACEMENT.
Anything else is a waste of taxpayer money.
“Saving the taxpayers’ money.” Imagine that!
Whoopsie, stupid fscking Libs:
“NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing.
The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.”
Via Forbes
We hear/read variations of the same vitriolic tripe with every issue to do with health, the environment, treating people (en masse) decently. The US — the ONLY western nation where decent health care for everybody is regarded as a commie plot…..
Then those damn commie libs stopped us using DDT, then lead in gasoline, and trying to stop our god-given right to make maximum profits by dunking our crops with various untested chemicals. Fer chrissake, they won’t even let us work children 14 hours a day in garment factories any more.
Let’s get back to the 19th century, when a robber baron could be a robber baron, without these pansy, whining, oh-lets-be-nice-to-the-peasants bull!
The Liberal lies and hoaxes are being exposed. Loser Al Gore won’t be making his billions after all.
It would be nice if MDN (and every other website that does this) would stop linking to sites that require a subscription in order to view the article linked to.
As for the story, these elected officials reasons for going to to iPads is to be commended… provided the reasons given are justified as stated and not a rationale to supply themselves with the latest tech dodads.
Are the iPads used strictly for the purposes stated and remain in government offices when not in use?