A couple of months ago, we reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District’s iPad giveaway program was rife with problems, including students who managed to bypass site security protections.

The teachers are now chiming in, and the grades are not good.

Only 36 percent of Los Angeles public school teachers who responded to a survey strongly favor continuing a troubled and very costly plan to put iPads in the hands of every student.

Employee unions representing teachers and administrators along with a Los Angeles Unified School District board member conducted the anonymous survey, reports the Los Angeles Times.

About 15 percent of teachers who have endured the iPad program rollout participated in the survey.

espite promises by administrators that wireless connections would be sufficient, many teachers pointed to persistent infrastructure glitches. Almost 75 percent said they or their students had experienced serious connectivity problems.

“The system keeps going down,” explained one teacher, “which makes it impossible to utilize the iPads in the way that the district desired.”

A majority of the teachers who responded to the survey complained about problems with storage, applications, signing on and ongoing security issues.

A majority also said they and their students were using the iPads — which cost a whopping $768 each — just three hours or less each week.

Why aren’t teachers using the iPads in class? The survey suggests that they don’t really know how.

Training has been minimal. Apple, the manufacturer, provided one day of iPad training. Pearson, the London-based textbook company that provides the still-just-partially available curriculum for the devices, provided only two days of training.

School district officials told the Times they now realize that teachers need additional training on how to use iPads and how to manage classrooms of students who are using iPads. They have also recommended giving teachers iPads six months before students receive them.

The great Los Angeles public schools giveaway has been a disaster from the start. This fall, when students received their tablets at the first few high schools chosen for the project, hundreds of students figured out almost immediately how to hack the security settings so they could surf the internet and download music. Another 71 kids ostensibly lost their iPads just as immediately.

….Also, the school district must pay an extra $60 million each year starting three years from now in order to re-license the English and math curriculum software on the devices.