Good idea? Bad idea? I read this article on LATimes talking about how the kids hacked the MDM software on school issued iPads. The topic was on security. Obviously the MDM provider did not do a through job, as explained by an article on alertboot here.
This reminds me of another question, the iPad in classroom. A while ago I recall seeing a plea at my local school website, the kids there asked parents/friends donation, to buy them iPad, so that they can do cool things like count coins on iPad. My take then is why not counting the real coins. I can understand the pitch from educators (such as this one at LAUSD), the blah blah (perceived good things are going to happen with the iPads). At the end of the day, those devices have to be used to enhance the kids learning, not to distract their learning, or to reduce teachers’ creativity.
(Update 10-02-13) Tom Kaneshige of CIO magazine has a more comprehensive explanation of MDM and why the incident happened.